Narcocorrido - It's a YouTube world

Narcocorrido, ballad of the drug dealer. I saw something on television a few months ago about one of the balladeers, Valentín Elizalde, a singer known as the "Golden Rooster." He was playing in some dive bar and had a bunch of macha machachas hanging around him. The story was premised on his drug dealing connections, which he denied of course. I dismissed it at the time as so much hype, but it appears I was wrong.

"The Internet has turned into a toy for Mexican organized crime," Clark said. "It's a toy, a toy to have fun with, a toy to scare people."

Elizalde is now dead, having been shot 20 times and a mocking YouTube of his autoposy intermittently pops up on the site. Other YouTube videos pop up all the time and the comment sections fill with vague threats. Apparently the big Mexican cartel guys are using the internets to taunt each other and the police. It's like some macabre version of Clue. Meanwhile, Elizalde couldn't get a gig outside a dive bar when he was alive but his video is now a best seller.

Go figure. Times have certainly changed. I remember when drug dealers kept a lower profile.