I mean, I dunno about that stuff. For reference, Guatemala City manages a murder-rate about 10x higher than Memphis, TN (which itself is averaging about 3rd most dangerous city in the US by most ratings), and the country of Guatemala as a whole has multiple cities in the top-50 list of murders/100,000 citizens. Violent crime is rampant in both rural and urban areas, gangs control large portions of the cities and country, and organized crime has tendrils in every level of government, overtly and shamelessly (to the point that the distraught populace recently voted in a goofy comedian to replace their most recently convicted President). The overwhelming majority (90%+) of the murders go unsolved, some rather. . . pointedly so.
Now, I dunno about you, but when I travel in Memphis, I behave very differently than I do I in, say, Cary, NC (which has 1/13 the number of murders per 100K that Memphis does–to say nothing of violent crime altogether). The general and consistent threat-level is noticeably higher, and warrants a far more conscious, cautious demeanor. It’s the logical and safe way to behave.
So if you go to a place that’s a whole order of magnitude more dangerous than that, cut off (most likely) from friends, family, your bank, your insurance, and, perhaps, even people who speak the same language as you do, I think a fairly notable level of caution is warranted. Particularly if you are an obviously white, English-speaking, moneyed foreigner traveling off the beaten path away from explicit tourist zones or along long, paramilitary-studded highways.
My favorite example of the baseline crime expectancy in Guatemala–and its pervasiveness–is that when my mom and I used to travel there in the late 90s–a time of relative peace!–it was understood that you’d leave ~$20-40 American as bribes at the top of each suitcase you checked through customs into or out of the country. It’d be quietly and politely taken out, and then the bag would be handed off to you without another word. Sans the bribe? Expect a lovely series of delays and poorly communicated attempts to extract the cash, instead.