Earlier this month, the House Homeland Security Committee's subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence held a hearing on the supposed Western Hemisphere operations of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi'ite militia and political party which is on the State Department's list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations." Those testifying included Roger F. Noriega, a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and Douglas Farah, a senior fellow of the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Fears of Hezbollah collaboration with Mexican drug cartels were raised by a 2010 internal memo from the Tucson Police Department, leaked by the hacker group LulzSec, which raided a trove of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The memo apparently warns that Hezbollah has established operations and a large arms stockpile in Mexico.

Following Mexican attorney general Arturo Chávez's resignation in April, the attorney general's office (Prosecutor General of the Republic—PGR) charged 111 officials who served under him with corruption on July 21. Sixty-seven were charged with fraud while others were charged with varying offenses including falsifying documents, theft, interfering with administration of justice, misusing public service, abuse of power, lying in court, bribery, embezzlement and forgery. Twenty-six were issued arrest warrants. On July 22, new attorney general Marisela Morales also fired 140 police officers and released that 280 more under investigation within the organization. Of those fired, several were charged with having connections to organized crime, murder, robbery and extortion, while seven were fired due to convictions on kidnapping, murder and extortion charges, all stemming from Mexico's rampant drug trade problem.

Frustrated by slow progress in determining the fates of missing loved ones, relatives of ten men from southern Mexico who vanished on the Mexico-US border have embarked on a hunger strike and public protest. The action was initiated five days ago in the capital of Oaxaca by family members of a group of men who disappeared on July 14, 2010, after traveling to the Tamaulipas border city of Matamoros to purchase two trucks and vehicle parts for an eco-tourism enterprise.

The average income of Mexican households fell by 12.3% between 2008 and 2010, the government's National Statistics and Geography Institute (INEGI) reported on July 15. The richest households generally lost the most in percentages, but poorer households suffered more because their income was already so low, according to the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure, which the INEGI conducts every two years. The decline in income reflects a 6.1% contraction of the Mexican economy in 2009 in the midst of a world economic crisis that started in the US; the Mexican economy recovered partially in 2010 with a 5.4% expansion. (La Jornada, Mexico, July 16)

Some "gun trafficking 'higher-ups'" who supply weapons to Mexican drug cartels may have been "paid as informants" by US government agencies, according to a letter two ranking US Congress members sent US attorney general Eric Holder on July 5. "The evidence we have gathered," Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) wrote, "raises the disturbing possibility that the Justice Department"—which Holder heads—"not only allowed criminals to smuggle weapons but that taxpayer dollars from other agencies may have financed those engaging in such activities." The "other agencies" may include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the letter said.

Two armed men gunned down Mexican activists Isabel Ayala Nava and her sister, Reyna Ayala Nava, in the early afternoon of July 3 as they were leaving a church in Xaltianguis, a village in Acapulco municipality in the western state of Guerrero. The killers took the women's cell phones, and later in the day Isabel Ayala's daughter, Micaela Cabañas Ayala, received a threatening call made from her mother's phone.

July 3 elections in Mexico's key central state of México returned to power the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the former ruling machine of the entire country, in what commentators are calling a signal that the once-discredited party could regain the presidency next year. The state's current PRI governor, Enrique Peña Nieto, is considered the party's early presidential front-runner. He is to be succeeded as México's governor by PRI candidate Eruviel Avila. The PRI also took the two other states where gubernatorial races were held, Nayarit and Coahuila, further tilting the national balance of power to the party.

At least five Central American immigrants were forcibly removed from a freight train by about 10 armed men wearing hoods on June 24 near the village of Medias Aguas in the east central Mexican state of Veracruz, according to two immigrants who managed to escape. The number of people kidnapped could be as high as 80, according to the well-known immigrant rights activist Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, coordinator of the Brother and Sister Migrants on the Road (Hermanos en el Camino) shelter in Ciudad Ixtepec in the southern state of Oaxaca. Solalinde reported the kidnappings to the authorities after talking to the two witnesses.