Some 10,000 members of the Section 22 teachers union and the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) marched in Oaxaca City Sept. 1 to demonstrate their rejection of Mexico's President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, the same day he delivered his first address to Congress. Another 7,000 Oaxacans gathered in Mexico City's Plaza de la Constitución for a "contrainforme," a public speak-out conceived as a corrective to Calderón's address. (La Jornada, Sept. 2)

Meanwhile, apparently drug-related violence is fast escalating in Oaxaca. On Sept. 7, a state police officer died and four more were injured in an ambush of their vehicle with assault rifles on the Juchitán-Tehuantepec highway. (La Jornada, Sept. 8) On Sept. 6, unknown gunmen entered La Habana Night Club on the southern outskirts of Oaxaca City and opened fire, leaving a dancer dead and patrons wounded. A similar attack on the Oaxaca City bar Rinconada del Carmen took place three days later, when black-clad gunmen seized the establishment, threatened patrons and roughed up the owner. (Olor a Mi Tierra, Sept. 9)

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