'Blog del Narco' gives inside data on Mexican drug war

Olga R. Rodriguez

The Associated Press | Posted: Friday, August 13, 2010 12:00 am

The blog, which is written almost entirely in Spanish, is online at www.blog delnarco.com Warning: Some of the content is extremely graphic.

MEXICO CITY - An anonymous young blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere - an inside view of their country's raging drug war.

Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, "Blog del Narco" in less than six months has become Mexico's go-to Internet site at a time when the mainstream media are feeling pressure and threats to stay away from the story.

Many postings, including warnings and a video showing a beheading, appear to come directly from drug traffickers. Others depict crime scenes accessible only to the military or the police.

The undifferentiated content suggests that all sides are using the blog - drug gangs to project their power, law enforcement to show that it too can play rough, and the public to learn about incidents that the mainstream media are forced to ignore or play down.

In at least one case, Blog del Narco may have led to a major arrest - of a prison warden after a video posting detailed her alleged system of setting inmates free at night to carry out killings for a drug cartel.

The mysterious blogger hides his identity behind an elaborate cyber-screen. The Associated Press wrote to the blog's e-mail address, and the blogger called back from a disguised phone number. He said he is a student in northern Mexico majoring in computer security and that he launched the blog in March as a "hobby," but it now has grown to hundreds of postings a day and 3 million hits a week.

"People now demand information, and if you don't publish it, they complain," he said.

Indeed, President Felipe Calderón has heard complaints that his government is not putting out enough information to allow people to function and stay safe.

"You authorities have placed Mexicans in the middle of a shootout where it's not clear where the bullets are coming from," journalist Hector Aguilar Camin said at a recent forum evaluating the government's strategy for fighting organized crime. "When it comes to information, the Mexican public-safety agencies don't even shoot in self-defense."

The violence has killed more then 28,000 people and has made Mexico one of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists, which explains why Blog del Narco cloaks itself so heavily in anonymity.

"For the scanty details that (the mass media) put on television, they get grenades thrown at them and their reporters kidnapped," the blogger said. "We publish everything. Imagine what they could do to us."

Among his postings:

• A video of a man being decapitated. While the media reported only that police found a beheaded body, the video shows the man confessing to working for drug lord Edgar "La Barbie" Valdez Villareal, who is locked in a fight with both the Beltran Leyva and Sinaloa cartels.

• The prison-warden affair, which unfolded in a video of masked members of the Zetas drug gang interrogating a police officer, who reveals that inmates allied with the Sinaloa Cartel are given guns and cars, and sent off to commit murders. At the end of the video, the officer is shot to death.

• Links to Facebook pages of alleged traffickers and their children, weapons, cars and lavish parties.

• Photos of Mexican pop music stars at a birthday party for an alleged drug dealer's teenage daughter in the border state of Coahuila, across from Texas.

"The girl wrote to me and told me, in a threatening way, to take down her photos," the blogger said. "But as long as I don't hear from her father, I won't take them down."

While there are numerous blogs on Mexico's drug war, Blog del Narco seems to be the first used by the traffickers themselves. The blogger said he provides an uncensored platform, posting photographs and videos he receives regardless of content or cartel affiliation. It can be extremely gory, but his neutrality has helped to build his credibility.

"We don't insult them; we don't say one specific group is the bad one," he said. "We don't want problems with them."

Critics say it's free public relations for the cartels.

"Media outlets have social responsibilities and have to serve the public," said Carlos Lauria of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "This is being produced by someone who is not doing it from a journalistic perspective. He is doing it without any ethical considerations."

The blogger maintains a Facebook page and a Twitter account that includes CNN en Español, all major Mexican media outlets, the FBI and the Mexican Defense Department among its more than 7,300 followers. Rusty Payne, spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said, "We're very aware of these kinds of things." But he wouldn't say whether the DEA uses the information in its investigations.

The blogger said he spends about four hours a day working on the blog and has recruited a friend to help after becoming overwhelmed with submissions.

Many of his videos are sent to him by readers - who know he will get them a much wider airing in Mexico - or are taken from YouTube. He regularly lifts news reports from other media sites without credit. He said the mainstream media did the same with his content - until the national Milenio Television network aired the prison-warden video and credited Blog del Narco. Its daily viewership went up 30 percent.