Mexico's lower House of Deputies voted to open an investigation into accusations that Government Secretary Juan Camilo Mouriño improperly helped his family win contracts from the state oil monopoly Pemex. The accusations stem from contracts Mourino signed between 2000 and 2004 when he acted as the legal representative of his family's company while also working as a lawmaker and then as deputy energy secretary. The move comes as President Felipe Calderon, who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, is seeking to further open Pemex to foreign investment.

At a Feb. 29 press conference in Mexico City, researchers from the Economic Investigations Institute (IIEC) of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) gave a generally negative assessment of the economic impact of the 14-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico. According to the institute's Emilio Romero, Mexico has lost 2 million agricultural jobs during the period, while 400,000 Mexicans now migrate to the US each year. Jose Luis Calva said that since NAFTA took effect in 1994, Mexico's growth rate has averaged 3% a year, as opposed to a rate of 6.1% a year from the end of the 1910 revolution until 1982. Agricultural production has increased, he said, but productivity increased much more slowly than in the US; Mexico's rate grew from 1.7 to two tons per hectare while the US rate grew from seven to 8.9 tons.

Jacobo Silva Nogales (Comandante Antonio) and Gloria Arenas Agís (Coronela Aurora), convicted as leaders of the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), had their sentences reduced from 46 years and three months to 14 years and two months. Andrés Nájera Hernández, director of the Eureka Committee, which advocates for Mexico's political prisoners, called the decision a great advance in the struggle for a "general amnesty for all political prisoners in the country." Nogales and Arenas were arrested in October 1999. (La Jornada, March 5)

The family of New York IMC reporter Brad Will, killed Oct. 27, 2006—presumably at the hands of municipal police in Santa Lucía del Camino, Oaxaca—called upon Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) to follow the "logical" line of investigation and abandon ongoing probes of popular activists in Oaxaca. "This crime was one of the most photographed in history, yet they continue with this hypothesis while those responsible remain free," Brad's father Howard Will told the Mexico City daily La Jornada. He called upon Mexican federal authorities to undertake a "serious and objective" investigation, because that pursued by Oaxaca state authorities is totally "prejudiced." (Re-translated from Spanish translation.) (La Jornada, Feb. 29)

David VenegasAfter nearly 11 months in prison, David Venegas Reyes, a leader of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), was released from Santa María Ixcotel penitentiary, following the issuing of a judicial order (amparo) protecting him from further prosecution, citing insufficient evidence. The charges have not been formally dropped. (La Jornada, March 6) Vengas Reyes received threats on his life and those of his family while in detention last year. (Venegas Reyes letter, May 2, 2007, online at Casa de Paz, Chiapas)

The Chontal Maya community of Villa Vicente Guerrero, in Centla municipality of Mexico's oil-rich Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, has declared itself an "autonomous municipality" in a letter to the Sixth Commission, civil wing of the Zapatista rebel movement in neighboring Chiapas state to the south. The declaration said Vicente Guerrero, in remote swamplands of the Rio Grijalva delta, is withdrawing from all government institutions in response "abandonment" by the official authorities despite "the extraction of millions of barrels of petroleum and natural gas" on local lands. The community also cited human rights abuses, including the arrest of seven residents by federal police in connection with a supposed attempt to illegally detain government functionaries. The statement said the seven were "brutally tortured." (La Jornada, March 3)

The brothers Antonio and Mariano Pucuj were sentenced to 26 years in prison late last month for their participation in the December 1997 massacre of 45 Tzotzil indigenous people at Acteal hamlet in Mexico's southern Chiapas state. They were also ordered to pay more than $70,000 in compensation to the victims' families. The Pucuj brothers are said to be appealing the decision. Officials say the killings were motivated by a land dispute between two Tzotzil communities. But victims' families say the perpetrators were provided weapons and paramilitary training from the government. Last year, courts sentenced 34 men to 26 years each for the killings. (AP, Feb. 27)

Fourteen Toztzil and Tzeltal Maya prisoners at Social Readaption Center Number 14, known as El Amate, in Cintalapa, Chiapas, went on hunger strike Feb. 28, in protest of harsh conditions and to demand recognition as political prisoners. Eight are followers of the Zapatista rebels' "Other Campaign" political initiative. Most have been imprisoned five years, in connection with the Tres Cruces case involving land conflicts in the highland village of San Juan Chamula, which is ruled by notorious political bosses known as the caciques. The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Center has issued an urgent statement expressing concern for the men's health. (La Jornada, Feb. 29) On March 3, nine indigenous prisoners being held in the highland city of San Cristóbal de las Casas announced they were joining in a solidarity hunger strike with the Cintalapa 14. (La Jornada, March 4)