Bring out your dead

The drug wars in Mexico have left thousands of people dead - often the result of gruesome killings - and one tabloid, El Nuevo Alarma!, has made it its business to feed the appetite of readers who want to see the gory aftermath.

From the Daily Beast:

With every ritual execution, with every decapitation, the editors of Mexican tabloids like El Nuevo Alarma! (warning: graphic photos) snap into action. Alarma! is Mexico’s most shameless tabloid, like the New York Post with one-100th of the editorial discretion. Since 1963, Alarma! has specialized in publishing graphic photos of Mexico’s dead, and, now, the drug cartels have handed the paper an unending stream of bodies. “Ellas También,” reads the cover headline of a recent issue, alongside the photo of two youngish women who had been murdered by the cartel that calls itself La Familia. The editor, Miguel Ángel Rodriguez Vazquez, told me the photo piqued his interest, because it’s not every day he sees a woman so casually executed.

-snip-

Alarma! is a weekly newspaper. It claims a circulation of 80,000, with 15,000 to 20,000 of those copies sold in the United States—the bulk of them in southern California, Texas and New York.

Leader of Sinoloa cartel killed by Mexican authorities

The Los Angeles Times reports that Arturo Beltran Leyva, the leader of Mexico's largest drug cartel, was killed today by Mexican forces. The story is here.

News judgment*

In just the last 15 minutes, I watched as this story (about Michael Phelps smoking weed) pushed this story (about civil rights abuses in the war on drugs) off the front page of the Washington Post website.

*Update: Law enforcement judgment - The sheriff of Richland County in South Carolina says he wants to charge Phelps with a crime. Phelps' sponsors, on the other hand, could care less about the boy with the bong.

Mi guerra es su guerra*

Unlike here, Mexico's 'war on drugs' looks like a war. Since the start of 2007, the country has recorded 6,836 drug-related deaths. The staggering numbers are only eclipsed by the savagery of the killers. While the violence has so far stopped at the border, the war's roots run deep inside the U.S.

Fortunately the Los Angeles Times has decided to devote serious resources to covering Mexico's drug war, despite cuts in other areas of international reporting. The stories from reporters Richard Marosi, Tracy Wilkinson, Ken Ellingwood, Sam Quinones and others are collected here.

*UPDATED: The latest story comes Sam Quinones, who looks at a 2007 massacre at a Monterrey, Mexico jewelry store. The killers left four people dead and didn't take a thing. Video included.