After a 14-hour session, the Chamber of Deputies of the Mexican Congress voted in the early morning of Sept. 29 to approve major changes to the 1970 Federal Labor Law (LFT). The 346-60 vote in the 500-member Chamber was pushed through by an alliance of the governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). There was one abstention, and many deputies from the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) walked out of the session in protest before the vote. The measure, which was passed under a special "fast-track" provision, now goes to the Senate, which must act on it within 30 days.

Mexican naval forces announced the arrest Sept. 27 of Iván Velázquez Caballero, AKA "El Taliban" or "Z-50"—said to be a top commander of Los Zetas who had recently defected to the rival Gulf Cartel. El Taliban was said to be in a struggle with his former boss, Zeta commander Miguel Treviño Morales AKA "Z-40" for control of the "plaza" (trafficking theater) in San Luis Potosí, where the arrest took place. From 2007 until his recent break with the Zetas, he had also controlled the plazas in Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Nuevo León and Coahuila. He had a reward of 30 million pesos ($2.3 million) on his head.

In other news, the Mexican government continues to play down an Aug. 24 incident in which Mexican federal police in at least four vehicles shot up a US embassy van carrying two US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents to a Mexican Navy installation; the two agents were wounded and are being treated in the US. On Sept. 17 a Mexican official suggested that the attack was the result of simple confusion. The police agents were looking for a gang that had kidnapped an employee of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in the same area, the official said. They were focused on the unusual presence of an armored van traveling at high speed on a country road, and they didn't notice that the vehicle had diplomatic license plates, according to the official, who said he couldn't be cited by name. (Associated Press, Sept. 17, via Terra Argentina)

On Sept. 19 Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the US Department of Justice, released a 471-page report on Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled program in which the Arizona office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) inadvertently let about 2,000 firearms pass into Mexico during 2009 and 2010, with many of the weapons apparently going to Mexican drug traffickers . The inspector general, a sort of internal auditor for the Justice Department, found that the ATF and US prosecutors in Arizona were at fault in the operation, along with Justice officials in Washington who were responsible for supervising the ATF and the federal prosecutors.

As Mexico has aggressively militarized its "drug war" over the past years, the nation's capital has been an exception, with authorities reluctant to send soliders to patrol the seat of federal power—until now. Over 1,000 army troops have been mobilized to the streets of Nezahualcóyotl, a suburb of Mexico City, just south of the Federal District line in México state, which has seen a dramatic increase of violence in the past weeks. The México state Prosecutor General says 119 assassinations have been registered so far this year, mostly in Nezahualcóyotl. The decision to send in army troops—under a program dubbed "Operation Neza"—was apparently sparked by the Sept. 16 stabbing death of México state lawmaker Jaime Serrano Cedillo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Although subsequent reports have indicated he was killed by his wife in a domestic dispute, Serrano was the second PRI politician killed in as many days last week. On Sept. 15, Eduardo Castro Luque, newly elected to the Sonora state legislature, was shot full of nine bullets in front of his home in Ciudad Obregón. The twin slayings came when the country was on high alert for Independence Day celebrations, with extra troops deployed to conflicted states to head off terror attacks on the festivities. The PRI, a once-entrenched political machine, returns to power after 12 years in opposition, when president-elect Enrique Peña Nieto takes office in December. (LAT, AP, Sept. 21; WSJ, El País, Spain, Sept. 20; EFE, AP, La Jornada, Sept. 15)

At least 26 are dead, 50 injured and seven still missing after a Sept. 18 explosion at a Petróleos Mexicanos  (Pemex) gas pipeline distribution center on the outskirts of Reynosa, on the Texas border in Tamaulipas state. The dead include four Pemex employees and 22 private contractors. The pipeline serves wells in northern Mexico's Burgos basin, which have been repeatedly attacked for pilfering by criminal gangs such as Los Zetas. Last month, Pemex said the amount of petroleum products stolen in the first half of this year is up 18% compared to 2011, totalling more than 1.8 million barrels. But the company denied that criminal activity was linked to the Reynosa blast. (Brownsville Herald, Sept. 19; OilPrice, Aug. 21)

Mexican naval forces in the oil port of Tampico, Tamaulipas, on Sept. 13 arrested Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez AKA "El Coss"—notorious leader of the Gulf Cartel—along with five cohorts, apparently without resistance. Authorities hailed it as a major blow against the cartel, coming just a week after the arrest of another Gulf kingpin, Mario Cárdenas Guillén AKA "El Gordo" (Fatso), captured by Mexican marines in Altamira, also in Tamaulipas—the brother of Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, who led the cartel until he was detained in 2003.

The Mexican daily La Jornada reported on Sept. 6 that the US had granted political asylum to Mexican teacher Agustín Estrada Negrete, who claimed he had suffered persecution and torture from officials of México state because of his homosexuality. Estrada was removed from his post as a school principal after he had appeared in women’s clothes at a festival against homophobia in May 2007. Following a march demanding his reinstatement in 2009, México state police arrested Estrada in Toluca and took him to the La Palma prison, where he said he was beaten and gang-raped. He arrived in San Diego in September 2010 in a wheelchair to seek asylum.