Mexican federal police backed up by the army's elite Airborne Special Forces Group (GAFES) detained at least six municipal police in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, in a surprise pre-dawn raid on their headquarters Jan. 19. Nuevo Laredo mayor Ramón Garza Barrios did not challenge the arrests, saying he would defer to federal authorities until more information is available. (El Universal, Jan. 19)

Tijuana Cartel gunmen and fought a three-hour battle with Mexican federal police and army troops in the border city Jan. 17, using machine guns and grenades and firing on a helicopter. One gunman was killed and four police officers were wounded in the fight; one officer died in the hospital the next day. Authorities later found six more bodies in the house where the gunmen made their stand, believed to be local kidnapping victims.

Local Oaxaca activist Simon Sedillo in a Jan. 15 report that appears on the Enemigo Comun blog:

On January 15th, 2007, before the beginning of a youth march for the liberation of political prisoners, Urban Paramilitaries (porros) initiated a series of provocations to defame the social movement. Known urban paramilitaries (identified as "Aladin" and "Crusty") have occupied and burned at least two buses to provoke violence before the march, and other urban paramilitaries have begun to open fire at UABJO (Benito Juarez Autonomous University of Oaxaca). Students are being forced out of classrooms and clashes have ensued.

Refuting widespread media portrayal of the "erosion" (desgaste) of the rebel Zapatista movement, Jorge Santiago, director of the local group Economic and Social Development of the Indigenous Mexicans (DESMI), which has been working with Maya communities in the Highlands of Chiapas for 35 years, told Blanche Petrich of the Mexican daily La Jornada that 14 years after the armed uprising, "we are stronger, because we are linked" with social struggles across Mexico. "Our word has to do with the words of others. The people are beginning to have confidence in themselves as builders of relations, with the local base." He especially credits the Zapatistas' maintenance of the moral high ground—"The decision not to instigate confrontations with the local enemies, in spite of harassment and the onslaught on their territory." (La Jornada, Jan. 6)

On the morning of Jan. 10 some 200 members of the farmers' group El Barzón Popular took over the toll booths on the privately owned Mexico City-Toluca highway and allowed motorists to ride for free for about three hours. El Barzón director Crescencio Morales said this was a continuation of protests against the elimination of tariffs on corn, beans, sugar and powdered milk that took effect Jan. 1 under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He said there would be more protests, with the next one on the Mexico City-Queretaro highway. Some 7,500 vehicles took advantage of the toll-free ride, costing the owners more than $30,000, the toll booth administrator said. (La Jornada, Jan. 12)

Thousands of Mexican army troops and federal police have been mobilized to the Texas border in a new offensive against the "Zetas," paramilitary wing of the powerful Gulf Cartel. Authorities pledge to hunt down the Zetas and raid their safe-houses. "Since the first of January we have changed our operations," said Patricio Patiño Arias, deputy minister for intelligence and strategy at Mexico's Public Security Ministry. "It's no longer just patrolling, but rather a direct fight, a direct fight against specific objects, against specific targets that has grown out of important intelligence work."

Police and striking miners clashed at Grupo Mexico's Cananea copper mine in Sonora state Jan. 11 after Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) declared a five-month-long strike there "non-existent" (illegal) and announced a provisional suspension of the National Syndicate of Mine, Metal and Similar Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM). Police called in to break up a picket line at the mine gate fired tear gas at workers who were trying to block the entrance with heavy machinery. Company spokesman Juan Rebolledo told Reuters: "They threw machinery at the police and that is why the tear gas was fired." SNTMMSRM leader Napoleon Gomez, now in Canada to avoid corruption charges in Mexico, said that state and federal police were trying to occupy the mine. "They are violating both the constitution and labor law," Napoleon told Reuters.

On the morning of Jan. 3 a unit of 15 masked people armed with AK-47 rifles set fire to three backhoes belonging to the Constructora Torreblanca, a construction company building a highway in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. "No to the gas price increase!" and "Join the armed struggle!" were some of the slogans the group painted at the site, in Tixtla municipality, about 15 kilometers from Chilpancingo, the state capital. The company had the slogans removed, and news of the incident didn't become public until Jan. 5. No group took responsibility for the action, although the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) and other rebel groups have been active in Guerrero in the past. (La Jornada, Jan. 6) [It is not clear from news sources whether the company is linked to Guerrero governor Zeferino Torreblanca Galindo.]