CHICAGO — It’s an odd feeling, being silenced. On the Fourth of July, I heard that El Universal, Venezuela’s century-old newspaper, and among the oldest in Latin America, had been sold to a recently registered, anonymous Spanish corporation. Against a backdrop of fireworks bursting over Lake Michigan, I sat at my computer and started copying from its website into Word documents two years’ worth of weekly opinion columns I had written for the paper. I knew a flood was coming — I had seen it happen before. My laptop would be my pieces’ ark.

Sure enough, last week, I received the following notification by email: “Hello and good afternoon, I hope you are well. We’re sorry to inform you that, due to editorial restructuring, there has been a series of adjustments and we will no longer be able to publish your work. Many thanks.”

The wording was perfect. My articles could no longer be published not because of their quality or anything to do with their content, but by virtue of being mine. Apparently I had called out the government — for mismanaging the electric grid, borrowing recklessly from China, imprisoning political opponents — one too many times.

Dozens of other columnists at the paper received similar notices recently. The contributions of others, including the most celebrated cartoonist in the country, have been censored or edited without notice. Some of those spared have resigned in protest.