So I jump off the bus and navigate the busy Eastside sidewalk, deftly dodging the various Vátos, Viéjas, and random Nácos. Suddenly, I struggle to hold back a violent impulse to gag. At a corner news stand I am suddenly eye-level with a magazine cover showing a decapitated human head with it’s skin brutally scraped off. I recognize the screaming yellow logo on the publication as the one that has haunted me ever since I was a little Pee-Pee Pants Cabrón. Immediately, I shift my gaze to the other magazines, spying various layouts of “Chicas con Grandes Nalgas†in an attempt to wash away that ghastly image of yet another victim of Mexican Narco-Satanicos!
 Alarma! Magazine is indeed, Mexico’s greatest “red press†crime tabloid. First Introduced to an “escandalo†hungry readership back in 1963, the sensationalist mix of uncensored full color blood & guts, scandal, crime, swimsuit models and crossword puzzles was an instant hit and remains so today.
ALARMA! has covered everything from “Las Poquiánchis†to the big Mexico City earthquake of ’85 to today’s violent Narco Wars while prominently displaying all of the headless corpses fit to print.
It’s the morbid fun that they seem to have with humorous word play, irony and puns in their articles that is priceless.
My personal favorite was about these two poor Cabrónes who broke into a shack to sleep off a massive hangover. Apparently, they then lit a fire to keep warm. The tragic results were announced with the headline “ENTRARON CRUDOS Y SALIERON FRITOS!â€
So go pick up a copy if you dare having horrific images imprinted in your memory forever, or try watching any of the “Casos De Alarma†movies available on VHS, better yet, throw a TV party watching “ALARMA! TV”, Saturday nights on KRCA 62. ALARMA! Unicamente la verdad!Â
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“ENTRARON CRUDOS Y SALIERON FRITOS!â€
poor fellas, hilarious headline!
Oh man, I remember going to Tecate since the age of 5 to visit my abuelita’s brother and they always had that mag. I could not put it down. It was like the print version of “Faces of Death”.
Now its on TV?! crazy.
Now if this isn’t an incentive to brush up on your Spanish, I don’t know what is! (These mags are sooooo bad, even in my sickest serial killer / medical journal obsessed youth, they were horrid to linger on.)
Thanks Kim! Yeah- I made the editorial decision to make my blogs
here without any English subtitles! Spanish learners will all thank me someday!
I only got rid of my small stash of Alarmas last year, I thought I couldn’t live without the amazing photo of some dude on the side of a train track, while his head was 5 feet away! But it turns out there’s always more to come. Is the TV show that graphic as well? Somehow I doubt it.
Chavo, it is as graphic. The day I stumbled upon the show it featured a segment on crowds looking at the desemboweled body of a woman who’d been hit by a bus–and doing nothing. She was mangled and they showed something like five minutes of her body lying in the street, folks looking at her in horror, and then those same folks going along their business. Their point, “la policia no llego por 12 minutos.” As if that point required me seeing her smashed body lying in the street with its appendages ripped off. Last time I watched.
The TV show is as gorss, with cheesy crap added in too. I click over to Jose Luis or Secretos usually
ALARMA! TV airs Friday nights at 10pm and then Saturdays at 7pm they show the ALARMA! Top 10 (!). One of the hosts is this RUCA who’s always falling out of her revealing outfits as she mournfully laments: “Ay, Que Tragedia!”
I don’t know what’s more outrageous, this show, or “EL SHOW DE DON CHEPE” that comes on right before.
ALARMA! is the greatest publication on Earth now that Weekly World News is no longer with us.
Genius!
Uhh, I just watched the program, it’s worse than the damn magazine. I got to see some dude having his arm sawed off, a line of people getting executed in Iraq, some mara gloating about all the people he killed, some decapitated bodies plus a pic of their heads located in a dumpster. And the host in the skimpy dress just kept saying “that’s terrible” or something to that effect. Yeah, decapitations are terrible.
I’m making a trip to LA this summer from London and am gonna either volunteer in south america or try to find work with a newspaper. Do you think it would be easy to try and intern or just volunteer with the guys at alarma! I’m a photographer and I’ve become interested in the whole view point from mexico especially when were living in such a PC world, especially over the water. If anyone’s got some info my email is stevendunain@googlemail.com. cheers
Hey, whats up, locos? The same pictures in the mag were everyday things in Tijuas. More so nowadays with these cartels. My dad used to read the mag after buying next to the Limon supermercado and than talk about the stories with his compas over a few beers. Once I started reading those pages it seemed like they were made up. But they are the truth, nothing but the dead truth. Viva la calle Morelos y viva Sidro, cabrones!
OMG my dad use to look at the mag. They were so nasty . My dad is from Tecate . I lived in San Ysidro
So he would get him from T.J or @ grandmas in Tecate are they still around it’s been so long.
Hi,I am Carlos Aguilar and i am reporter of Alarma! magazine. I like write about murders, revenges, and crimen, that is my pasion Also, I take photos of dead people….
I like your blog, is very nice…Greetings
I remember, when I was a boy we used to go visit our kinfolk in reynosa, tamps. My uncle would be reading the Alarma and I could see all kinds of horrible graphics, lhowever I didn’t know how to read spanish so I didn’t know how such tragics had occurred. It wasn’t until recently when I took a trip to mexico, that I witnessed a more gruesome scene. We were traveling along a countryside highway, apparently, a car had hit a boy and people were just standing around looking at him. I asked my cousin to stop- just as anybody would, here in the U.S.- to see if we could be of some assistance, but he didn’t dare as he was too scared he would be accused of having hit the boy. I was just glad I wasn’t living in Mexico back then; and even now.