Fergie's Tech Blog

Mexican Drug Cartels Leave a Bloody Trail on YouTube

Valentín Elizalde, the late singer known as the "Golden Rooster," was gunned down following a Mexican cyberspace drug war.
Image source: MSNBC / Youtube.com

Bloody bodies -- slumped at steering wheels, stacked in pickup trucks, crumpled on sidewalks -- clog nearly every frame of the music video that shook Mexico's criminal underworld.

Posted on YouTube and countless Mexican Web sites last year, the video opens with blaring horns and accordions. Valentín Elizalde, a singer known as the "Golden Rooster," croons over images of an open-mouthed shooting victim. "I'm singing this song to all my enemies," he belts out.

Elizalde's narcocorrido, or drug trafficker's ballad, sparked what is believed to be an unprecedented cyberspace drug war. Chat rooms filled with accusations that he was promoting the Sinaloa cartel and mocking its rival, the Gulf cartel. Drug lords flooded the Internet with images of beheadings, execution-style shootings and torture.

posted by Fergie @ 4/09/2007 09:59:00 AM