Mexican federal agents and Chiapas state police evicted several families Aug. 19 from the predios (collective farms) of Nuevo Salvador Allende and El Buen Samaritano, in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. Six family heads were detained, accused of environmental crimes and property damage; another 39 were taken to a shelter in the town of La Trinitaria. The relocation was undertaken after the residents of the predios—Tzeltal and mestizo peasants—refused to negotiate with the Agrarian Reform Secretariat, asserting that they had been living in the zone for 30 years. (La Jornada, Aug. 19) The following day, two other small communities were similarly evicted from the reserve. (La Jornada, Aug. 20)

Starting Aug. 20, Presidents George W. Bush and Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper met in Montebello, Canada, to discuss North American integration. The purpose was to advance the little-known second phase of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), called the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP).

Mineworker Reynaldo Hernandez Gonzalez was killed and several workers were injured on Aug. 13 in a violent confrontation between rival groups of miners at Grupo Mexico's La Caridad mine in Nacozari, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. There were 15 arrests, and about 20 workers reportedly disappeared. The violence broke out when a group of fired workers who were loyal to the main mineworkers union, the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM), returned to the mine to demand that they be rehired. Apparently they fought with supporters of a company union.

As of Aug. 11, some 13 union leaders from the US and Canada had arrived in Cananea, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sonora, to show support for striking miners there. According to Sergio Tolano Lizarraga, general secretary of Section 65 of the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM), the US delegation was headed by Manny Armenta, a United Steelworkers (USW) leader in Arizona, with unionists from New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Ohio. The strikers say they also have support from workers from nearby states and from both the conservative Congress of Labor (CT) and the more independent National Workers Union (UNT).

With 98.83% of the ballot boxes counted, Mexico's centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the allied Green Ecological Party of Mexico (PVEM) had won all 25 districts in Aug. 5 legislative elections in the southern state of Oaxaca. The Alliance That Builds [Alianza Que Construye], the PRI-PVEM coalition, got 412,798 votes to 238,292 for the center-left For the Good of All coalition [Por el Bien de Todos], which is made up of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), the Workers Party (PT) and the Convergence party. The center-right National Action Party (PAN) of Mexican president Felipe Calderon Hinojosa came in third with 113,646 votes. Just 36.42% of the state's 2.4 million voters turned out for the election.

Irene Khan, general secretary of the UK-based human rights organization Amnesty International (AI), is scheduled to visit Mexico July 30-Aug. 5 for what AI calls a "high-level working visit" to address its concerns about human rights violations in Mexico. The group's concerns include reports of sexual assaults on women prisoners by police agents during the repression of demonstrations in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico state in May 2006; the government's failure to solve the murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, over the last 15 years; and the repression of anti-globalization protesters in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in May 2004.

In the early morning of July 28 people thought to be members of the rebel Revolutionary Popular Army (EPR) assaulted a site in Chiapa de Corzo, in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, where a federal prison is being built. No injuries were reported in the incident, during which an unknown number of attackers captured the three guards at the site and locked them in a guard booth. The attackers then shot up the site and painted slogans on the walls. Municipal police arrived when they heard the shooting; they found about 40 used cartridges on the scene.

Eleven adherents of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) arrested in last week's protests in the southern Mexican city have been ordered imprisoned on charges of arson, theft and property damage. Another 18 were ordered released for lack of evidence. (Proceso, July 25) APPO has announced new road blockades throughout the state as a part of its forced boycott of the Guelaguetza folk festival, a major tourist attraction. (El Sol de San Luis, July 26)