The decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge Aug. 22 in the south-central city of Cuernavaca, Morelos. The Beltran Leyva Cartel claimed responsibility for the killings in a message left with the bodies. The beheaded and mutilated bodies were hung by their feet from the Tabachines bridge in the south of the city, near an on-ramp to the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. The message threatened: "This is what will happen to all those who support the traitor Edgar Valdéz Villarreal"—a reference to the former high-level Beltran Leyva operative code-named "la Barbie" who has broken with the cartel and is now the subject of a massive manhunt by Mexican federal police. On Aug. 10 a condo complex in Mexico City's posh Bosques de las Lomas district was besieged by a massive federal police contingent backed up helicopters on an apparently erroneous tip that "La Barbie" was there. In an incident that failed to make headlines outside Cuernavaca, the day before the bodies were found the home of a purported Valdéz Villarreal supporter in the city was torched by unknown assailants. A note left by the "Pacifico Sur Cartel" threatened to target more properties. (AP, La Jornada, Aug. 22; Diario de Morelos, Aug. 21; Poder360, Aug. 10)

Pablo López Alavés, a Zapotec leader of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón" (CIPO-RFM), was abducted Aug. 15 by a group of some 20 masked and black-clad men armed with rifles who stopped his car outside his pueblo of San Isidro Aloapam when he was going to gather wood with his wife, two daughters and five-year-old son. The gunmen broke his car window before forcing him from his vehicle and transferring him to their own unmarked truck. The family members returned to the pueblo and alerted his CIPO-RFM comrades, who in turn alerted the authorities and began a search. It was initially assumed he was kidnapped by paramilitaries in league with local talamontes, or illegal timber exploiters, whose operations CIPO-RFM has long opposed. But the following day authorities revealed he is being held at the state prison at Etla, apparently on assault charges. In 2000, López Alavés had faced charges of "attacking the means of communication" related to roadblocks protesting the talamontes, but was acquitted. CIPO-RFM calls the current charges politically motivated and is demanding his release. (CIPO-RFM communique, Aug. 18; CIPO-RFM communique, Aug. 17)

Six city police officers were arrested Aug. 20 in connection with the killing of a mayor in a suburb of Monterrey, Mexico. The suspects included the officer who guarded the house where Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos was seized on Aug. 15. The officer was supposedly abducted with the mayor, but later freed unharmed. The body of the 38-year-old mayor was found bound, gagged and blindfolded three days later on a road outside town. The officers confessed to involvement in the Cavazos' killing, said Nuevo León state Prosecutor General Alejandro Garza y Garza, who added that other suspects are still being sought.

On Aug. 12 the Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued recommendations in the case of two graduate students killed the early morning of March 19 during a gunfight between soldiers and alleged drug cartel members in front of the prestigious Institute of Technology and Higher Education's Monterrey campus (ITESM) at Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León. The incident took place as part of a heavily militarized "war on drugs" that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa put into motion shortly after taking office in December 2006; the government and the army claim that most of the thousands of victims are cartel members.

A full session of Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) decided by a 9-2 vote on Aug. 10 that same-sex marriages performed in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) are valid in all the country's states, although each state remains free to regulate marriages performed in its own territory. The court had ruled on Aug. 5 that the DF's law allowing same-sex marriage was constitutional, denying a challenge from federal attorney general Arturo Chávez Chávez.

On Aug. 5 Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) upheld a law enacted in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) last December recognizing same-sex marriages. Eight of the 11 justices voted with the majority; two opposed the marriage equality law and one was absent for reasons of health.

The long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) lost its hold on power in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca in gubernatorial elections last month, but the PRI's local apparatus of control may only be hardening—especially in the state's conflicted Mixtec region, where paramilitary groups terrorize peasant communities that have broken with the political machine.

Mexican army Special Forces troops on July 29 killed Ignacio Coronel Villarreal AKA "Nacho"—a top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. After a manhunt across several Mexican states, elite forces closed roads in Zapopan, part of the Guadalajara metropolitan area in Jalisco state, surrounded at least three houses, and cut off communications in the area. Many soldiers arrived by helicopter, and fierce gun-battle ensued. After Coronel, 56, was killed, several of his men were arrested. One soldier was killed, and one injured. (e-consulta, Aug. 2; BNO News, July 30)