On Sept. 16, some 25,000 gathered at Mexico City's main plaza, the Zócalo, where President Felipe Calderón delivered the traditional grito—three shouts of "Viva Mexico!"—to celebrate the 1810 uprising that resulted a decade later in independence from Spain. But bicentennial celebrations were canceled in several municipalities across the country for fear of violence, as narco gangs escalate their brutal internecine warfare. "This is not a time to celebrate, but to lament," said Victor Quintana, a federal lawmaker (PRD) in Chihuahua state. (Reuters, The Telegraph, Sept. 16)

Members of the Mexican political parties PRI, PRD and PVEM (Green Party) attacked 170 Zapatista supporters and expelled them from their homes in the Tzeltal community of San Marcos Avilés, in the municipality of Chilón, Chiapas, in retaliation for the construction of an autonomous school in the early morning hours of Sept. 9.

Much as been made of a brief quip by Fidel Castro in his recent set of interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. To wit: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore." These nine somewhat ambiguous words, offered without any further elucidation from the Bearded One, have sparked a voluble reaction across the political spectrum...

Quito's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño said Sept. 12 that the dramatic attack two days earlier by FARC guerillas on the border town of San Miguel in Colombia's Putumayo department was not launched from Ecuador. Patiño stressed that the attack, in which at least six Colombian National Police officers were killed, "has nothing to do with us." The foreign minister's statement came in reaction to the expressed concerns of the Colombian government that FARC fighters may have crossed into Colombia from Ecuador to launch the offensive and then fled back to hide in the neighboring country.

In what was probably Mexico's biggest jailbreak ever Sept. 10, 89 prisoners—66 facing or convicted of federal charges, mostly related to drugs and firearms—used ladders to scale the 20-foot walls of the Execution and Sanction Center (CEDES) in the border city of Reynosa in conflicted Tamaulipas state. Two guards at the facility disappeared along with them, and are assumed to have been in on the scheme. Tamaulipas' new public safety secretary, José Garza García, said 44 guards and employees of the prison are under investigation. Military sources said the Gulf Cartel is suspected of involvement. So far this year, 201 inmates have escaped from prisons in Tamaulipas. In April, armed men who arrived in 10 cars stormed another Reynosa prison and exchanged gunfire with guards, freeing 13 inmates. (AP, La Jornada, Sept. 11; EuropaPress, Sept. 10)

Latin America solidarity activist Rev. Lucius Walker, 80, died of a heart attack on Sept. 7 at his home in Demarest, New Jersey. Walker, a Baptist minister, was also active in the US civil rights movement; in 1967 he founded the New York-based Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).

On Sept. 10, Puerto Rican politicians from across the spectrum praised leftist independence activist Juan Mari Brás, who died earlier that day at 82 of lung cancer in his home in Río Pedras, San Juan. Mari Brás was a "legendary leader who fought for his ideals," according to Gov. Luis Fortuño, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP). Héctor Ferrer, president of the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called Mari Brás "an example for all of us who believe in an ideal and seek the best for Puerto Rico," while Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) president Rubén Berríos Martínez said: "Thank you, Juan, for your life and your example."

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) made an agreement in principle in Tegucigalpa on Sept. 10 for a standby loan to the Honduran government. This gives the country immediate access to $196 million and will clear the way for loans of $80 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, $40 million from the World Bank, $52 million from the European Union (EU), $7 million from Germany and an unspecified amount from Taiwan.