Former México state governor Enrique Peña Nieto is still favored to win Mexico's July 1 presidential elections, but polls released at the end of May showed his lead over the other candidates slipping. After being considered the certain winner for months, Peña Nieto, the candidate of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was only four percentage points ahead of former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a poll published by the conservative daily Reforma on May 31. Peña Nieto led voter intentions with 38%, according to Reforma, down from 45% in March; López Obrador, who is running with a center-left coalition, followed closely with 34%, up from 22% in March; and Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of the governing center-right National Action Party (PAN), came in third with 23%, down from 32% in March.

Private and public university students sponsored a massive march in Mexico City on May 19 to protest media coverage of the July 1 presidential and legislative elections and the widely expected victory of former México state governor Enrique Peña Nieto, the presidential candidate of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The marchers also rejected the candidate of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), Josefina Vázquez Mota, who shares second place in most polls with center-left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The body of Mexican journalist Marco Antonio Avila, kidnapped three days earlier in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora state, was found May 19 along a beachside highway near Guaymas, in a plastic bag, with signs of torture and a threatening "narco-message." He had written for the Ciudad Obregón newspapers Diario Sonora de la Tarde and El Regional de Sonora. It was but the most recent in a wave of attacks on the press in Mexico. One week earlier, the office of El Mañana in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, was sprayed with bullets. Days before that, three freelance crime-beat photographers were assassinated in Veracruz. In late April, Regina Martínez, a reporter for the national weekly Proceso, was found dead with signs of torture in her home in Xalapa, also in Veracruz state. (El Dia, Argentina, May 19; BBC News, April 29)

On May 19, the Mexican army announced the arrest of eight suspects in the massacre of 49 people who were decapitated, mutilated and left in plastic bags on the side of a highway in Cadereyta, Nuevo León, just outside Monterrey last week. Among those arrested was suspected ringleader Daniel Elizondo, AKA "El Loco"—said to be a member of the Gulf Cartel. Drugs, guns and hand grenades were seized during the arrests. However, authorities earlier said that the graffito "100% Zeta" found near the bodies indicated that Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel's bitter rivals, were responsible. At the time of the massacre, local authorities resorted to the now common tactic of playing down its significance. "This continues to be violence between criminal groups," said Jorge Domene, Nuevo Leon's state security spokesman. "This is not an attack against the civilian population." Yet authorities admitted the victims had not been identified, and may have been migrants attempting to cross into the United States. (AlJazeera, May 20; AP, May 19; AP, May 15; CNN, May 14)

Groups in Argentina, Brazil, France, England, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the US are planning events in the May 15-22 "Week of Global Struggle for the Liberation of Alberto Patishtán Gómez and Francisco Sántiz López," two indigenous prisoners from the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas. The week of actions was initiated by the New York-based Movement for Justice in El Barrio.

Left-leaning independent unions dominated celebrations of International Workers Day in Mexico on May 1, while some centrist labor federations decided not to hold marches, reportedly because of concern over security. Tens of thousands of unionists, campesinos and other activists participated in the independent unions' annual march to Mexico City's main plaza, the Zócalo; the left-leaning daily La Jornada reported that more unions and more unionists took part than in previous years.

In what the Mexican media are calling "Black Friday," nine bodies—some bearing signs of torture—were hanged side-by-side from an overpass in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on May 4, while 14 decapitated bodies were found stuffed in a minivan left outside a customs inspection building. The heads were later found in three ice coolers left outside the city hall. Four of those left hanging from the overpass were women; the decapitated bodies were all of men in the their 20s. A professionally printed "narco-banner" in block letters on the overpass read: "This is how I am going to finish off [Asi me los voy a ir acabando] all the jerks* [todos los pendejos] you send to heat up [que mandes a calentar] the plaza," apparently a reference to a car bomb that exploded in the city center on April 24, targeting the police and injuring one. The banner included a warning for someone called "El Gringo" who it accused of car-bomb attacks. It closes: "Now we'll see you around, you bunch of whorish parasites." (Ahora ahí nos vemos bola de parapatras puto.) Authorities said the message appeared to be from Los Zetas and addressed to their local rivals in the Gulf Cartel. Mexico's federal government has launched an operation dubbed "Northeast Coordinator" in response to the inter-factional violence in Tamaulipas.

The Mexican Chamber of Deputies on April 30 approved a bill that will recognize, protect and provide aid to victims of crimes stemming from the gang-related drug wars that have engulfed the country for nearly the last six years. Known as the General Victims Act, the law was passed by Mexico's lower house of Congress as a means to compensate those persons adversely affected by fighting between gangs and security forces. The law will provide financial, legal and medical aid to those in need; victims of criminal violence will be eligible for relief of up to 950,000 pesos ($73,000). The bill was passed by the Mexican Senate last week in response to longstanding demand, as more than 47,500 people have died in Mexico over the last five-and-a-half years due to drug-related violence, and thousands more have gone missing.