Mexican human rights activist Karla Castañeda Alvarado applied for political asylum in the US on Feb. 13 after secretly leaving her home in Ciudad Juárez in the northern state of Chihuahua with four of her children. US authorities have granted her six months to provide documentation to justify her application. The Committee of Mothers and Relatives of Disappeared Young Women, in which Castañeda was active, said it was better for her to seek asylum, noting the example of activist Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, who was shot dead by an unidentified man on Dec. 16, 2010, as she was protesting in front of the main government office in the state capital, also named Chihuahua.

Drug-related violent deaths reached 12,394 in Mexico last year, according to a count released by the daily Milenio on Jan. 2. The account said this was an increase of 110 over 2011, but 264 less than in 2010, the most violent year of the Felipe Calderón presidency. (However, by the government's own figures, the total for 2012 was 12,903, and 15,273 for 2010.)  For a fifth consecutive year, Chihuahua was the most violent state in the country, accounting for 18% of total deaths. Yet a Dec. 30 report on El Paso Inc notes the official number of murders in the violence-torn border city of Juárez dropped to about 800, down from a peak of 3,622 in 2010 that won the sobriquet "Murder City." The government of course takes credit, pointing to the jailing of gang leaders and social programs for at-risk youth. A Jan. 11 report on National Public Radio admits that may be part of the explanation, but says "word on the street" is that the long, bloody turf war is winding down because one side won: the interloping Sinaloa Cartel defeated the local and now heavily factionalized Juárez Cartel.

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.

Mexico's Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (PRODH) held a press conference in Mexico City on Oct. 23 to announce the release of a report on the alleged torture of Israel Arzate Meléndez, a resident of Ciudad Juárez in the northern state of Chihuahua, by state police and the military. According to the report, Tortured, Imprisoned and Innocent, two soldiers arrested Arzate on Feb. 3, 2010, charging him with participation in the massacre of 15 youths in Ciudad Juárez's Villas de Salvárcar neighborhood the previous Jan. 30. The report says the soldiers took Arzate to a military installation, stripped him naked, tied up his hands and feet, placed a plastic bag over his head and tortured him with electric shocks to get him to confess to involvement in the killings.

Hundreds of campeisnos staged a protest outside the Governor's Palace in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua last week, following the Oct. 22 double murder of two leading members of the activist organization El Barzón. Ismael Solorio Urrutia and his wife Manuela Martha Solís Contreras were shot while driving in in thier truck on the highway near Ciudad Cuautémoc, west of the state capital, Chihuahua City. Supporters are demanding a face-to-face meeting with Chihuahua's Gov. César Duarte to demand justice in the case, asserting that Solorio had faced numerous threats and attacks in recent weeks. On Oct. 13, Solorio and his son Eric were beaten by men that activists claim were in the pay of Vancouver-based mining company MAG Silver. Solorio and fellow Barzonistas had been opposing the installation of the company's El Cascabel mine in the municipality of Buenaventura. The Barzonistas say the mine is illegally slated for Ejído Benito Juárez, a collective campesino agricultural holding. The site is belived to hold a rich vein of the rare element molybdenum.