With bodies still emerging daily throughout the city, the toll of residents killed narco-violence in Tijuana over the past week is approaching 50. Five bodies turned up in an alley between two shopping centers and nine on a vacant lot outside a daycare center—where a message nearby read: "Here are your people." The bodies in the lot were found face down with their hands tied behind their backs, and the ground was littered with shell casings. Another five were discovered in a van with US license plates. Two more were found beheaded, wrapped in blankets on a roadside, with the severed heads in plastic bags. Outside a popular seafood restaurant, the remains of two people were found stuffed in a barrel and dissolved with acid.

Ramiro Guillén Tapia, a campesino leader from Mexico's Sierra de Soetapan, doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire Sept. 30 in front of the Veracruz state government headquarters in Xalapa, saying it was an act of protest against failure of officials to respond to his demands for titling of indigenous and campesino lands in the mountain region. He survived 21 hours in the city's hospital before succumbing.

Teachers in the central Mexican state of Morelos, on strike since Aug. 13, escalated their tactics on Sept. 22 by blocking access to state government offices in Cuernavaca, the state capital. Gov. Marco Antonio Adame Castillo, of the governing center-right National Action Party (PAN), responded by asking the federal government for 400 anti-riot agents from the Federal Preventive Police (PFP). Some 20,000 Morelos teachers have been trying to force Adame Castillo to cancel the state's participation in the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE), a national plan supported by Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) head Elba Esther Gordillo. The teachers are members of Section 19 of the SNTE.

New data reported by the Mexican media suggest that emigration to the United States rose sharply in 2007, the first full year of the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón. Based on US Census Bureau numbers, Mexico's National Population Council (Conapo) estimated that 679,611 Mexicans made the move to El Norte last year. According to Conapo, the number of Mexican nationals relocating to the US was up 5.9% from 2006. It was the highest jump in Mexican emigration registered since 2002. The total number of Mexican-born residents living in the US now stands at 11,800,000 persons, or just over 10 percent of Mexico's population, Conapo estimated.

Following an anonymous tip, Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) arrested three suspected members of the narco-paramilitary group Los Zetas Sept. 25 as the "material authors" of the Independence Day grenade attack that left eight dead and over 100 injured in Morelia, Michoacán. Four more are under investigation in the attack and may face imminent arrest, said Marisela Morales Ibáñez, chief of the Special Investigative Subprosecutor for Organized Delinquency (SIEDO). Morales Ibáñez emphasized that the men, detained at a house in the Michoacán city of Apatzingán, were themselves on drugs when they carried out the attack. The arrested suspects were named as Julio César ("Tierra Caliente") Mondragón Mendoza, Juan Carlos ("El Grande") Castro Galeana, and Alfredo ("El Socio" or "El Valiente") Rosas Elicea. (La Jornada, Sep. 27)

Mexico's military seized $26.2 million in cash believed to belong to members of the Sinaloa Cartel Sept. 14. The soldiers also found guns and two bags of marijuana in the weekend raid at the house in the city of Culiacán—as well as documents naming a member of a gang allegedly led by Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, an associate of fugitive Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

At least 23 inmates have been killed and scores wounded in days of rioting at the overcrowded La Mesa prison in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Violence first broke out Sept. 14 during family visiting hours after a prisoner died inside, apparently at the hands of guards. Prisoners took advantage of the greater mobility afforded by the visiting hours to seize work implements such as picks and shovels to use as weapons, and set mattresses on fire with cigarette lighters. Four prisoners were killed in the initial outbreak; the remainder met their deaths as Baja California state police stormed the prison Sept. 18. Authorities said prisoners also used firearms, but no guards were among the casualties.

Unknown assailants lobbed grenades through the crowded town square in Morelia, Michoacán, during Independence Day celebrations Sept. 15, killing seven people and injuring more than 100. The first explosion hit just after 11 PM as bells began to ring across Mexico and Michoacán's Gov. Leonel Godoy was delivering the traditional "grito" of independence before thousands of revelers. President Felipe Calderón, whose hometown is Morelia and has mobilized thousands of soldiers to Michoacán to fight drug gangs, delivered a nationwide address the next day calling on Mexicans to unite against the cartels. "On this national holiday, there are cowards hidden in the crowds of patriotic people that have converted joy into sadness and the happiness of Mexican families into sorrow," he said. (NYT, Sept. 17)