Twenty-one were killed and 12 injured Oct. 20 in a fight between inmates at a prison in Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Tex. Tamaulipas state and Mexican federal police, supported by army troops, took control of the state prison, as anxious relatives of inmates gathered outside to demand information—at one point kicking the prison gates. Inmates used guns, knives and gasoline bombs in the battle before security forces stormed the prison. Reports indicated all of the dead were killed in the initial fighting between prisoners, as opposed to in the effort to re-take the facility—but didn't state this explicitly.

On Oct. 16 Mexico's federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) arrested activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno for the shooting death of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will during a protest in the southern state of Oaxaca on Oct. 27, 2006. Octavio Perez Perez was also arrested and charged with concealing the crime; Hugo Jafit Colmenares Leyva was arrested on the same charge on Oct. 17. Perez and Colmenares were released on Oct. 18 on bail of 25,000 pesos (about $1,925) apiece. All three of the arrested men are activists in the leftist Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), which along with the state local of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) spearheaded protests that shut down much of Oaxaca state for five months in 2006.

Several large operations by federal and local Mexican police from Oct. 7 to Oct. 9 broke up protests by striking teachers and their supporters in Morelos state, south of Mexico City, leaving dozens of people detained or injured. Morelos teachers have been on strike since Aug. 13 to protest the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE), a national plan promoted by Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and national teachers union head Elba Esther Gordillo Morales.

Based on local medical examiner reports, the Tucson-based Human Rights Coalition recently reported that the number of unidentified bodies found in the Arizona-Sonora border region is on the upswing. According to the immigrant rights advocacy group, 183 people were found dead in Arizona's Pima, Yuma and Cochise counties during the fiscal year that ran from October 1, 2007, to September 30, 2008. Of the recovered bodies, 119 were [identified as] males and 45 [as] females. Although some victims were identified as nationals of Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Honduran and Peruvian origin, more than half, or 59%, were unidentified.

Gunmen killed six young men the night of Oct. 11 at a family party in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez. Most of the victims were shot; one was beaten to death, and one body was found wrapped in a blanket. Investigators found four bodies on a sidewalk in the Juárez Nuevo colonia (neighborhood). Two other bodies were found inside the home's front patio. This brought the toll in presumably drug-related violence in Juárez to at least 25 over the weekend—and to more than 1,070 since the beginning of the year. (El Paso Times, AP, Oct. 12)

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.