As has become traditional, on Oct. 2 present-day students joined veterans of a 1968 student strike in a march in Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of a massacre of strikers and their supporters there by police and the military. The attack, in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas near the Tlatelcolco housing project, left at least 44 dead, although many witnesses claim that hundreds were killed. At this year's march, which marked 45 years since the attack, protesters demanded a full accounting for the massacre and punishment for the perpetrators.

Three men allegedly linked to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, accused of conspiring to distribute a thousand kilograms of cocaine in the US and Europe, face trial in a federal court in Concord, New Hampshire, after being extradited from Spain. According to network Univisión, the accused were apprehended in the Spanish port of Algeciras in August 2012. One defendant, Manuel Jesús Gutiérrez Guzmán, has been identified as a cousin of Joaquin Guzman AKA "El Chapo"—the Sinaloa Cartel's notorious fugitive kingpin. Another, Rafael Humberto Celaya Valenzuela, was a candidate for public office in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora, with Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). (Latino Post, Proceso, Proceso, Sept. 4)

The giant Buenavista del Cobre copper mine in Cananea, near the US border in the northwestern state of Sonora, is in full operation again, a little more than three years after a police assault ended a 2007-2010 strike over health and safety conditions by Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM, "Los Mineros"). The mine produced earnings of $288.69 million for its owner, Grupo México (GM), in the second quarter of this year, according to an article in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada. But the town itself hasn't prospered. The article reports that the past 10 years have brought an increase in "organized crime, unemployment, shortages of drinkable water, a growing incidence of different types of cancer and acute respiratory diseases, ecological deterioration, alcoholism, and, because of a large transient population, problems with housing and urban infrastructure."

Carrying plastic shields and armed with nightsticks and tear-gas canisters, some 3,600 helmeted Mexican federal police moved in on Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo, at 4 PM on Sept. 13 to clear out an encampment teachers had set up as a base for actions that they had been carrying out since Aug. 21 to protest changes in the educational system. The National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), the dissident union group leading the protests, had negotiated an agreement with the government to vacate the plaza in time for the Sept. 15-16 ceremonies that traditionally celebrate Mexico's independence from Spain, but a smaller group of teachers from the militant locals in the southern state of Oaxaca tried briefly to hold out against the police. Confrontations followed for several hours involving police agents, teachers and local anarchists. National Security Commission (CNS) head Manuel Mondragón gave a preliminary count of 29 people arrested. (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, from correspondent; La Jornada, Mexico, Sept. 14)

Some 50 Mexicans and local supporters protested in front of the Mexican consulate in New York City on Sept. 13 to demand money that they say the Mexican government owes them from a 1942-1964 program that brought Mexicans into the US as farmworkers. The guest workers, known as "braceros" ("laborers" or "farmhands"), had 10% deducted from their wages by the US government; the money was supposed to go to Mexico's Campesino Savings Fund for their pensions. The US says it sent the deducted funds to the Mexican government, but the braceros and their survivors say the workers never got their pensions.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has spied on emails, phone calls and text messages to and from Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, according to NSA documents presented on Brazil's Globo television network on Sept. 1. These documents, like those made public in July about US spying on at least 14 Latin American nations, were given to Glenn Greenwald, a US blogger and columnist for the UK daily The Guardian who lives in Brazil, by former US intelligence technician Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in June. Snowden is now residing in Russia; he says he is unable to comment on the documents because of the terms under which Russian authorities are letting him stay in the country for one year.

The Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress voted 390-69 on Sept. 2 in favor of the Professional Teaching Service Law, legislation that requires teachers to be evaluated periodically, although it allows two retests for teachers who fail the evaluation. This is the third in a series of "educational reforms" being pushed by President Enrique Peña Nieto. The Senate completed the approval process the next day by voting 102-22 for the law. In both chambers the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was split; five of the party's 22 senators backed the law. (Europa Press, Sept. 2; La Jornada, Mexico, Sept. 4)

A vigilante calling herself Diana​ the Hunter (Diana la Cazadora) claimed credit in a series of communiques for the slaying of two bus drivers last week in northern Mexico's Ciudad Juárez, saying the killings were revenge for sexual abuse of women by night-shift drivers. "I and other women suffered... but we can't stay quiet," one of the e-mails said. "I am the instrument of vengeance for several women." Witnesses to the first killing Aug. 28 said a black-clad woman with a blonde wig or dyed hair approached the  driver, took out a pistol, shot him in the head and left the bus. The same killer told the second victim before dispatching him, "You guys think you're real bad, don't you?" The targeted bus line brings many women back and forth from the maquiladoras that ring Ciudad Juárez.