Mexico's drug-war violence broadcast on Internet

By Hector Tobar
Los Angeles Times
Photo by EDUARDO VERDUGO / AP

MEXICO CITY — For months, video artists and videographers of varying skill have been peppering the Internet with a gruesome cavalcade of images: a woman slain in the cab of a pickup truck, an alleged Mafia hit man being tortured and executed, an assassinated singer's body splayed on a coroner's table.

Many of the videos are posted at one time or another on the Web site YouTube. They seek to cheer on or denigrate the opposing sides in Mexico's drug wars, the Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman and the Gulf cartel believed to be led, until recently, by Osiel Cardenas. Mexican authorities extradited Cardenas last month to face charges in a U.S. courtroom.

The deeds of Mexico's drug traffickers have long been celebrated in the folk-music genre known as "narcocorridos." The Internet video postings are a new venue to spread the mythology and allow people who identify with one of the cartels to delight in humiliating their rivals.