In an unusual and dramatic protest against lax gun control laws in the US, relatives of victims of drug-related violence in Mexico destroyed a .357 Magnum pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle in Houston's Guadalupe Plaza Park on Aug. 27 and buried the remains in cement. The protesters were part of a Caravan for Peace that started a month-long tour of the US in San Diego on Aug. 12 to raise awareness of the US role in a "drug war" that has cost some 50,000 lives in Mexico since the beginning of 2007. The tour is to end in Washington, DC on Sept. 12.

Mexico's 2012 presidential election came to a close on Aug. 31 when the Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Branch of the Republic (TEPJF) officially declared former México state governor Enrique Peña Nieto the winner of the July 1 vote. One day earlier the tribunal had dismissed charges by the coalition backing center-left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador that Peña Nieto's 6.62% lead over López Obrador was the result of fraud, vote buying and media manipulation by Peña Nieto's centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico's ruling party from 1929 to 2000. (La Jornada, Mexico, Aug. 31, Sept. 1)

A group of Mexican federal police agents attacked a US embassy car at around 8 am on Aug. 24 in the state of Morelos just of south of Mexico City, near the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway. The police agents shot a number of times at the car, lightly wounding two US officials who were traveling with a member of the Mexican Navy to a nearby Navy training installation. The embassy car had diplomatic license plates, while the federal police were reportedly traveling in four unmarked vehicles.

After nearly 10 years of struggle, Mexican campesinos fighting to protect their lands from the planned La Parota hydro-dam on the Río Papagayo won a definitive victory with the Aug. 16 signing of the "Cacahuatepec Accords" by Guerrero's Gov. Ángel Aguirre Rivero and the Council of Ejidos and Communities in Opposition to La Parota Dam (CECOP). Under  the agreement, Aguirre has committed the state not to approve La Parota dam if affected communities do not accept it, if they are not justly compensated, or it will impact the environment—effectively ending the project. Aguirre is also committed to seek an audience between CECOP and Mexican President Felipe Calderón to assure a commitment to the same principles from the federal government. La Parota dam would have flooded  17,000 hectares, impacting some 100,000 local residents. 

According to two members of the US Congress, Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), there is evidence that the US-based retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., didn't take legally required steps to prevent money laundering and tax evasion through its Mexican subsidiary, Wal-Mart de México. The allegation appears in an Aug. 14 letter the lawmakers wrote to Wal-Mart Stores CEO Michael Duke complaining that the company has failed to cooperate with their investigation of a $24 million bribery scandal that emerged in April.

According to an Aug. 4 report in the Wall Street Journal, the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles is investigating possible money laundering by Chinese-Mexican pharmaceutical entrepreneur Zhenli Ye Gon in the middle 2000s through the Las Vegas Sands Corp. casino company. The company, whose CEO and largest shareholder is US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to the Republican Party, reportedly failed to tell the authorities about suspicious money transfers by Ye Gon until the publication of a newspaper article about him in 2007. Adelson himself is apparently not being investigated at this point.

Six Mexican coal miners were killed on Aug. 3 when some 100 tons of coal and rock collapsed in a mine operated by Altos Hornos de México S.A. de C.V. (AHMSA) in Barroterán community, Progreso municipality, in the northern state of Coahuila. One miner was trapped but survived with minor injuries; he was rescued about an hour after the collapse. The other 287 workers in the mine escaped without injuries. Some workers thought a methane explosion caused the accident, but management attributed it to "a pocket of methane gas," not an explosion.

At an unusual joint press conference in Mexico City on July 19, the presidents of Mexico's governing center-right National Action Party (PAN) and the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) called on the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) to investigate evidence of money laundering by the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). PAN president Gustavo Madero and PRD president Jesús Zambrano cited indications that during the campaign for the July 1 presidential and legislative elections PRI officials moved large sums of money through fake corporations and the Grupo Financiero Monex foreign exchange company in order to circumvent campaign finance restrictions. Madero said there was no implication that the money came from organized crime, but it may have been "stolen, from tax evasion, from companies, from the government, from state governments." (La Jornada, Mexico, July 20)