Mexico took the first steps June 21 toward extraditing former Quintana Roo governor Mario Villanueva Madrid to the US, where he is wanted in New York City on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. President Felipe Calderón has already sent 21 narco suspects to face charges across the border this year, but Villanueva would be the highest-ranking former Mexican official to stand trial in the United States on drug charges.

Two were killed and four injured in an ambush at San Miguel Aloapam in the Ixtlán de Juárez district of southern Mexico's Oaxaca state, according to the municipal president Alejandro Cruz Pablo. State authorities said five men had been arrested at neighboring San Isidro Aloapam for their role in the attack. (Olor a mi Tierra, June 18) However, the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca—Ricardo Flores Magón (CIPO-RFM) said in a communique that PRI-affiliated armed campesinos from San Miguel Aloapam had entered San Isidro's communal forest lands to illegally cut trees and fired upon residents who tried to bar their way. They said the five men taken from their community were not arrested by legitimate authorities, but "kidnapped" by "paramilitaries." (CIPO-RFM, June 20)

A petition from O'odham Voice Against the Wall, posted to journalist Brenda Norrell's Censored, blog, June 15:

We Demand the Return of Human Remains Unearthed During a Recent Desecration of a Sacred Burial Ground
On May 17th and May 21st of 2007 the remains of at least three humans were unearthed during the construction of a border zone "Vehicle Barrier" wall.

The World Organization Against Torture (OMCT) has condemned the incommunicado detention and apparent "disappearance" in Mexico's conflicted Oaxaca state of Raymundo Rivera Bravo, 55, and Edmundo Reyes Amaya, 50, two militants of the Popular Democratic Revolutionary Party (PDPR). According to the OMCT, the two men were arrested in Oaxaca City by the state police May 25. The organization said in a statement it has been unable to determine the whereabouts of the detained men, and and is demanding guarantees for their "personal integrity," expressing concern over the risk of torture. (La Jornada, June 17)

Leaders of the Section 50 health workers union in Mexico's conflicted and impoverished southern state of Chiapas issued an urgent call to state and federal authorities to establish dialogue with the Zapatista Nation Liberation Army's regional authorities at the highland village of Oventic to exchange information about an outbreak of whooping cough. However, state authorities denied claims of 11 deaths from whooping cough in the Highland region. (Cuarto Poder, June 17)

Veracruz state police detained 47 members of local campesino group "Los Dorados de Villa" at the community of Ixhuatlán de Madero, in the mountainous Huasteca region. The campesinos, adherents of the Zapatista "Other Campaign," had been peacefully occupying a 513-hectare piece of land at Lomas del Dorado, from which they say they had been illegally evicted by the army 23 years ago. They say the occupation was undertaken after a generation of fruitless petitions for redress. An observer at the scene from the local United Human Rights Network (RUDH) is said to have been "disappeared." (La Jornada, June 16; LIMEDDH, June 15)

Resuming his national tour of Mexico, Subcommander Marcos of the Zapatista rebels met June 14 with residents of Loma de Santa María barrio in Morelia, Michoacán, who oppose a so-called "mega-tunnel" state authorities plan to build through their neighborhood. After a closed meeting with the residents, Marcos joined community leaders at a press conference where he said, "The earth is like a human body, and if you destroy a natural area, it is as if you cut off an arm. The politicians are trying to convince us this is possible, when we know it is not true." (Cambio de Michoacán, June 14) Opponents say the tunnel will negatively impact several green areas on the outer rings of the city, including Bosque Cuauhtémoc, Bosque Lázaro Cárdenas and La Loma de Santa María. (Cambio de Michoacán, June 7)

Federal judicial authorities in Mexico have granted an injuction to a group of Zoque indigenous campesinos in the Chimalapas region straddling the border of Chiapas and Oaxaca states, halting construction of a road through their territory. The petitioners, from the village of Santa María Chimalapa, Oax., say the project undertaken by the Chiapas state government, extending the Cintalapa-Rafael Cal y Mayor highway to the Valle de Uxpanapa highway in Oaxaca, would illegally impact communal lands. Complicating the matter is that some of the impacted lands are contested between Santa María Chimalapa, which claims them as traditional communal lands, and communities on the Chiapas side of the border which claim them as ejidos (redistributed lands). "The community is ready to defend its territory and seek a solution to these ancient conflicts," said Miguel Hernández Jacinto, comisariado of communal lands for Santa María Chimalapa. Peasant colonists from Chiapas have apparently been settling the communal forest lands, and petitioning the agrarian reform authorities for reconition as ejidos. These forests are said to protect jaguars, tapirs, tepezcuintles and other species threatened with extinction. (La Jornada, June 13)