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| Alarma, 12 August, 1992 (Muerte 12) |
The dead. Faces
mutilated, bodies contorted, limbs severed.
These are the images that weekly confronted readers of the Mexican
tabloid Alarma. Published from 1963 to 2014, with a brief
period of censorship from 1986-1991, Alarma
was a weekly chronicle of crime and murder in Mexico, offering shocking
photos to a public desiring sensational crime stories. Despite its emphasis on the barbarism of
crime, the magazine became a conservative moral force in Mexican print culture,
often ignoring police corruption in favor of simple crime narratives that
reinforced the ruling class and ideology.
With the increased attention paid to tabloid-style journalism in the
1990s, Alarma became the prototype
for a new form of on-demand content-driven publication. Despite its death in 2014 due to economic and
circulation issues, the magazine stands today as a testament to a popular
culture desensitized to violence and one which seeks in the 21st
century to address ongoing issues of sexuality, political and economic power,
and class struggle.
Contents:
A.
Alarma!: A History
B.
Form, Content, Style
C.
Audience and Influence
D.
Social and Political Influence
A. Alarma!: A History
In the decade
that saw the first issue of Alarma,
photojournalism underwent a shift in style and focus. Throughout the 1960s, Mexico saw the start of
several nota roja (red journalism) publications. Alarma,
like Alerta and other imitators, were
called “red” journalism because of their intense interest in bloodshed and the
dead, thus following American “yellow journalism” and narrowing its sensationalism
to graphic images of both criminal perpetrators and victims. Alarma was
started by Carlos Samayoa Lizarraga, aka Don Carlitos, and launched by
Publicaciones Llegro, which was owned by a major figure in Mexican journalism,
Regino Hernandez Llegro. Prior to the
founding of Alarma, Hernandez Llegro
founded the right-wing political magazine Impacto,
which today continues to have influence in Mexican politics.
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| Top: Alarma, 31 March, 1964. Bottom: Alarma, 17, April, 1963 (Muerte 39) |
The first
issue of Alarma was published on
April 17, 1963, and featured the then well-known star, Aida, who was imprisoned
for alleged fraud. The cover featured a
contrasting set of photos, with one reading “ayer” (“yesterday”) featuring a
glamorously-posed Aida, while the contrasting photo read “hoy” (“today”),
featuring an implied mugshot of the fallen star (Vargas Cervantes 128). Within its first year, Alarma’s popularity grew and its print run increased from 300,000 weekly
copies to more than half a million (Vargas Cervantes 132). Its popularity increased quickly in part due
to its coverage of the Poquianchis story, where three sisters killed
approximately 28 of their maids. The
sisters were interviewed in person by an Alarma
journalist, which ran for weeks and offered the public sensational details
about their crimes. The photos printed
with the interview included those of the victims, perpetrators, judges, and many
staged pictures for cinematic effect. Alarma continued its attention to
popular public crimes throughout the decade.
Most notably, in 1968 it published graphic images of the Tlatelolco
massacre from October 2nd of that year. The publications of these photos was one of
the few instances where the magazine implicated the state in violence and
corruption. It would be the general
practice of Alarma over the course of
its life to ignore or dismiss police complicity in crime and corruption (see
section D below for further discussion).
Throughout the
following decades, circulation was steady, with an average of 600,000 issues
sold weekly in the 1970s and 1980s (according to figures printed on Alarma’s front pages from these
years). Perhaps their most notable issue
in 1980s was published on October 2nd, 1985, which featured many of
the most devastating photos from the September 19th, 1985 Mexico
City earthquake. With this edition and
subsequent others to cover the damage, sales reached nearly 2 million copies
per week (Vargas Cervantes 137). Beginning in 1986, however, Alarma was censored and closed for five
years during the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado. One possible cause for the censorship was
likely political, as Alarma’s parent
company, the political magazine Impacto,
had published anti-government articles against the Madrid Hurtado
administration. Additionally, it is likely
that, as host of the 1986 World Cup, Mexico City sought to withdraw its
circulation along with 60 other magazines for content deemed scandalous or
pornographic (Vargas Cervantes 146).
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| Alarma, 12 November, 1991 (Muerte 3) |
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| Alarma, 15 June, 1963 (Muerte 38) |
B. Form, Content, Style
Alarma’s distinctive style has subsequently been imitated by many of its
competitors likely due to the success of its simple, distinguishable format and
aesthetic. Its style follows in the
tradition of comic books and photo novelas, sometimes even featuring pictures
with accompanying word balloons. Of
course, what is most remarkable about Alarma
is its photographic content.
Grotesque pictures accompanied by arresting headlines combine to make Alarma a unique journalistic experience. Not all of its photos featured the deceased;
one of Alarma’s trademarks features a
picture of the suspected criminal recreating the crime scene, often shown with
the weapon (or approximate to the alleged weapon) used in the crime. Photographs used especially in the first few
decades of Alarma were noted for
their high quality and skillful use of the close-up. Later issues, by contrast, appeared less
sophisticated and used the graphic nature of the images to mask the loss of
quality. Beyond pictures, Alarma featured a variety of stories on
sports, religion, and the paranormal. In
addition to these features, there was often included a usually naked (or near
nude) woman as centerfold. Reader’s
letters and Hollywood-style gossip columns were also included, offering some
balance to the horrific stories of death and murder.
Alarma also featured a distinct verbal
style in its headlines and title page.
Most obviously, the title of the publication lacks the initial
exclamation mark of typical Spanish grammar.
Though the reasons are not clear, it is possible that its
one-exclamation form gives the readers a hurried, freshly-printed feel, as if
the stories were so new the editors could not correct the grammatical error in
time. Underneath the title is printed “Unicamente
la verdad!” or “only the truth.” This
subtitle establishes the publication as a guardian of truth for the public, a
sentiment repeated throughout Alarma in
both its form and criticism-free content of the police and ruling elite. The letters themselves in the title are given
the appearance of painted blood, though the color scheme does not use red but rather
black and yellow. Either this was chosen
in reference to yellow journalism or, more likely, were chosen because they are
the cheapest colors to use. Alarma’s story headlines are often told in catchy, sometimes-clichéd few
word sentences, frequently featuring humorous Spanish puns “adding the
reflexive pronoun or article as a suffix to the conjugated verb instead of
placing it before the verb,” which is the grammatically correct construction in
Spanish (Vargas Cervantes 139). These
formal elements cemented a style that became iconic, and still exists today in
print tabloid forms.
C. Audience and Influence
During its
time of publication, Alarma reached a
wide audience in Mexico, though it was more heavily read in Mexico City and
near the U.S./Mexican border. Competition quickly emerged, with many
imitating its style and content, and thus increasing the market size of tabloid
publications in Mexico. One of its
primary competitors, Alerta, was
first published on July 12, 1965. As is
evident from the name, Alerta was a
close copy of Alarma in both
aesthetic and content. Such was the
success of Alarma that many of its
own journalists went on to found their own publications, including El Metro and Extra Popular. With the
increased market for tabloid journalism came also a stigma regarding its
readers, who were often associated with the poor and uneducated class in part
due to Alarma’s lower cost and simple
journalistic style. As discussed below
(Section D), Alarma might ironically
said to be the mouthpiece of the middle class, expressing conservative values
while ignoring the plight of the poor and marginalized.
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| Alarma, 2 March, 2000 (Muerte 54) |
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| Alarma, 26 January, 1993 (Muerte 80) |
D. Social and Political Influence
Alarma’s publication of the victims and
perpetrators of crime exists against a backdrop of a host of social and
political issues prominent in Mexican culture.
Perhaps one of the simplest and most important questions that can be
asked is: what sustained its publication for nearly half a century? Cuauhtemoc
Medina raises a similar question when he writes, “Why the Alarma!? To show the fate of moral delinquents; to prove that
death, rape, child abuse, robbery, suicide drug addiction are nurtured within
deviant family life. To help by example,
that is the objective of Alarma!”
(42). He adds that crime in the magazine is always “the product of an
individual’s deviation, an attack of depraved instincts…against the bastion of
Catholic morality” (51). Perhaps the
reason that Alarma was such a potent
cultural force stems from its deeply situated position regarding traditional
representations of the self and the family.
The publication existed to constantly call the culture back to an ideal,
where deviance could be pointed out and quickly rejected as anathema to the
goals of the community. The magazine often implied that it was playing some
kind of official role with the police, helping them on a particular case and
thus sharing in the moral good of all. Yet,
rarely if ever did Alarma question the
police, and little attention was ever paid to police corruption. This deference for authority is also situated
within the context of Roman Catholicism.
As Stafford suggests (5), the fascination with dead bodies evokes
complex Mexican cultural markers, including the Day of the Dead and the
Catholic emphasis on martyrs and saints.
Catholic iconography especially may have contributed to an ongoing
interest in the magazine’s subjects.
Alarma also implicitly, in its defense
of traditional family life, sought to reinforce gender norms and stereotypes
through its criticism of sexual deviance.
Much attention was paid to the fractured family structure, especially the
ways in which families suffered under the weight and pressure of sexual
transgressions. Susana Vargas Cervantes’
dissertation examines how the photos in Alarma!
“inform and participate in the larger national imaginary in relation to peripheral
sexualities in Mexico” and she argues that “these photographs work as a site of
resistance to and a subversion of many different forms of violence in Mexico”(6). The images from Alarma are often obsessed with female sexuality and subjectivity. They
are both alluring and threatening, where powerful female criminals are
fascinating to the reader but equally represent the apex of deviancy.
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| Alarma, 21 July, 1995 (Muerte 65) |
With the onset
of the new Alarma in the 1990s and
2000s, new issues arise regarding popular journalism and political and economic
changes in Mexico. Beginning in the
1990s, Mexico saw a surge in la nota roja
publications. This rise has been tied to
two historical phenomena: democratization and commercialization (Hallin 267). This period saw the slow loss of power for
Mexico’s ruling party, while it simultaneously transitioned from state-directed
capitalism to more neoliberal forms. The
increased journalistic and economic freedom has led to a greater emphasis on
popular interests directing news media. Some
criticism, as Daniel Hallin notes (271), has been aimed at upper class citizens
who profit from poor communities whose real problems are little known because
the tabloids pay little attention to them.
Indeed, the 1990s saw a dramatic increase in Mexican crime stories reported
in the tabloids, while reporting on political stories dropped dramatically (see
Hallin 273 for figures). This
market-driven journalism may ultimately benefit more democratic goals, but it
remains to be seen whether that will simply reinforce the values of the middle
class. Nota Roja, after all, is largely played towards the fears of
middle-class families about the deviancy of lower-class criminals. That it has yet to find greater success in
telling the stories of the marginalized is troubling, but with greater
flourishing of the press there always remains at least the possibility of crime
from the perspective of the victimized, and not simply the capitalization upon
fear.
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| Alarma, 22 September, 1992 (Muerte 3) |
All Alarma pictures and covers were found in:
Muerte! Death in Mexican Popular Culture. Ed. Harvey Bennett Stafford. Venice, CA: Feral House, 2000. Print.
Bibliography
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