DRUG RIVALS WAGE A WAR OF GRISLY IMAGES

Rival Drug Traffickers Are Sprinkling The Internet With
Often-Gruesome Video Depictions Of Their Retribution

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 website
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 led, until recently, by Osiel
Cardenas. Mexican authorities extradited Cardenas last month to face
charges in a U.S. courtroom.

Last week, assassins armed with assault weapons and cameras appeared
to take the cultural battle to a new level. Police said two groups of
gunmen videotaped themselves assassinating five officers and two
secretaries at police stations in Acapulco.

Those images have yet to surface on the Internet. But a vibrant
subculture has emerged to celebrate and document the deeds of the
drug traffickers. Although many of the people who post videos
probably are not directly involved in the drug trade, people made
explicit threats on one blog, since shut down, that were followed by
real-life killings.

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.

The videos hint at the growing mystique of the cartels, which have
formed competing bands of hit men who are said to have received
paramilitary training. Although YouTube often removes the violent
videos from its site, they usually reappear quickly. Last week, many
of the postings had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Video Of Arrest

"Now you can see that they're not that brave -- ha, ha, ha," one
YouTube poster wrote in Spanish in response to a four-minute video
posted there called Los Sicarios, (the Hit Men). The video shows a
suspected member of the Gulf cartel, popularly known as the Zetas,
arrested after a firefight in the state of Tabasco.

Handcuffed and lying on the floor, the suspect meekly asks to talk to
his family and declares, "They're going to kill me. I know I'm going
to be killed."

"This is great," the YouTube poster wrote in response. "Pure Sinaloa
Productions."

Such mocking might be just empty bluster, but other statements posted
on the Internet are not. In September, Marcelo Garza, a high-ranking
federal investigator in the border state of Nuevo Leon was
assassinated 18 days after a blogger stated: "We swear to you that
soon we will knock him down." The blog accused Garza of working for a
rival cartel.

In 2005, The Dallas Morning News obtained a copy of a DVD showing
unknown kidnappers interrogating four men allegedly working for the
Gulf cartel. One of the captives is executed on camera. A Mexican
official told the newspaper that video was part of a rival cartel's
"counterintelligence strategy."

The video of that killing is reproduced in several YouTube postings,
including one that threatens revenge for the killing of singer
Valentin "the Golden Rooster" Elizalde, whose narcocorrido ballads
were taken up as anthems to Sinaloa cartel leader Guzman.

Death Threat

"This is directed to all those who call themselves Zetas . . . and to
the Gulf cartel," the YouTube video begins in a hip-hop cadence.
"You'll pay with your lives for what you did to our Golden Rooster."

A 30-second video of Elizalde's autopsy in the border city of Reynosa
after his assassination in November circulates widely on the
Internet, with one version on YouTube having more than 850,000 views
as of last Wednesday.

A YouTube spokesman said in a written statement that the company
relies on users to report inappropriate content. Such content is
removed if it is found to be inappropriate.

"Real violence on YouTube is not allowed," said the spokesman, who
declined to be identified. 'If a video shows someone getting 'hurt,
attacked, or humiliated,' it will be removed as according to our
Community Guidelines."

Luis Astorga, a drug trafficking analyst at the National Autonomous
University of Mexico, says it is likely that the vast majority of the
videos posted on YouTube and other sites are produced by people with
no links to the cartels themselves.

Often, reporters arrive at crime scenes before the police do.
Officers don't always close off crime scenes, and bystanders can
shoot footage with the hope of selling it later.

Indeed, some video available on YouTube appears to have been filmed
by police themselves, including a dramatic eight-minute sequence shot
from the inside of a jail in Tabasco state during a shootout.

'We're Under Fire'

"We're in the Palace of Justice, and we're under fire," one man in
the video says as he calls out for help on his cellphone. Explosions
are audible outside the building, and blood covers the floor.

A woman cries out: "Please, call the army!"