YouTube’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold

The Internet has flexed its muscles in Guatemala.

Last month thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Guatemala City demanding the president step down after a lawyer was killed on the street by an unidentified assassin. The United Nations is now planning an investigation while the international community, concerned about the future of the Central American nation, looks on anxiously.

This political crisis, however, wasn’t prompted by any press story. It was sparked instead by a clip posted on the YouTube video sharing Web site. In the video, the now deceased attorney predicted his assassination – and laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom.

“This is the most serious political crisis the country has faced since the (1996) signing of the peace accords,” said Anita Isaacs, a Haverford College political science professor who studies Guatemala’s democratization. The peace accords ended what had been a nearly four decade-long civil war. “The country is hanging on by a thread,” she added.

This, then, is the story of the YouTube video that sparked a U.N. investigation and threatened to take down a Latin American government.