Carrying plastic shields and armed with nightsticks and tear-gas canisters, some 3,600 helmeted Mexican federal police moved in on Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo, at 4 PM on Sept. 13 to clear out an encampment teachers had set up as a base for actions that they had been carrying out since Aug. 21 to protest changes in the educational system. The National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), the dissident union group leading the protests, had negotiated an agreement with the government to vacate the plaza in time for the Sept. 15-16 ceremonies that traditionally celebrate Mexico's independence from Spain, but a smaller group of teachers from the militant locals in the southern state of Oaxaca tried briefly to hold out against the police. Confrontations followed for several hours involving police agents, teachers and local anarchists. National Security Commission (CNS) head Manuel Mondragón gave a preliminary count of 29 people arrested. (Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, from correspondent; La Jornada, Mexico, Sept. 14)

Some 50 Mexicans and local supporters protested in front of the Mexican consulate in New York City on Sept. 13 to demand money that they say the Mexican government owes them from a 1942-1964 program that brought Mexicans into the US as farmworkers. The guest workers, known as "braceros" ("laborers" or "farmhands"), had 10% deducted from their wages by the US government; the money was supposed to go to Mexico's Campesino Savings Fund for their pensions. The US says it sent the deducted funds to the Mexican government, but the braceros and their survivors say the workers never got their pensions.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has spied on emails, phone calls and text messages to and from Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, according to NSA documents presented on Brazil's Globo television network on Sept. 1. These documents, like those made public in July about US spying on at least 14 Latin American nations, were given to Glenn Greenwald, a US blogger and columnist for the UK daily The Guardian who lives in Brazil, by former US intelligence technician Edward Snowden in Hong Kong in June. Snowden is now residing in Russia; he says he is unable to comment on the documents because of the terms under which Russian authorities are letting him stay in the country for one year.

The Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress voted 390-69 on Sept. 2 in favor of the Professional Teaching Service Law, legislation that requires teachers to be evaluated periodically, although it allows two retests for teachers who fail the evaluation. This is the third in a series of "educational reforms" being pushed by President Enrique Peña Nieto. The Senate completed the approval process the next day by voting 102-22 for the law. In both chambers the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) was split; five of the party's 22 senators backed the law. (Europa Press, Sept. 2; La Jornada, Mexico, Sept. 4)

A vigilante calling herself Diana​ the Hunter (Diana la Cazadora) claimed credit in a series of communiques for the slaying of two bus drivers last week in northern Mexico's Ciudad Juárez, saying the killings were revenge for sexual abuse of women by night-shift drivers. "I and other women suffered... but we can't stay quiet," one of the e-mails said. "I am the instrument of vengeance for several women." Witnesses to the first killing Aug. 28 said a black-clad woman with a blonde wig or dyed hair approached the  driver, took out a pistol, shot him in the head and left the bus. The same killer told the second victim before dispatching him, "You guys think you're real bad, don't you?" The targeted bus line brings many women back and forth from the maquiladoras that ring Ciudad Juárez.

In the first street demonstration that former center-left presidential candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano has led since 2000, thousands of Mexicans marched in Mexico City on Aug. 31 to show their opposition to President Enrique Peña Nieto's plan for opening up the state-owned oil and electric companies, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Energy Commission (CFE), to greater participation by foreign and Mexican private companies. The marchers set off from the Angel of Independence, a traditional starting point for Mexico City demonstrations, but they stopped short of the usual destination, the Zócalo plaza, which dissident teachers are occupying as part of a series of protests that have tied up various parts of the capital since Aug. 21. The education workers are protesting President Peña’s plans for teacher evaluations.

In an Aug. 10 press release the Citizens Committee for the Defense of the Naturalized and of Afro-Mexicans (CCDNAM) charged that the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) had failed to carry out an adequate investigation into the beating death of US rights activist Malcolm Latif Sabazz the night of May 8-9. "It’s shameful that after three months there is no punishment of those responsible for this crime," the CCDNAM’s president, Haitian-born Mexican activist Wilner Metelus, said. "Those who assassinated our brother Malcolm Latif remain free from justice, with the complicity of the authorities."

Mexican army troops on Aug. 27 disarmed members of the "community police" force after a brief scuffle on the coastal highway in Guerrero state. Some 800 members of the self-defense patrol and their supporters were marching from the pueblo of El Paraíso, Ayutla de los Libres municipality, to  Cruz Grande, Florencio Villareal municipality, when approximately 200 troops in armored vehicles surrounded them, and demanded they surrender their rifles and machetes. In a few minutes of physical struggle, some 300 patrol members were disarmed, and 10 detained. Women, children and elders also participated in the march, which was called to demand liberty for movement leader Nestora Salgado García and 13 "community police" members from Olinalá pueblo.