Two dead and one injured are reported in an ambush Nov. 14 at the community of La Conchuda in the municipality of San Agustín Loxicha, in the southern mountains of Oaxaca, known as a bastion of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). The victims, Faustino Sebastián Valencia and Jesús Valencia, father and son, and Lorenzo Jiménez, were ambushed by masked men with automatic rifles while walking on a mountain road. Faustino and Jesús Valencia were killed instantly, while the third remains hospitalized. All three were prominant local supporters of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Juan Sosa Maldonado, Loxicha regional leader of the Organization of Indigenous Zapotec Pueblos (OPIZ), a member organization of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), called the growing violence in the Sierra del Sur a "grave issue." (ADN Sureste, Nov. 17)

The former Loxicha regional leader for the OPIZ, Alejandro López López, was found dead in the same area on Oct. 20. Assuming leadership of the local organization, Sosa Maldonado blamed his death on local paramilitaries who two years earlier had murdered another indigenous leader, Lino Antonio Almaraz. He said a network of assassins operate with total impunity in the region, protected by the political machine of "priismo neopanista"—meaning a convergence of the traditional PRI machine that controls Oaxaca and that of the National Action Party (PAN), which now controls the federal executive branch. (ADN Sureste, Oct. 23)

See our last posts on Mexico, the Oaxaca crisis and the guerilla movement.