A total of 19 bodies have been found in clandestine graves in northern Mexico's Chihuahua state, officials from the state prosecutor's office said Nov. 26. The first 11 were discovered in what was described as a deserted area of La Colorada ranch, in the community of Ejido Jesús Carranza, 40 kilometers southeast of Ciudad Juárez near the Texas border. The bodies were said to be two years old. The victims were asphyxiated, shot or beaten, their ages ranged from 18 to 40 years old, and they included US citizens. Information leading to the discovery came from the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua authorities said. That same day, eight more bodies were unearthed near Rosales, in Chihuahua's interior. These bodies were just two days old, and bore signs of torture. Some had been burned, beaten and had eyes carved out before being shot in the head. Four more bodies were found along the highway near the mountain outpost of Creel.

Complaints about abuses by Mexican police and soldiers have increased dramatically over the past seven years, according to testimony by Raúl Plascencia Villanueva, the president of the government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), to the Mexican Senate's Human Rights Commission on Nov. 21. Plascencia was reporting principally on the period from Jan. 1, 2005 to July 31, 2012, which overlaps the administration of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and his militarization of the "war on drugs." Calderón took office on Dec. 1, 2006; he will be succeeded this Dec. 1 by Enrique Peña Nieto.

A study released late last month by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, an elite think-tank based in Mexico City, asserted that proposals to legalize cannabis in Colorado, Washington and Oregon could cut Mexican drug cartels' earnings from traffic to the US by as much as 30%. The study, entitled "If Our Neighbors Legalize," drawing on previous research by the RAND Corporation, predicts that legalization in any US state would help drive down the price of high-quality domestic cannabis, undercutting the cheaper and less potent cartel imports. It calculated a loss of $1.425 billion to the cartels if Colorado legalized, $1.372 billion if Washington legalized, and $1.839 billion if Oregon voted yes. (AP, Nov. 1) In the Nov. 6 vote, initiatives calling for legalization of cannabis under regimes of state control were approved by voters in Colorado and Washington, but rejected in Oregon.

After nearly 10 years of struggle, Mexican campesinos fighting to protect their lands from the planned La Parota hydro-dam on the Río Papagayo won a definitive victory with the Aug. 16 signing of the "Cacahuatepec Accords" by Guerrero's Gov. Ángel Aguirre Rivero and the Council of Ejidos and Communities in Opposition to La Parota Dam (CECOP). Under  the agreement, Aguirre has committed the state not to approve La Parota dam if affected communities do not accept it, if they are not justly compensated, or it will impact the environment—effectively ending the project. Aguirre is also committed to seek an audience between CECOP and Mexican President Felipe Calderón to assure a commitment to the same principles from the federal government. La Parota dam would have flooded  17,000 hectares, impacting some 100,000 local residents.