Bicentennial celebrations were canceled in several municipalities across Mexico for fear of violence, as narco gangs escalate their brutal internecine warfare.
Thugs for local political bosses attacked Zapatista supporters and expelled them from their homes in the Tzeltal community of San Marcos Avilés, Chiapas, in retaliation for building a school.
In Mexico’s biggest jailbreak, 89 prisoners used ladders to scale the walls of the Execution and Sanction Center (CEDES) in the border city of Reynosa. Two guards disappeared along with them.
At least three people suffered serious injuries and 26 were arrested when fighting broke out between striking miners and others at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern Mexican state of Sonora.
In comments before the Council on Foreign Relations, Hillary Clinton asserted that the US, Mexico and the Central American countries need to cooperate on an “equivalent” of Plan Colombia.
Guanajuato governor Juan Manuel Oliva RamÃrez announced that the state government would soon release seven women who had been jailed on charges of “homicide in the case of close relatives.”
The US State Department has for the first time called for withholding Merida Initiative funds based on human rights abuses in Mexco—but at the same time approved release of $36 million.
Violence continues to escalate in the conflicted northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. At least 25 were killed as soldiers stormed a training camp allegedly set up by Los Zetas in Ciudad Mier.
World oil prices remain depressed despite an uptick this month, driven by the Venezuela crisis and fear of US-China trade war. Yet this month also saw Zimbabwe explode into angry protests over fuel prices. The unrest was sparked when the government doubled prices, in an effort to crack down on "rampant" illegal trading. Simultaneously, long lines at gas stations are reported across Mexico—again due to a crackdown on illegal petrol trafficking. Despite all the talk in recent years about how low oil prices are now permanent (mirrored, of course, in the similar talk 10 years ago about how high prices were permanent), the crises in Zimbabwe and Mexico may be harbingers of a coming global shock. (Photo via Amnesty International)
Two car bombs exploded in Ciudad Victoria, capital of Mexico’s conflicted Tamaulipas state, as authorities investigate the massacre of 72 migrant laborers at a ranch near the US border.
Mexico’s Navy found 72 bodies on a ranch near the US border in Tamaulipas state. The dead are apparently migrants from Central and South America slain in a massacre by Los Zetas.
The decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge in the south-central Mexican city of Cuernavaca. The Beltran Leyva Cartel claimed responsibility in a message left with the bodies.
