Rory Carroll reports for The Guardian
It is the most compelling video Carlos Jimenez has taped as a journalist but he sincerely hopes it will never be broadcast. If it is, he will be dead.
The tape features Jimenez talking to camera and naming those who have turned his community in El Naranjo, northern Guatemala, into a nest of corruption, violence and fear.
The video, already passed on to trusted contacts, is to be aired only if the reporter is murdered. "It is to be posthumous. I detail who has been doing all the killings. You'll get to see it if they kill me."
The macabre film is the latest sign that narco-fuelled violence has spilled down from Mexico and turned central America into one of the world's deadliest regions for journalists. Media workers are being abducted and gunned down in increasing numbers amid a climate of fear and impunity.
Yensi Roberto Ordoñez, a TV host with Guatemala's provincial Canal 14 cable station, was found dead with knife wounds to his neck and chest in May after receiving threats his bosses said were related to his work.
Yensi Roberto Ordoñez, a TV host with Guatemala's provincial Canal 14 cable station, was found dead with knife wounds to his neck and chest in May after receiving threats his bosses said were related to his work.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned what it called a "wave of violence" against Guatemala's journalists, especially those in the provinces.
In Honduras, 13 journalists have been killed in the past 18 months. In the most recent case hooded men with AK-47s shot Luis Ernesto Mendoza, the owner of a TV station in the city of Danli, as he arrived at his office.
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