Six or more people were killed in the early morning of Aug. 25 when a freight train derailed near the border between the Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. The federal government reported later in the morning that four people were killed and 35 were injured, some seriously; shortly afterwards, Jazmín Cano, the mayor of Las Choapas in southern Veracruz, put the number of deaths at six and the number of injured at 22. The accident was reportedly caused by the combination of rain and excessive speed.

Some 2.3 million students in the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Michoacán missed classes on Aug. 19, the first day of the 2013-14 school year, as thousands of teachers in the two states started an open-ended strike in the latest protest against US-style changes to the education system. The job action kicked off a week of demonstrations focusing on an Aug. 21-23 extraordinary session of the Congress that was to consider legislation proposed by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto to make teacher evaluations mandatory. The protest movement was led by the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), a large dissident group in the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), with the support of several SNTE regional sections, including Oaxaca's Section 22 and Michoacán's Section 18.

Sandra Ávila Beltrán, dubbed the "Queen of the Pacific" by the Mexican media, arrived Aug. 21 at the Federal Social Readaptation Center (CEFERESO) Number 4 in Tepic, Nayarit, days after she was extradited to Mexico from the US. The transfer came after a US judge in Maimi gave her credit for time served on the basis of five years she spent behind bars in Mexico and another year awaiting sentencing in Florida. She was arrested upon her arrival back in Mexico, to face new charges of money-laundering on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel.

On Aug. 12 Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto formally announced his plan for transforming the country's nationalized energy sector by opening up the giant oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) to shared risk contracts with Mexican and foreign private companies and by allowing private companies to generate electricity for the Federal Energy Commission (CFE). Mexico is currently the world's largest oil producer, with about 2.5 million barrels pumped each day, but Peña Nieto said his "energy reform" would raise oil production to 3 million barrels a day in 2018 and 3.5 million 2025 and natural gas production from 1.7 million cubic feet now to 8 million cubic feet in 2015. The reform, which would require changes to articles 27 and 28 of the Constitution, is supported by the center-right National Action Party (PAN) and Peña's centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI); the votes from the two parties should be enough to get the legislation through the Congress.

The presumed kingpin of the Gulf Cartel, Mario Armando Ramírez Treviño AKA "El Pelón" (Baldy), who also went by the code-name X-20, was arrested by Mexican army troops along with two henchmen in Río Bravo, Tamaulipas, Aug. 17. Only one shot was fired in the apprehension. Spokesmen for the administration of President Enrique Peña-Nieto in announcing the capture predicted that it would put the breaks on the nightmarish violence in Tamaulipas between the Gulf Cartel and its rivals Los Zetas, and noted that several Gulf criminal operatives have been arrested this month. 

Over the past week, some 1,500 activists from around the world converged on Mexico's Chiapas state for the Zapatista rebels' first international organizing workshop, the Little Freedom School (Escuelita de Libertad), with course names such as "Freedom According to the Zapatistas." On Aug. 15, three days into the gathering,  the rebels' Comandante Tacho issued a statement charging that "military planes were doing flyovers over the zones of the five Zapatista caracoles." The caracoles (snails) are the community centers the rebels have built to govern their territory in open assemblies, and where the Freedom School is being held. Tacho signed off: "We say to the government of [President Enrique] Peña Nieto, that if your soldiers want to learn in the Little School, they should ask to be invited. We won't, however, invite them. But then they can use the pretext that they are spying because we didn't invite them." (El Enemigo Común via Climate Connections, Aug. 15; Waging Nonviolence via Upside Down World, Aug. 12)

Mexico's most notorious kingpin, Rafael Caro Quintero, was released Aug. 9 from Puente Grande federal prison in Jalisco where he had been incarcerated for the past 28 years. He left the facility at dawn, several hours before the release order was made public. The First Appellate Tribunal in Guadalajara found in March that Caro Quintero was improperly tried for the 1985 torture-killing of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, and that charges should have been brought at the state rather than federal level. Federal prosecutors immediately appealed to the Supreme Justice Court of the Nation, which refused to rescind the lower court's decision. The Third Circuit Tribunal, also in Guadalajara, has now followed through by issuing Caro Quintero an amparo—a judicial order barring any federal action against him. 

Mexican environmental activist Noé Salomón Vázquez Ortiz was murdered the early afternoon of Aug. 2 in his hometown, Amatlán de los Reyes, in the eastern coastal state of Veracruz. The killing came one day before the town was to host the Tenth National Meeting of the Mexican Movement Against Dams and in Defense of Rivers (MAPDER). Vázquez Ortíz and a minor were gathering flowers and seeds for a floral tribute to be used at the conference when a group of men appeared, ordered the minor to leave and began stoning Vázquez Ortíz. His body was found later with the hands and legs bound and the throat slit. State police arrested four men the day of the murder; they reportedly said they had personal differences with the murdered man.