Borderland Beat

BB was started in 2009 by "Buggs" (Alex Marentes), a retired Albuquerque Police Department officer and former active duty and reserve U.S. Marine.[1][2] Buggs' intention was to report about the Mexican Drug War to U.S. readers. Buggs began translating Mexican drug cartel news articles from Spanish to English since mid-2008 but was using his personal blog as a platform. Realizing the dangers of reporting on his personal blog, he created BB and hosted it on Blogger, a platform owned by Google. Buggs came up with the name of the blog because "borderland" refers to a geographical space or zone around a territorial border, in this case the U.S.-Mexico border.[3] Buggs was born in the El Paso–Juárez border area and BB initially started by covering drug cartel violence in this area.[1][4] The word "beat" stands for a specific territory that law enforcement operate in. Once the blog was launched, Buggs created his pen name to protect his identity; only a few people in his circle knew his real identity.[5]

BB posted news about the Mexican Drug War on a daily basis since its creation. The project was run by volunteer reporters based in the U.S. and Mexico, and their main objective was to inform the English-speaking world about drug cartel violence. BB mostly translated Spanish-language drug cartel news into English.[6] On occasion, BB also developed their own field of research by interviewing people in Mexico and doing their own analysis.[7] They sometimes worked in collaboration with other media outlets and think tanks (such as Small Wars Journal and InSight Crime) by sharing their news articles for references and by allowing them to partially or fully republish their material.[8]

BB claims that none of the reporters met face-to-face and only maintained contact through the platform and via email.[6] To protect the identities, all of the BB reporters concealed their identities and many of them confined other personal information. Some of the posts were sometimes passed down through intermediaries to protect their integrity. "They could be journalists, cops, politicians, maybe even cartel members themselves," Buggs said in an interview.[9] In addition, several reporters have passed through BB's editorial board over the years, including some that "disappeared" from the online community without prior notice, like former BB reporters "Iliana" and "Rise Machiavelli". BB stated that they do not know if they are dead or alive.[10] The most active contributor throughout BB's history was "Chivis Martinez", a female reporter based in Mexico. She initially covered cartel violence in Coahuila and eventually in 2013, she took over the everyday management and operation of the blog.[11]

The first article published by BB was titled "Los Capos" (English: The Drug Kingpins), which included the list of Mexico's 37 most-wanted drug lords.[5] The article included the names of the wanted fugitives, their aliases and bounties, and the cartels they were working: the Sinaloa Cartel, Tijuana Cartel, Gulf Cartel, Los Zetas, La Familia Michoacana, Juárez Cartel and the Beltrán Leyva Organization.[12] Over the years, BB increased in readership and popularity, including with U.S. and Mexican law enforcement. As readers began to contribute in the articles' comments sections, BB created a forum for users to share drug cartel news and updates.[13] BB had reporters and informants based in Mexico who provided "boots on the ground" for many of the news articles published by the blog. Several of them were based in various geographical locations, which facilitated information gathering on distinct drug cartels that operated in these respective areas.[14]

In the 2010s, BB started collaborating with journalists and crime reporters based in Mexico to give them a safer platform to share organized crime news.[15][16] In Mexico, journalists avoided writing about drug cartel violence because they feared retribution from organized crime groups, and they used BB to publish articles that they could not report on the mainstream Mexican media.[15] BB never had a physical office where drug cartels could carry out an attack, another factor that made it an attractive platform for crime reporters.[17] In March 2010, BB wrote an article titled "War on Information in Mexico", which covered violence against journalists and the rise of social media as a platform for news sharing. The following year, BB published an article titled "Mexican Drug Cartel Kills Blogger" that highlighted the growing dangers of citizen journalists in Mexico's ongoing drug war.[15] As bloggers started becoming a target by organized crime groups in Mexico, several international media outlets interviewed some of the BB reporters to share their experiences. The Daily Dot and MSNBC interviewed former BB reporter "Overmex" and Der Spiegel interviewed "Gerardo".[18]

In 2011, Buggs decided to reveal his identity to confront the logistics of maintaining BB and to help spread BB's popularity. Buggs argued that by revealing his identity, this move would help media outlets identify the point of contact within BB and avoid pursuing other reporters and try to uncover their identities. In November of that year, Buggs did his first interview with the Texas-based news outlet KRGV News.[19] During the interview, Buggs discussed BB's mission and violence against reporters. "[BB] was intended to fill a voice that the media wasn't reporting,” Buggs said. "A lot of the narco cartels were targeting the media."[20]

Between December 2009 and February 2019, BB had 72,594,400 visits.[21] During its heyday it averaged approximately 50,000 readers a day.[6] BB also had a Facebook account with 100,000 followers, but this page was closed in February 2020 for reportedly "violating community standards".[21] BB responded to the closure by stating that someone had reported their Facebook page and that they had never received a warning of any supposed violations. They claimed that they rarely uploaded gore videos and that those that they did were usually covered by Facebook with a warning notice. BB posted articles from their main site on Facebook but also shared raw information that was sent to them from anonymous users. "The staff on Facebook reviewed the page and they felt the whole page violated the community standards and chose to just delete the whole page permanently. I find this move might have an ulterior motive", BB said in a statement.[22]

BB was the first media outlet to confirm the May 2020 death of Sinaloa Cartel drug lord José Rodrigo Aréchiga Gamboa ("El Chino Ántrax"), who had been in supervised released at his home in San Diego, California, but escaped to his hometown of Culiacán, Sinaloa.[23] BB broke the story after one of their sources confirmed to them that Chino Ántrax was killed in a shootout in Culiacán along with his sister Ada Jimena Aréchiga Gamboa and brother-in-law Juan Garcia Espinoza.[23][24]

In October 2020, BB announced that they were shutting down their website in response to a lawsuit issued against them by a Mexican drug lord. The drug lord in question was Armando Valencia Cornelio, former leader of the Milenio Cartel, who sued BB through the United States District Court for the Northern District of California for publishing a story about him that included personal information.[23] BB reporter "MX" published an article in June 2020 giving an overview of his criminal career and release from U.S. prison earlier that year. The article stated that Valencia Cornelio was moving to Atherton, California, and had lymphoma cancer.[25] The story was originally published by the Mexican newspaper Reforma and translated and republished by BB. Multiple other media outlets in Mexico also circulated the story and were eventually included in Valencia Cornelio's lawsuit.[lower-alpha 1][23]

In efforts to conceal his identity, Valencia Cornelio was granted a "John Doe" plaintiff identity after his attorney Jeffrey Mendelman filed a motion.[23] In the lawsuit, Valencia Cornelio's defense complained that BB violated Blogger's privacy policy by publishing personal information about him. The BB report included an old California driver's license (CDL) that Valencia Cornelio once owned. That CDL included the "...driver’s license number, address, sex, height, weight, date of birth and signature of [Valencia Cornelio]."[26] The CDL was originally published by the Mexican newspaper El Norte in 2003, the year Valencia Cornelio was arrested in Mexico.[27] BB closed down their main website but said that they would continue their efforts on a smaller scale through their Twitter account. They said they were hoping to relaunch in January 2021.[23] BB relaunched in January 2021 as projected. They reiterated their commitment to reporting on Mexican drug cartels, and said they would keep their readers informed on the progression of the lawsuit.[28]

• Marentes, Alex (2019). Borderland Beat: Reporting On the Mexican Cartel Drug War. Lulu. ISBN 1686892446.

• Borderland Beat