A small indigenous community in Mexico's northern Chihuahua state finds little glitter in the "magic town" planned for their ancestral lands. Instead of good fortune, leaders of the Raramuri (Tarahumara) community of Bacajipare allege they've been the target of death threats and bullets because of an escalating land conflict related to the planned Divisadero-Barrancas Adventure Park.

Mexican Exterior Secretary Patricia Espinosa reacted Jan. 15 to the recent US Joint Forces Command report describing Mexico and Pakistan as "weak and failing states," telling reporters that most of the murders in the escalating narco wars have been between drug traffickers, and half have been concentrated in the cities of Juárez, Tijuana, Culiacán and Chihuahua. "Mexico is not a failed state," she said. (NYT, Jan. 16) Similar points were made by Enrique Hubbard Urrea, Mexico's consul general in Dallas, in a meeting with the Dallas Morning News editorial board, where he actually boasted improvement, asserting that the Mexican government "has won" the war against the drug cartels in certain areas, including Nuevo Laredo. (DMN, Jan. 16)

In a Jan. 9 meeting with ambassadors and consuls in Mexico City, President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa denied that there was chaos in Mexico and that "the civilian population was being massacred in the streets." He was apparently referring to fighting among drug cartels and between drug traffickers and the government. (La Jornada, Jan. 10) More than 8,000 people have been killed in Mexico's drug wars over the past two years. A study by the US Joint Forces Command, a US military planning group, warns that the Mexican state may "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse" because of "sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels... Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone." (International Herald Tribune, Jan. 9 from Reuters)

Three undocumented immigrants were killed and eight others injured when state preventive police fired on a truck near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas on the morning of Jan. 9. Police agents opened fire after the driver refused to stop the truck, which was carrying some 30 Chinese, Ecuadoran and Guatemalan immigrants entering from Guatemala in transit to the US. The agents continued to shoot during a 20-minute chase that ended with the truck crashing. All the injured and at least one of the dead had received bullet wounds; the driver and an immigrant smuggler escaped. Two of the agents were reportedly detained. (La Jornada, Jan. 10)

Thousands of fishermen in Mexico went on strike last week to protest the rise in the cost of diesel fuel, which they say has reduced their profit margin to zero. The strike, dubbed "Zero Fishing 2009," was declared in the northern state of Sinaloa by fishermen operating a fleet of around 100. In less than a week, the number of vessels involved in the strike had climbed to over 2,500.

The US continues to be the major weapon supplier to Mexico's drug cartels, according to a report the Cabinet submitted to President Felipe Calderón last week. In the text, the secretariats of Government, Defense, Navy and Public Security, and the Prosecutor General's office say the cross-border arms traffic is a $22 million-a-year trade, and that weapons from the US have reached Los Zetas, bloody paramilitary wing of the Gulf Cartel, as well as criminal organizations in Sinaloa and Tijuana.

During a live broadcast the night of Jan. 6, at least five masked gunmen riding in two pickup trucks fired high-caliber weapons and tossed a grenade outside the studios of the Televisa network in Monterrey, in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León. The two news anchors asked the police for help on the air during the attack. Televisa's news director in Monterrey, Francisco Cobos, told local reporters that the gunmen left a message on the windshield of one of the cars parked in the station's lot saying in Spanish: "Stop reporting on us. Also report on narco officials."

On Dec. 26 supporters of Mexico's rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) began the "World Festival of Dignified Rage" in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City). The series of events marks 15 years since the mostly indigenous group took the world by surprise on Jan. 1, 1994 with the military occupation of four cities in the southeastern state of Chiapas. Some 2,500 people reportedly participated in the festival, which moved to Oventic in Chiapas on Dec. 31 and then to the city of San Cristobal de las Casas, which the rebels occupied at the beginning of 1994. The festival is to run through Jan. 5. Speakers include representatives of the New York-based Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Unemployed Workers Movement of Argentina and the Greek Alana Magazine; Argentine-born Mexican writer Adolfo Gilly; former Nicaraguan rebel leader Monica Baltodano, now a leader of the opposition Movement for the Rescue of Sandinism; Uruguayan writer Raúl Zibechi; and Bolivian activist Oscar Olivera.