Some critics said it provided a platform to cartels, others complained the blog cut and pasted reports from other sources without attribution. It provided bulletins, pictures and video of abductions, shootouts, executions and the discovery of bodies as well as severed human heads, limbs and torsos. Over time it acquired multiple sources, including drug gangs, and drew more than 3m hits monthly. Tens of thousands more have vanished.īlog del Narco helped fill a vacuum left by cowed mainstream media organisations which often could not report roadblocks, shootouts and kidnappings. More than 70,000 people have died in the past six years, including dozens of journalists, as cartels battle each other and state forces. "I don't want to think the worst but I can't help it." Some victims have been tortured and beheaded on camera. Her biggest fear is she will see her colleague appear on a video of the type that frequently appeared on their blog: battered, interrogated, gazing into the camera, knowing a terrible fate awaits. She is in a boarding house and has enough money to last a few months, she said, but has no friends or contacts in Spain. She has no immediate plans to resume blogging. She has not posted on the blog since 3 May, she said, but technical issues related to previous cyber-attacks meant it appeared on the site on 8 May. "I had all the correct papers." Hours later she was on a flight to Spain, she said. She sold some of her great-grandmother's jewellery, took a bus to the border and legally entered the US on foot. Lucy said that after receiving the phone call she immediately moved to another part of her home city, in northern Mexico, and prepared to flee. Adam Parfrey, head of the Washington-based publisher Feral House, which published Dying for the Truth, said he was not in direct contact with the authors but had heard a rumour one had disappeared. Her account could not be independently verified but a US-based intermediary who is also in contact with Lucy backed up her story.
She said she was speaking from an undisclosed location in Spain and that she was alone, lonely and frightened. Lucy, speaking to the Guardian via Skype this week, cried several times. I emailed him, tried Skype and WhatsApp, but nothing. I called him back but there was no answer.
BLOG DEL NARCO MUNDONARCO CODE
It was our code word for extreme situations, our last resort, but until then we had never used it. The revelation caused a stir but the duo continued as normal, Lucy, a journalist, writing and editing the site and her partner, a male friend aged 27 who lived in a different city in northern Mexico, managing the technical side.