The messages brim with urgency as they pop across computer screens and into cell phones, made all the more stark by their brevity.
"Gunshots heard along Guadiana Blvd," one Durango resident reported on his
Twitter account one recent night. "Three burned-out trucks along the highway to
Flor," read another post.
With many of Mexico's conventional news outlets no longer willing to risk
reporting on the Mexico's ongoing drug war, a growing number of Mexicans in this
country's northern cities are turning to Internet tools to keep abreast of the
conflict raging around them.
They post on Twitter and then retweet what others have posted. They turn to
Facebook for news through status updates and links to other sites. Increasingly,
they follow crime blogs that specialize in news about narco violence. Some blogs
have become popular enough they carry advertising.
Some analysts say the online media tools are helping to fill an informational
black hole that opened when drug traffickers began targeting news reporters and
their publications.
Around midnight Sunday, assailants tossed a grenade at the offices of the
Vanguardia newspaper in the city of Saltillo, the seventh attack on media
installations in the northern city in the past two years.
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission puts the number of murdered
journalists at 66 since 2005, although other watchdog groups put the number
killed or disappeared for reasons related to their profession at a little more
than half that.
But others worry that reliable news is still hard to come by as crime bosses,
corrupt officials and interested parties put their own spin on events.
"We have passed from a climate of too little information to a climate of
information chaos," said Maria Elena Meneses, an expert on new media at the
Mexico City campus of the Monterrey Institute of Technology.
Meneses said Mexicans hungry for information have flocked to social media for
information on everything from roadblocks, to public gunfights, carjackings and
kidnappings.
"Citizens have organized themselves to tell each other what is happening.
'There's trouble on this street, there's a blockade on that one. They are
robbing people. They are taking their vehicles,'" Meneses said.
That kind of urgent, firsthand reporting has become rare as the news media in
northern Mexico print and air little of what their reporters learn, sticking
only to the blandest of reports.
"What many newspapers do is only publish official news releases," said Aleida
Calleja, a media expert who recently became president of the Mexican Association
for the Right to Information, an advocacy group. "Obviously, journalists don't
investigate deeply because it puts their lives at risk."
In the numerous cities and towns where organized crime is strong,
particularly in the north, crime bosses often signal to newspaper editors what
they want - and don't want - to see in print.
"They pass along what should be in the edition for the next day," Calleja
said.
The Mexican Foundation of Investigative Journalism, an advocacy group,
conducted a six-month study in 2010 that found that in some of Mexico's most
violent states, local media report as little as 5 percent of the crimes that
occur.
That's opened the field for a handful of blogs that have emerged in the past
18 months to chronicle Mexico's drug war. The blogs routinely post videos and
photos that to some seem to glorify the grisly acts of gangs and show their
prowess at killing.
The most widely read of the blogs, el Blog del Narco, has become such a
source of videos and photos of organized criminal actions that U.S.
counternarcotics officials and drug war analysts routinely monitor it.
The blog, which began in March 2010, says it is run by "two young people" who
are "not for or against any crime organization" but simply want Mexicans to see
"the terror that the country is suffering through."
The anonymity of its authors, though, has left some to wonder if the blog is
also spinning on behalf of one or another of the major crime groups.
"They say they are citizens on a mission, but they don't give their names,"
Meneses said. "That's the problem with these social networks. The internet is a
formidable tool, but it depends on how you use it."
Other Spanish-language blogs carry names like Narco Tijuana, Narcotrafico en
Mexico and Narcoguerra (Narco War).
Government agencies are seeking to catch up, with many state and city
officials opening their own Twitter accounts.
"Our objective is to provide opportune and truthful accounts," said Fernando
Rios, who tweets for the Durango state secretariat of public security. "What
happens is one person says (on Twitter), 'I hear gunshots near my house' and the
next person says, 'Listen, my friend says there's a gunfight,' and another says,
'The lead is really flying.' And the rumors just take off."
Since Rios began the secretariat's Twitter account earlier this year, he's
picked up about 6,500 followers. Nearly daily, he posts safety suggestions, asks
for anonymous tips against criminals, and gives terse updates on violent
crime.
"Shots heard on Amapola Street," he posted recently. "Law enforcement is on
the way."
On another day, he urged residents to "back your vehicle into the garage so
that nothing blocks your vision of the street."
While such small news alerts and tips may calm some nerves, few Durango
residents are under any illusions about the hidden, larger story of violence in
the city. Since late April, seven mass graves have been found here, and more
than 300 corpses unearthed.
The mass graves are only part of the panorama of ghastly violence from turf
wars between crime gangs. In attempts to terrorize their foes, gangsters behead
their enemies, toss grenades into crowded venues, and use overwhelming force to
control territory.
When a drug gang ambushed a convoy of rivals in the Pacific coastal state of
Nayarit on May 25, killing 29 people, soldiers found some 1,000 shell casings at
the scene, testament to the firepower the assailants used.
Traditional media covered the ambush, but for greater details and a plethora
of photos, Mexicans had to turn to one of the blogs.