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.

According to Mexico's National Defense Secretariat (Sedena), the military has taken responsibility for 44 cases of violations of civilians' human rights since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa ordered soldiers to join in the fight against drug trafficking. Sedena says it has initiated criminal or administrative proceedings against 223 soldiers, including officers, in these cases. However, no general has faced charges so far, and no soldier has received a sentence in cases resulting from recommendations by the government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH). A total of 5,055 complaints against the military have been received by the CNDH during this period; the military dismisses some of these as "presented by members [of criminal organizations] to discredit the military institution and in this way to limit its operations."

Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who has led a national protest movement against the militarization of the "drug war" since losing his son to narco-violence earlier this year, met at the Federal District's Chapultepec Castle with President Felipe Calderón June 23, accompanied by some 20 other survivors of violence. After more than three hours of dialogue with Sicilia and his delegation, Calderón said he was open to "reviewing" his security strategy. He also said he accepted their proposal to create a commission to "work on behalf of the victims." The president agreed to meet again in three months with the poet.

More than 65 women have been murdered so far this year in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, according to the Mexican daily La Jornada. The victims included pregnant women and nine underage girls; the majority had been sexually abused before they were killed, and some had been tortured. Several of the corpses were dismembered. Northern Mexico is especially affected by drug-related violence, much of it from wars between drug cartels that have intensified since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa began militarizing the fight against traffickers in December 2006. Mexican analysts say this "drug war" fuels violence against women in the region.