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.

Mario Ernesto Villanueva Madrid, ex-governor of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, was extradited to the US on May 10 to face charges of accepting some $20 million in bribes from the notorious Juárez Cartel in exchange for allowing in the transport of over 200 tons of cocaine through his state towards North American markets. US prosecutors say the money was laundered through accounts at Lehman Brothers in New York. Appearing in federal court in New York the day of his extradition, Villanueva pleaded not guilty to all charges. (AHN, AOL News, May 10)

Mexico's prosecutor general of Military Justice, José Luis Chávez, announced May 1 that following a joint investigation with civilian prosecutors, it was determined that drug cartel gunmen, not soldiers, were responsible for the deaths of two children during a confrontation in the northern state of Tamaulipas. The incident took place April 3 on the Reynosa-Nuevo Laredo highway near Ciudad Mier, where a family of 13 traveling in an SUV was apparently caught in a crossfire between army troops and cartel gunmen. Bryan and Martin Almanza Salazar, ages 5 and 9, were killed and seven other family members wounded. The survivors said that the troops opened fire without provocation.

As has become traditional, rival Mexican union confederations celebrated International Workers Day on May 1 with separate rallies in Mexico City's huge Zócalo plaza. The largest was organized by the independent National Workers Union (UNT), which claimed 250,000 to 300,000 participants; the local police failed to give an estimate.