Mexico, Colombia and seven Central American nations held a 24-hour summit April 10 in Campeche, issuing a nine-point plan for revitalizing the regional development alliance known as the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP). Joining Mexico's President Felipe Calderon were the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia, and the prime minister of Belize. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was represented by his vice-president, Jaime Moreno. "Latin American integration is not a dream," President Calderón told the gathering. "As our Octavio Paz saw, it's a reality that we're constructing day by day." The major achievement of the summit was an agreement to pursue a region-wide oil refinery, to be located in an as-yet undetermined Central American country. Officials said four companies have expressed interest in bidding on the project.

Amado Ramírez Dillane, 50, Acapulco-based correspondent for Mexico's Televisa network and host of the daily news program "Al Tanto" on local Radiorama, was shot to death near the city's main square April 6. He had apparently just left Radiorama's studio when he was gunned down. According to Misael Habana de los Santos, Ramírez's co-host at Radiorama, the journalist had received several death threats on his cellular phone prior. Habana wrote in the national daily La Jornada that Ramírez had not paid attention to the threats, and refused to inform local police.

Mexico's Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat (Semarnat) announced that six more setlements—some which have been established for 70 years—have been slated for relocation from the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in the lowland rainforest of Chiapas, the Lacandon Selva. The named settlements are San Antonio Miramar, Rancho Corozal, Salvador Allende, Nuevo Salvador Allende, El Buen Samaritano and Nuevo San Gregorio. The communities are made up of some 60 families, covering around 5,000 hectares.

Indigenous peoples have no future under the neoliberal system, because it doesn't respect their traditional self-government (usos y costumbres) and seeks to eliminate their ethnic identity, said the Bishop Emeritus of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who brokered the dialogue with the Zapatista rebels in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas. He said that the salvation of the West is in the indigenous world, which poses a communitarian alternative to the individualist ethic which threatens contemporary societies. Ruiz was speaking at a conference at the Universidad Iberoamericana's Puebla campus. (La Jornada, March 14)

Some 500 Mexican army troops and Federal Preventative Police took over the Public Security Secretariat of southern Tabasco state March 17, and arrested three high-ranking police commanders. The three officials, summarily fired upon their arrests, are part of a clique known as "La Hermandad" (The Brotherhood) that took control of state police operations during the administration of former Gov. Manuel Andrade (2000-2006). La Hermandad is suspected of ordering the hit on the new Public Security Secretariat (SSPT) director, Gen. Francisco Fernández Solís. Fernández was shot and his chauffeur killed in an ambush in the state capital Villahermosa on March 6. Federal authorities also took control of the state armory and confiscated all the weapons to conduct ballistics tests and determine if any were used in the assault on Gen. Fernández.

At least 22 were arrested and several injured in protests March 13 against the visit of President George Bush in the southern Mexican city of Merida, Yucatan. Hundreds also marched to the US Embassy in Mexico City, battling riot police with concrete blocks, metal bars and fire-crackers and tearing down barricades. Police responded with tear gas, pepper spray, and baton charges, throwing back rocks and clubbing demonstrators down. (El Universal, La Jornada, March 14)

Diego Arcos Meneses, an indigenous Chol Maya campesino, has been arrested by Chiapas state police and charged with murder in connection with November's massacre at the rainforest settlement of Viejo Velasco. The Chol campesino organization Xinich protests his innocence. The Xinich statement says Arcos Meneses, 42, is a health promoter and Jesuit "catechist" (lay worker) at the settlement of Nuevo Tila, Ocosingo municipality. "Regrettably in our country such human gestures can be dangerous: solidarity is criminalized while repression walks with impunity," says Xinich, the group believed by rights observers to have actually been targeted in the attack. (Xinich statement, March 4)

As Umberto Eco said about Salman Rushdie, "A death sentence is a rather harsh review." From AP via the San Diego Union-Tibune, Feb. 19:

MEXICO CITY – Gunmen shot to death four men identified as members of a musical group as they returned from a performance in the western Mexico state of Michoacan, a state prosecutor's spokeswoman said Monday.