The security fence surrounding the hotel in the upscale neighborhood of Polanco, Mexico, where Justin Bieber was scheduled to give a news conference, was impressive. It was far away from the main entrance of the hotel – far enough away to make sure that the throngs of frenzied girls would not be able to trample their object of lust to death. Girls still dressed in their school uniform endured the sun for hours, screaming or singing his songs together, without knowing each other but bonding through their love for him.

When we, the photographers and journalists, were walking past to get into position for the news conference, the girls begged to come along with us “Sir, let me carry your equipment; don’t you need an assistant?; Pleeeease, I love him sooo much, please, take me with you…….” while they hugged the fence and held pictures of Justin pressed to their hearts.

One of them was holding onto a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Justin like it was the real thing; Justin – the cardboard lover.

Later, at Mexico City’s main square the Zocalo, the screaming was a thousand fold. The crowd was more diverse as it was a free concert. For many it was the only chance to see Justin Bieber without having to pay a small fortune.

Mothers and fathers accompanied their daughters as they waited 12 hours ahead of the concert. They camped on the streets near the square in order to be able to land a good spot in front of the stage.

Some 210,000 people attended the concert according to local media. Thousands of teenage tears drenched the historical square used for gatherings since Aztec times. Screams and emotions penetrated the thick walls of the historical buildings surrounding the square.

When Bieber started singing “Baby” some fans fainted and had to be taken away. In the end, it was thousands of exhausted but happy girls who went home. A mother who carrying her young daughter on her shoulders said “This is the best day of my life because I could accompany my little one to the first great concert in her young life.”

News of executions, macabre assassinations and kidnappings are commonplace in northern Mexico, but this headline was not. With journalists’ reflexes we began to plan a trip to what suddenly became the bloodiest theater in the drug war. In the past two months a candidate for governor was gunned down, two mayors assassinated, grenades exploded on city streets and the cousin of a media mogul kidnapped. In one weekend 51 people had been murdered in infamous Ciudad Juarez.

My editors asked me if I wanted to go to Ciudad Victoria, where the government announced it would send the 72 bodies for identification. I knew the routine. In less than an hour I was headed out the door to the airport with my equipment and a hastily-packed suitcase, just as my youngest daughter arrived from school.

“Where are you going Papá?” she asked. “Can you take me with you?” My daughter is still a child.

“I can’t take you. I’m going for work,” I told her as I touched her cheek, avoiding her big eyes as they searched out mine.

Night fell and I found Reuters TV colleague Alberto in the airport. We stuffed our equipment into the plane that was only slightly bigger than a bus, and soon we were airborne. The airport in Ciudad Victoria was empty. It began to rain and from the taxi window we could see very few houses in the deserted streets lit by amber lights.

“We can’t go out at night here anymore,” our taxi driver told us. Since drug gangs began fighting over the trafficking routes, residents stopped leaving their homes, especially at night.

When we reached the downtown hotel across from a park and a church, we managed to phone a government spokesman in Mexico City. They confirmed that the 72 dead were illegal immigrants executed by organized crime as they were heading toward the U.S. border. We were also told that the bodies would no longer be transported to Ciudad Victoria, but rather to San Fernando, a town closer to the ranch.

We knew the 180 km of single-lane highway to San Fernando was full of roadblocks, some manned by government soldiers and others by gunmen at the service of the drug mafia. It was a scenario of armed confrontation for control of the region, and not a word of the massacre was spoken on the local TV news programs. It was understandable if journalists were frightened. Recently many Mexican journalists had been kidnapped and threatened, and some provincial newspapers had been attacked with grenades. We began to feel the same fear, and decided to stay inside the hotel.

The night was calm but at times I awoke to look out the window for anything moving. Just before dawn I saw the first light make a silhouette of the church tower and took some photos, only to find that next door Alberto was also awake filming the same scene.

At breakfast we could feel everyone’s eyes on us. There the people distrust strangers. In the end, nobody trusts anybody. We began to feel paranoid, with no way to tell if the person staring at us was just curious or an informer of organized crime.

We reached an agreement with colleagues from other foreign media to stay in a group when leaving to report. When I told our taxi driver to take us to the morgue where we hoped to learn about the massacre investigation, he just looked at me as if I had asked him to take me to the gates of hell. “Take the next taxi. I can’t take you. I don’t know where it is,” he told me.

We lied to the next taxi so he would take us to the morgue, but when we arrived he refused to wait for us there. “You can stay here. I’m leaving. Take another taxi.” Now it was my turn to be paranoid.

Frustrated, we returned to the hotel and considered driving to San Fernando. We asked the police about the route and were told they couldn’t guarantee our safety. We spoke with our editors and after analyzing our options we were instructed to return home the next day.

As I packed in the early morning my laptop logged onto Twitter showed a tweet about two explosions in Ciudad Victoria. I couldn’t believe it. There had been two explosions nearby and we hadn’t heard anything. Through the window I saw only dark and empty streets. I spoke to Alberto. It was only two hours until our return flight so I called my editor and we decided to wait for first light and check the version of a car bomb in front of the local Televisa network studio.

We headed to Televisa’s building and two blocks away found three soldiers blocking access with yellow tape, too far from the damage to see anything. The soldiers wouldn’t heed our pleas for access, but one murmured, “It’s on the other block, go around.”

He was right. From the other direction we could approach and see a bombed car on a sidewalk. More soldiers came toward us and gestured for us to leave. We told one that another soldier had given us permission, and in the time it took for him to check our story we managed enough images with long lenses of the damage about 80 meters away.

Suddenly the paranoia returned. I noticed some double-cab pickup trucks circulating in the area with three or four men observing us before driving away. I alerted my colleagues that we should leave. In the taxi we decided to head to the airport and transmit the car bomb photos from there, and not expose ourselves to any more observers in the land where nobody trusts anybody.

Heavily armed patrols in armored personnel carriers, trucks and jeeps swept though towns and cities in the border region while helicopters buzzed overhead a day after the bodies of 72 people were found in an empty building at a remote ranch.

The victims, believed to be Central and South American migrants, appear to have been blindfolded and bound before they lined up against a wall and gunned down.

Photographs showed bloodstained bodies heaped on the ground at the ranch in Tamaulipas state, which has become the scene of some of Mexico’s worst drug violence as the Gulf cartel and a spinoff group, the Zetas, fight over smuggling routes.

Officials said investigators were still examining the scene and had not yet removed the bodies.

Security forces killed three gunmen and arrested another when they approached the ranch on Wednesday, but several other suspects escaped during the fighting.

Migrants trying to slip into the United States are increasingly at risk of kidnapping and extortion by drug gangs that operate with near impunity in parts of northern Mexico, police and analysts say.

More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched his war on the cartels when he took office in late 2006.

Calderon has vowed to push ahead with the crackdown but has warned that more violence is likely ahead.

RESORT BLAST

While most of the bloodshed has been confined to gang members and security forces, violence is spreading to parts of the country once deemed peaceful.

At least five people were wounded in an explosion at a bar in the famed Mexican beach resort of Puerto Vallarta on Wednesday night, the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said.

Investigators believe the blast was intentional, but were unable to confirm media reports it was caused by a grenade, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said on Thursday.

As many as 15 people were injured in the attack, including four who lost limbs, Mexican media said.

Puerto Vallarta is a popular Pacific coast destination for sun-seeking foreign tourists. It was not known if any foreign tourists were among the approximately 100 people in the bar when the attack occurred.

No motive for the attack was known although tourists are almost never targeted.

Violence in Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is located, has increased since security forces killed top drug trafficker Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, who controlled the drug trade in the state, in July.

(Writing by Robert Campbell; Editing by Missy Ryan and Vicki Allen)

News coverage is a daily activity for me, and however I get involved in a story it’s not just a job; it’s also what I enjoy doing. Sometimes I’m just an observer behind a camera, but other times I also end up being affected personally. When the new H1N1 flu virus broke out in Mexico there was an additional factor for me; it was impossible not to suffer the first days of the epidemic as the head of a family.

I thought of the photos that I wanted to take, but I couldn’t help thinking of my daughter, my wife and my mother. As Colombians living in Mexico City we were all exposed to the unknown virus. Fear and uncertainty dominated my family, friends and the millions of people with whom I share the streets of this metropolis.

Very early on Friday, April 24, I put on rubber gloves and a facemask that I bought from the corner pharmacy. The masks were still easy to find, but a day later their scarcity would become a problem. My daughter celebrated along with countless others of her age the sudden onset of vacation, not yet understanding that the break from school would become a virtual quarantine. It was recommended that children not leave their homes during the emergency. In the early days of the outbreak, the government said that the majority of the victims were young adults, but in normal flu outbreaks children and the elderly are always the most vulnerable.

Limited knowledge about the disease and the recommended precautions caused Mexico City residents to avoid physical contact, even between people who a day earlier would greet each other with two kisses, as is the custom in Mexico. Friends and colleagues began to stand at a distance in hopes of preventing the spread of something that we knew little about. But we were learning more about it minute by minute.

Early news about dying victims was disconcerting. Before the government declared that the current flu vaccine was useless for this strain, I went to a vaccination clinic where people were begging for the shot. I had hoped to get one for myself to be safe while covering the story, but I was denied as everyone else. People left the clinic with fear in their faces and voices when they asked each other, “What do we do now?”

Fearful of catching the flu, I climbed into a taxi to continue covering the outbreak. There were fewer people, fewer cars in the city’s normally congested streets. The human landscape changed to one of blue-masked pedestrians. By the end of the first weekend the population was better informed. Most were less frightened in spite of the fact that the virus was among us and spreading.

Monday was the beginning of the first full week with the virus in Mexico. The day was hot and strange, without traffic. Then, a few minutes before noon, the earth shook. My taxi tilted from left to right. Electric cables swung back and forth. I grabbed my camera and yelled to the driver, “Stop! It’s shaking!” I jumped out and the near-empty street was still trembling. I walked to the corner and saw people rushing out from buildings and houses all around me. I could see the fear in their eyes.

In front of Aragon Hospital the street filled with doctors and patients. Some couldn’t take the crisis and fainted. Dozens of people muttered, “…just what we needed…”

At that moment I remembered that my family was alone in our fifth floor apartment. I called my wife but she didn’t answer. I called my daughter’s cell phone but again, no answer. I kept taking pictures with one hand while calling with the other, and hoping that everything was alright.

In the end I confirmed that my family was fine and I felt momentary relief, but then I remembered my mother who had died just two days earlier. Just one day into the flu coverage, Saturday at 5 a.m., my mother, who also lived with us in Mexico City, passed away for reasons unrelated to the epidemic. In that difficult moment I had called my editors to tell them that I couldn’t continue with the coverage plan that day, and I was told to take all the time I needed.

I had the choice of not working due to my family emergency amidst the sudden appearance of the new flu virus. But then I realized that the best therapy for me and the best tribute to my mother would be to go out and report the news. Even in the most difficult moments I couldn’t stop observing the world and my own life through photography.