Sharp debate over the direction of Mexico's narco war has broken out in the wake of twin massacres in northern Mexico last weekend. As the death toll from the narco violence punctures past records, some political leaders propose drastic responses that could curb civil liberties.

In Mexico's first major demonstration of 2010, on Jan. 29 thousands of unionists and campesinos marched from the Angel of Independence in Mexico City to the city's main plaza, the Zócalo, continuing a tradition of annual protests against the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the federal government's neoliberal economic policies. The demonstration was focused on the high cost of living, and the demands included an emergency pay raise to counter the effects of the world economic crisis. Another goal was to show support for the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), whose 44,000 active members were laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's administration suddenly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10.

Ciudad Juárez Mayor José Reyes Ferriz announced Jan. 31 that the city is calling on artists across Mexico to submit proposals for a monument to memorialize the city's murdered women. The monument will likely focus on the eight victims whose bodies were found in 2001 in a cotton field across from the Association of Maquiladoras. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Mexican government earlier this year to erect a monument to dignify the memory of the victims. (Las Cruces Sun-News, Jan. 31)

Gunmen burst into a party and killed 14 high school students Jan. 31 in Ciudad Juárez. The assailants jumped out of sport utility vehicles, entered the house near the US border, where the students were celebrating a birthday and victory in a local American Football championship, and began killing them one by one. (Reuters, KVIA, El Paso, NM, Jan. 31)

A riot at the notoriously harsh Durango prison known as Social Readaption Center (CERESEO) No. 1 left 23 inmates dead and another 20 injured Jan. 20. Army troops were sent in to put down the violence, which supposedly involved members of the rival Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel. (El Universal, AHN, Jan. 21)

Mexico's National Defense Secretariat announced the mobilization of 860 army troops to Tijuana in anticipation of reprisals following the capture of Tijuana Cartel kingpin Teodoro García Simental AKA "El Teo". Baja California state officials say 76 people have been killed in the city so far this year. The toll for 2009 was over 700 murders.

The body of abducted Mexican journalist José Luis Romero was found on a roadside in Sinaloa Jan. 16. State authorities said he had been dead for two weeks. Romero, abducted Dec. 30 while vacationing in Los Mochis, covered police and crime issues for the radio station Línea Directa de Sinaloa, which said he was kidnapped "for carrying out his work."

Police found two severed heads and the bullet-ridden bodies of two women and a disabled man in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez Jan. 9. The body of the man, whose legs had earlier been surgically removed, was mutilated and left with a "narco-message." (AP, Jan. 9) On Jan. 8 in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, the body of Hugo Hernández, 36, was left on the street in seven pieces with a note addressed to the Juárez Cartel reading: "Happy New Year, because this will be your last." Hernandez's face was skinned and stitched onto a soccer ball. (AP, Jan. 8) On Jan. 7, a shoot-out at a military check-point in La Piedad, Michoacán, left one soldier and three presumed narco-gunmen dead. (Cambio de Michoacán, Jan. 7)