Gunmen stormed El Aliviane drug rehab center in Ciudad Juárez Sept. 3 and executed at least 16 people, lining the victims up behind the building and shooting them one by one. (LAT, Sept. 3) Meanwhile in Michoacán, the state sub-secretary for Citizen Protection, José Manuel Revueltas López, was assassinated in a two-truck drive-by shooting just outside the state Public Security Secretariat in Morelia, the capital. Two body-guards and a by-stander were also killed in the attack. (La Jornada, Sept. 3)

The heads of three major Canadian, Mexican and US labor federations responded to the Aug. 10 "Tres Amigos" summit—a meeting of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and US president Barack Obama in Mexico City—with a joint statement criticizing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a 15-year-old agreement on trade between the three countries. The statement was signed by Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) president Kenneth Georgetti; Francisco Hernández Juárez, president of the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico's second-largest union federation; and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation.

Mexico's Supreme Court Aug. 12 overturned the sentences of 22 men who were imprisoned in the 1997 massacre of 45 indigenous peasants at Acteal in southern Chiapas state. In a 4-1 vote, the court found that irregularities were committed by prosecutors who handled the case. The cases of 35 more convicted in the massacre are under review. Victor Hugo López of the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center agreed the case should be reopened, but urged a wider probe: "We also agree that some procedures were violated as these people were investigated. But we think there is more to it. We do not think that the Acteal massacre resulted from a conflict between rivaling communities. We think the Mexican state is responsible for this crime." (FSRN, NYT, Aug. 12)

The Mexican Catholic bishops' conference issued a statement criticizing federal police for bursting into a Mass to apprehend an alleged cartel lieutenant Aug. 3. "We make an energetic protest against the lack of respect and the violence exercised on the part of the forces responsible for guaranteeing the security of all persons in our nation...by interrupting a religious act...at the moment in which holy Mass is celebrated," the bishops said in a statement signed by Auxiliary Bishop Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez of Guadalajara, conference secretary-general. "Nothing explains this kind of action inside a religious place and much less in these moments where Mexico is noted internationally as an insecure and violent country." (Catholic News Service, Aug. 4)

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, intervened to block release of a favorable report on Mexico's human rights situation. Leahy's action delays the release of $100 million in US anti-drug assistance. The Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion, three-year package, requires Congress to withhold 15% of the funding unless the State Department finds that Mexico is respecting human rights.

The Mexican newspaper Milenio finds that July was the bloodiest month in the country since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006. According to Milenio, 854 people were killed in narco-violence in the country in July alone. Hardest hit is Ciudad Juárez, where 250 people were killed in July. Between January and July 4,300 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico, compared to 2,651 killed in the same period in 2008. By government figures, over 7,700 have been killed in drug-related violence since 2006, but Milenio said the actual figure was closer to 13,000. Milenio also found that kidnapping has increased by 154% over 5 the past five years.

A delegation of union leaders and parliamentarians from 13 countries visited Mexico for five days during the week of July 8 to show support for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) in its three-year struggle against the Mexican government and the Grupo México transnational. Organized by the International Metalworkers' Federation (IMF), the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), and the United Steelworkers (USW), the delegation included legislators from Australia, Canada and Peru, and union leaders from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, Peru, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the US.

On June 29 about 1,000 indigenous Nahuas from the communities of Santa María de Ostula, Coire and Pómaro in the central western Mexican state of Michoacán occupied La Canahuancera, a 700-hectare area near the Pacific coast. According to the Nahuas, men armed with pistols in the employ of local political bosses tried to stop the effort to take the land, and a campesino, Manuel Serrano, was hit by a bullet. The Ostula community police captured eight of the attackers; they released five of them later and turned three others over to state prosecutors on July 5. The Nahuas also set up a roadblock on the Manzanillo-Lázaro Cárdenas highway. The indigenous communities say they have titles to La Canahuancera dating back to 1802; they charge that a group of small landowners from the community of Placita, Aquila municipality, seized the land 45 years ago.