Mexico's new populist president announced that he is dropping out of the regional US-led drug enforcement pact, and will be turning down the aid package offered through the program. Instead, he is proposing a dialogue with Washington on across-the-board drug decriminalization in both nations. And Mexican lawmakers say they will pass a cannabis legalization bill by the end of the year.

The Emiliano Zapata Popular and Indigenous Council of Guerrero (CIPOG-EZ) is calling upon the United Nations to investigate following the assassination of two leaders of the organization. The bodies of José Lucio Bartolo Faustino and Modesto Verales Sebastián were found May 5 in the town of Chilapa de Alvarez, where they had days earlier been abducted on a road by unknown gunmen. Both were leaders of the Nahua indigenous community in Chilapa municipality, had served as representatives to the National Indigenous Congress (CNI), and had promoted the 2017 presidential candidacy of María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, known as "Marichuy," a Nahua woman who won the support of both the CNI and Mexico's Zapatista rebels. Both were abducted when they were returning to their communities in outlying villages of Chilapa municipality from a meeting of indigenous leaders in the Guerrero state capital, Chilpancingo. (Enlace Zapatisa, Somos el Medio, Prensa Latina)

Despite his boast to have "ended" the drug war and pledge to explore cannabis legalization, Mexico's new populist president is seeking to create a special anti-drug "National Guard" drawing from the military and police forces. This plan is moving rapidly ahead—and the military is still being sent against campesino cannabis growers and small traffickers.

An indigenous environmental activist was killed in Mexico's south-central state of Morelos on Feb. 20—three days ahead of a planned referendum on an energy development project that he opposed. Samir Flores Soberanes was a leader of the local Peoples in Defense of Land and Water Front (FPDTA) and community radio station Amilzinko. He was slain by unknown gunmen in an attack at his home in the village of Amilcingo, Temoac municipality. He was a longtime figure in local opposition to the planned Huexca power plant and associated natural-gas pipeline, pushed by the government under the Morelos Integral Project (PIM).

Two months into his term, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador declared an end to his country's "war on drugs," announcing that the army would no longer prioritize capturing cartel bosses. The new populist president made his declaration Jan. 30, at the end of his second month in office. He told gathered reporters at a press conference that the "guerra contra el narcotráfico," launched in 2006 by then-president Felipe Calderón, has come to and end. "Officially now, there is no war; we are going to prusue peace," he said.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of their New Year's Day 1994 uprising in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, leaders of the Zapatista rebels pledged their opposition to Mexico's new left-populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Anger was particularly directed at the planned "Maya Train" project, which would link the tourist resort of Cancún on the Caribbean coast with the Palenque archeological site in Chiapas, spearheading a new thrust of tourism mega-development. At the New Year's Eve ceremony, held at the rebel-controlled settlement of La Realidad and dubbed the "Meeting of the Networks of Resistance and Rebellion," thousands of supporters from across Mexico gathered to watch Zapatista troops march in formation—although wielding symbolic bastónes (staffs) rather than rifles.

In Episode 20 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the forgotten legacy of libertarian socialism—considered by many today a contradiction in terms. While the word "socialism" is suddenly viewed as legitimate in American political discourse again for the first time in generations, the word "libertarian" continues to be associated with the free-market right—despite its origins on the anarchist left. Weinberg discusses his own involvement in New York's Libertarian Book Club—founded by anarchist exiles from Europe in the 1940s, to keep alive their ideals and pass the torch to a new generation. Libertarian socialists seek inspiration in such historical episodes as the Zapatistas in Mexico (1910-19), Makhnovists in Ukraine (1917-21), Spanish anarchists in Catalonia (1936-7), and Zapatistas in Mexico again (1994-date)—peasants and workers who took back the land and the factories, building socialism from below, without commissars or politburos. Other movements inspired by this vision on the world stage today include anarchist-influenced elements of Syria's civil resistance, and the autonomous zone of northern Syria's Rojava Kurds. Weinberg argues that far from being an irrelevant anachronism, a libertarian socialist vision is necessary for human survival. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon.

Mexican federal police and the military have taken over policing duties in Acapulco, after the entire municipal force was disarmed Sept. 25 due to suspected co-optation by criminal gangs. The city’s police chief, Max Sedano Román, and five of his commanders were detained by Mexican naval troops. Two of the commanders were arrested "for their probable responsibility in the crime of homicide." Their weapons and other equipment of the city police force have bee seized by Guerrero state authorities. The Guerrero government said it took the step "because of suspicion that the force had probably been infiltrated by criminal groups" and "the complete inaction of the municipal police in fighting the crime wave." Acapulco had a homicide rate of 103 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, one of the highest rates in Mexico and the world. The Washington Post last year described the resort city as Mexico’s murder capital.