Employment and wages declined in Mexican maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export) during the 2000-2006 administration of former president Vicente Fox Quesada, according to a report by Huberto Juarez Nunez, an economics analyst at the Distinguished Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP). Employment in the sector is now at about 1.21 million, down some 135,000 from the number in 2000. The assembly plants are weak even in comparison to the rest of Mexican manufacturing, which grew only 0.6% in the first three months of this year; the maquiladoras declined by 0.1% in the same period.

After 16 months in hiding, three leaders of the People's Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT), Martha Pérez Pineda, David Pájaro Huertas and Ulises del Valle Ramírez, returned to the central Mexican village of San Salvador Atenco to lead the Sept. 16 "Grito de Independencia" celebration. The three re-emerged from clandestinity after a judge issued an amparo, a special order suspending the arrest warrants against them. The father of Ulises del Valle is FPDT director Ignacio del Valle Medina, who remains imprisoned at the top-security Altiplano facility. Several more FPDT leaders remain in hiding, including América del Valle, Jesús Adán Espinoza Rojas, Bernardino Cruz Cardona and Jorge Flores. Twenty-eight FPDT adherents are in prison following the May 2006 violence at Atenco. Hundreds of Atenco residents attended the Grito ceremony, rattling their machetes in the air as a symbol of resistance. (La Jornada, Sept. 16)

On Sept. 13 Mexican federal district judge Livia Lizbeth Larumbe Radilla, based in Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero, ordered the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) to suspend further construction of La Parota hydroelectric dam across the Papagayo River. The judge's order came in response to an Aug. 14 request by campesinos living in Guerrero's Cacahuatepec municipality for an injunction against construction pending resolution of a lawsuit they have filed to stop the dam. Larumbe Radilla ruled that continuing the project might cause "irreparable damages" to the campesinos.

Zapatista and anti-Zapatista Chol Maya peasants clashed with machetes Sept. 12 at the Cascadas de Agua Azul eco-tourist zone, in Tumbalá municipality of southern Mexico's conflicted Chiapas state. One anti-Zapatista was wounded and three Zapatistas captured by their adversaries before state and rebel authorities managed to negotiate a truce. The agreement called for the placing of 25 state police agents to keep the peace between both sides, and avoiding the interference of the military. The clash originates in a land dispute between the pro-Zapatista Ejido San Jerónimo and the anti-Zapatista Ejido Agua Azul, which controls the tourism site. Ejido Agua Azul protested that Ejido San Jerónimo had established a checkpoint to tax tourists on their way to the waterfalls. Zapatista commanders from La Garrucha were called in to mediate the truce. (Proceso, Sept. 12)

Mexico's Special Investigative Sup-Prosecutor for Organized Delinquency (SIEDO) says it is probing plans by the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) to kidnap high federal government officials and bomb foreign embassies. The plans were supposedly revealed by Hermenegildo Torres Cruz, a member of the Democratic Popular Left (IDP), under interrogation after being detained as a "witness" by the Public Ministry. (La Jornada, Sept. 16) Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI) has released a statement denying any connection to Arturo Duque Alvarado, arrested by Guerrero state police on charges of being a leader of the organization Aug. 26 in the community of Camacua de Michelena, Coyuca de Catalán municipality. The statement also protested the "disappearance" of supposed EPR militants Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto de la Cruz Sanchez as part of a "campaign of state terror," calling them "prisoners of war in the military installations of the Mexican narco-state." The statement explicitly did not make any judgment for or against the recent EPR attacks on oil pipelines in Veracruz. (El Universal, Sept. 12; La Jornada, Aug. 26)

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions announced in Geneva that it will review the arrests of followers of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) in Mexico. On the eve of leaving for the Working Group's session in Geneva, president of the Center for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples (CEDHAPI), Maurilio Santiago Reyes, told a press conference in Oaxaca City, "The UN will come to realize...that activists were detained arbitrarily, beaten and tortured physically and psychologically." (La Jornada, Sept. 10) The state of Oaxaca has agreed to create a special fund to indemnify victims of torture and illegal arrest. The move was taken in response to Recommendation 15/2007 issued by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). (La Jornada, Sept. 12)

The Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) claimed responsibility for Sept. 10 attacks on Pemex oil pipelines in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz. Authorities say an inscription in red on a section of pipeline read: "They were taken alive, we want them alive—EPR-PDPR." This seems to be a reference to recently "disappeared" militants associated with the Popular Democratic Revolutionary Party (PDPR), the EPR's political wing.

Some 10,000 members of the Section 22 teachers union and the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) marched in Oaxaca City Sept. 1 to demonstrate their rejection of Mexico's President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, the same day he delivered his first address to Congress. Another 7,000 Oaxacans gathered in Mexico City's Plaza de la Constitución for a "contrainforme," a public speak-out conceived as a corrective to Calderón's address. (La Jornada, Sept. 2)