Mexican federal officials have mobilized thousands more military troops to violence-torn northeastern Tamaulipas state in an emergency move prompted by escalating violence—punctuated by a prison riot that left over 30 dead on Jan. 4. The move brings the total of army troops patrolling Tamaulipas to 13,000, plus thousands more navy troops and federal police agents. The deadly riot broke out at the Santa Amalia prison in the city of Altamira—a facility designed to hold 2,000 inmates but which has a population of more than 3,000. The fighting apparently pitted followers of the Gulf Cartel against adherents of the rival Zetas narco network. A similar incident left 20 dead at a prison in nearby Matamoros in October.

On Dec. 28 the government of the southwestern Mexican state of Guerrero announced the arrest of police commander Cesario Espinoza Palma (or "Cesáreo Espinosa Palma") in connection with the Dec. 7 kidnapping of two campesino environmental activists, Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista. Nicknamed "The Goose," Espinoza Palma is the coordinator of the state Ministerial Investigative Police (PIM) for Tecpan de Galeana municipality; his arrest seems to be related to investigators' questioning of 24 Tecpan municipal police and four PIM agents on Dec. 15.

Mexican federal police on Dec. 28 announced the arrest at Mexico City’s international airport of Luis Rodríguez Olivera AKA "El Guero" (Blondie)—a narcotics kingpin who has collaborated with various of Mexico's warring cartels, and who was indicted in US federal court in 2009. U.S. authorities offered a reward of up to $5 million for Rodríguez Olivera, who with his brother Esteban (extradited to the US in March) is accused of smuggling tons of cocaine and methamphetamine into the United States and Europe, mainly through Texas. In a statement, Mexican police said Rodríguez Olivera and his brothers led a gang called Los Gueritos (The Blondies) that formed temporary alliances with the Gulf Cartel and Zetas, but worked between 1996 and 2008 for the Sinaloa Cartel, the country's most powerful. He is being held until a hearing on a US extradition request. (BNO News, Dec. 29; AP, Reuters, Dec. 28)

Mexican environmental activists Eva Alarcón and Marcial Bautista were reportedly still alive as of Dec. 21, two weeks after their Dec. 7 kidnapping from a bus in the southwestern state of Guerrero. According to Francisco Saucedo—an adviser to their group, the Guerrero-based Organization of Ecologist Campesinos of the Sierra de Petatlán and Coyuca de Catalán (OCESP)—officials of the state government supplied the information during a meeting with Alarcón's daughter, Coral Rosas, and Bautista's daughter, Victoria Bautista, but said that giving out more information might cause problems.

At least 80 former Mexican government employees with backgrounds in intelligence and security are now working for US government agencies as analysts and informants, according to a Dec. 18 article in the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada. Unnamed top officials in Mexican federal security agencies told reporter Gustavo Castillo García that the informants range from high-level ex-officials to former low-ranking police agents, and that "it hasn't been discounted that current employees may also be working for the US." Most of the former Mexican employees are reportedly employed by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), but some are with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); they work in Mexico City locations that include the US embassy, a building at 265 on the Reforma avenue, and one floor of a hotel at the Ángel de la Independencia. (LJ, Dec. 18)

Two Mexican students were killed by police gunfire around noon on Dec. 12 as police agents and soldiers attempted to disperse protesters blocking the Mexico City-Acapulco highway near Chilpancingo, the capital of the southwestern state of Guerrero. The victims, Jorge Alexis Herrera Pino and Gabriel Echeverría de Jesús, were students at the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College in the nearby village of Ayotzinapa, and they had joined about 500 other students and their indigenous supporters to demonstrate for improvements at the school.

On Dec. 12, "narco-banners" (narcomantas) with a four-paragraph communiqué were hung from pedestrian overpasses at 10 different spots around the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, signed with the name of Miguel Angel Treviño AKA "Z-40"—a fugitive leader of Los Zetas. Not hand-scrawled like most narcomantas, but professionally printed, the messages' first paragraph declared: "We do not govern this country, nor do we have a regime; we are not terrorists or guerillas. We concentrate on our work and the last thing we want is to have problems with any government, neither Mexico nor much less with the US." The message went on to distance both Treviño and the Zetas from the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US, as well as an August attack in a Monterrey casino that killed more than 50.

A Lebanese drug kingpin with alleged connections to both Hezbollah and Mexico's Los Zetas drug cartel, was charged with drug trafficking and money laundering, the Justice Department and DEA announced Dec. 13. Ayman Joumaa AKA "Junior" is accused of shipping an estimated 85,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States and laundering more than $850 million in drug proceeds for Los Zetas cartel through front companies and the Lebanese Canadian Bank. The indictment, unsealed in Alexandria, Va., says his trafficking and laundering networks extended to the United States, Lebanon, Benin, Panama, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere. DEA administrator Michele Leonhart said in a statement: "According to information from sources, his alleged drug and money laundering activities facilitated numerous global drug trafficking organizations, including the criminal activities of the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel." (ABC News, DEA press release, Dec. 13)