A woman crouches next to his body, obsessively stroking his arm while she weeps.Īlvarado holds his camera and dances around bystanders and possible relatives and friends of the victims, looking for the right angle. One of the victims looks young, a teenager. The bodies of two men lie in pools of blood. Sliding through the crowd of cops, he gets a clearer view of the crime scene. "There's a s*** ton of cops, family, maybe some people armed. Alvarado quickly double-parks and hops out. The scene grows ominous: Police tape wraps around a funeral home. On a major north-south artery of the city, a parade of cop car lights beckons.
#LA NOTA ROJA DE MONTERREY DRIVERS#
Nowadays, ambulance drivers are their main sources for crime scenes, as police have largely shut them out, Mexico City journalists say. The text is on a WhatsApp group reporters use to chase crimes. This is the kind of action that makes him speed and swerve through the light 2 a.m. But as he drives through the Mexico City streets on a recent night with NPR riding along, his phone lights up, and he does too.Ī text message says there's been a homicide with a firearm. Ordinary scenes of death like this are grunt work for Alvarado. "He said she showed signs of having been run over by a car, so that's what we'll run," he says. A moment later, he comes back with an answer. Alvarado recognizes one of the techs and rushes over hoping for clues about the cause of death. Long overdue, crime scene investigation technicians arrive to take away the body. He sees this as part of his job as a reporter on the crime beat's night shift. So Alvarado plans to stay until forensics arrives. The curb a few feet from the corpse is just over a foot high. "The police say she fell from the curb and died but I don't think so," he says. As organized crime becomes more widespread, splintered and confusing, some researchers say the constant stream of crime stories they produce is a critical source for understanding Mexico's violence as it hits all-time highs.Īt the crime scene, Alvarado, whom everyone calls Gama, has all the photos he needs, but he doesn't leave yet.
But in the capital and surrounding areas, the papers are taking on unique importance. In much of the country, serious journalists deride the genre as sensationalist. David Alvarado works the night shift for la nota roja (crime tabloids) in Mexico City.Īlvarado, 60, works for a genre known in Mexico as la nota roja, meaning "red news," the country's crime-blotter tabloids.
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