A newspaper vendor at Hermanos Escobar Ave in Ciudad Juarez. (Jaime Cervantes/Borderzine.com)

Corpses on the front page boost the circulation of Juarez tabloid

JUAREZ, Mexico – A few days after her 15-year-old son Juan was shot in the head by armed men, Mayra Carrizales remembers driving along a street in Juarez and glancing at a newsstand. She flinched when she saw the mocking front page headline in PM a Juarez tabloid – “Se lo descuentan!” which means “Wasted!” – and then she realized the picture beneath it was of her son’s bloody and battered face. “Every time I remember my boy, that photo pops out in my mind against my will,” said Carrizales, in Spanish during an interview in her home in the Las Torres neighborhood of Juarez. “It’s like somehow my memories of him had been tainted.”

Juan Nuñez was murdered in 2010, presumably by rival gang members who dumped his body in an empty lot near the Juan Gabriel freeway. To date nobody has been arrested.