Borderland Beat (BB) is an English language news blog that reports on the Mexican Drug War. The blog was started in 2009 by an anonymous individual using the pseudonym Buggs. BB's reporters are mostly based in the U.S. and Mexico. Their main focus is to provide English coverage of the drug war in Mexico, by creating analysis and research material about drug cartels, criminal figures, and the effects on the ongoing drug war, as well as translating Spanish articles into English. Borderland Beat was started in 2009 by "Buggs" (Alex Marentes), a retired Albuquerque Police Department officer and former active duty and reserve U.S. Marine. Buggs' intention was to report about the Mexican Drug War to U.S. readers. Buggs began translating Mexican drug cartel news articles from Spanish to English since mid-2008 but was using his personal blog as a platform. Realizing the dangers of reporting on his personal blog, he created Borderland Beat and hosted it on Blogger, a platform owned by Google. Buggs came up with the name of the blog because "borderland" refers to a geographical space or zone around a territorial border, in this case the U.S.-Mexico border. Buggs was born in the El Paso–Juárez border area and Borderland Beat initially started by covering drug cartel violence in this area. The word "beat" stands for a specific territory that law enforcement operate in. Once the blog was launched, Buggs created his pen name to protect his identity; only a few people in his circle knew his real identity. More information...
According to PR-model, borderlandbeat.com is ranked 15,372nd in multilingual Wikipedia, in particular this website is ranked 10,133rd in English Wikipedia.
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