For the second time in less than one week, the streets of the Mexican border city of Reynosa, Tamaulipas, hosted protestors Feb. 4. The actions spanned a range of grievances—high food and fuel prices, maquiladora lay-offs and the presence of the Mexican army in the city located across the Rio Grande from McAllen, Tex.

Thousands of campesinos from across Mexico blocked central avenues of the capital Jan. 30, many having traveled for days for the protest directed at President Felipe Calderón. Protesters decried that Calderón has instated a freeze on petrol prices, but not diesel—on which tractors and other farm equipment run. They also rejected Calderón's free trade policies, which they say hurts the farm sector.

More than 250 farmers with tractors and work trucks gathered in Ciudad Chihuahua's Plaza Hidalgo Jan. 27 to protest the high cost of diesel fuel and the lack of opportunity in Mexico's agricultural sector, blockading the entrances to Chihuahua state office buildings before beginning a sit-in outside the federal Agriculture Secretariat. They intend to caravan north and arrive at the border city of Ciudad Juárez later this week to blockade the international bridge to El Paso, TX.

A group calling itself the "Juárez Citizens Command" issued a manifesto this week setting a deadline of July 5 for authorities to restore order in the violence-plagued Mexican border city before it will begin following through on its threat to kill a criminal a day. The 10-point manifesto issued Jan. 27 was the second communication from the organization that was unknown prior to its initial threat made on Jan. 15. "The CCJ declares war on the thieves, kidnappers and extortionists that have put in risk the rights of citizens and reiterates its plan to terminate the life of a criminal every 24 hours for the good of all Juarenses," the document stated in Spanish.

The largest surge ever in legal and unauthorized Mexican migration to the US began after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, according to sociologist James W. Russell, who studied migration patterns between 1910 and 2008 for his new book, Class and Race Formation in North America (University of Toronto Press, 2009).

On Jan. 22, followers of the Rural Reactivation Movement (Movimiento por la Reactivación del Campo) occupied the offices of Mexico's Agriculture Secretariat in five municipalities and blocked six roads in northern Chihuahua state, pledging to maintain the protest campaign until the government reduces the price of diesel fuel, raises the price of maize and wheat, addresses outstanding land claim disputes, and approves early release of pledged resources from the Procampo rural aid program.

A man arrested by Mexican federal police in Tijuana Jan. 22 says he disposed of 300 bodies for a narco gang over the past decade by dissolving them in chemicals. Santiago Meza López said he was paid $600 a week to dissolve victims' bodies in caustic soda. He went by the moniker "El Pozolero del Teo" (Teo's Stew-Maker), an evident reference to Teodoro García Simental, a former kingpin of the Tijuana Cartel who defected last year to the rival Sinaloa Cartel, sparking a bloody turf war. Over 700 were killed in Tijuana in 2008. "They brought me the bodies and I just got rid of them," Meza, named as 20 on the US FBI's "Most Wanted" list, told journalists at a construction site where he disposed of the bodies over a 10-year period. "I didn't feel anything."

Oaxaca activist Rubén Valencia Núñez was harassed and violently attacked on the night of Jan. 10, and it is believed that his life remains under threat. He is a member of Oaxacan Voices Building Autonomy and Liberty (VOCAL), which is part of umbrella organization Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO). APPO led widespread protests in Oaxaca state in 2006 and 2007, calling for the resignation of the state's governor.