Gregorio Sánchez Martínez, a gubernatorial candidate from the Yucatan Peninsula state of Quintana Roo, was arrested by Mexican federal police May 25 as he arrived at Cancún airport on a flight from Mexico City. He faces charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime, with federal prosecutors accusing him of provided information and protection to Los Zetas and the Beltran Leyva gang. But supporters of Sánchez, who recently took a leave as Cancún's mayor to run for governor, condemned the charges as politically motivated.

Five participants in an open-ended hunger strike by dozens of laid-off Mexican electrical workers were taken to the hospital on May 21 and 22 as the protest reached the four-week mark. About 68 hunger strikers remained camped out in Mexico City's main plaza, the Zócalo, in the workers' latest protest against President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. More than 17,000 of the 44,000 laid-off LFC workers, represented by the 95-year-old Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), have rejected the government's severance package, choosing to fight the closing with protests and lawsuits.

Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, 44, leader of the Triqui indigenous "autonomous municipality" of San Juan Copala in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca, was killed May 20 along with his wife Cleriberta Castro, 35. The attack took place in Yosoyuxi, a hamlet within municipality, where the couple lived. Witnesses said an unmarked truck stopped outside the couple's store, and an "armed commando" emerged and carried out the murders. A statement from the autonomous municipality said the commando was made up of four "non-Triqui individuals," but asserted that the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) is responsible for the crime. Ramírez was leader of the rival Independent Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULTI, which established the autonomous municipality in 2007). (San Juan Copala Autonomous Municipality statement, May 22)

Mexican President Felipe Calderón, speaking at the US Congress during a visit to Washington May 20, urged legislators to reinstate an assault-weapon ban, saying violence in Mexico escalated when the ban expired six years ago. "There is one area where Mexico needs your help, that is stopping the flow of assault weapons and other deadly weapons across the border," Calderón said. "Let us work together to end this lethal trade that threatens Mexico and your own people." (Bloomberg, May 20)

National Public Radio on May 18 adds to the widespread speculation that the Mexican government is tilting to the Sinaloa Cartel in the country's increasingly violent narco wars. Reporting from Ciudad Juárez, where President Felipe Calderón has deployed 10,000 army troops and federal police, NPR "finds strong evidence that Mexico's drug fight is rigged," citing court testimony, current and former law enforcement officials, and an analysis of cartel arrests.

Retired Mexican army general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro was gravely wounded with a bullet to the throat in what police are calling a mugging attempt in the Federal District's Cuauhtémoc division May 18. By official accounts, Acosta Chaparro was shot multiple times in his car by an assailant trying to steal his watch, and driven to a hospital by his chauffeur. Police are said to have arrested a suspect. However, there is much speculation about a link to Mexico's ongoing narco wars. In 2007, Acosta Chaparro was investigated by both the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) and Prosecutor for Military Justice (PJM) for ties to Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the late kingpin of the Juárez Cartel. The general was cleared in one of the most high-profile cases of military corruption in recent Mexican history. (El Universal, May 19)

A former presidential candidate in Mexico and prominent member of President Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party (PAN) was declared missing May 15, in an attack being blamed on narco gangs. The car of Diego Fernández de Cevallos was found near his ranch in the state of Queretaro, the Prosecutor General's Office confirmed. Authorities say they found his belongings in the car and "signs of violence."

Civil Pact for Life, Liberty and the Rights of Women of Mexico, an association of 90 groups, held a rally in Mexico City on May 5 to call for a boycott of the seaside resort city of Cancún in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo as a protest against the state government's anti-choice policies. Like more than half of Mexico's 31 states, Quintana Roo recently passed a strict anti-abortion law. The protesters charged that the state, governed by the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), acts "as if it was a church." "Get your rosaries out of our ovaries," they chanted.