The Mexican government is violating its own laws on genetically modified organisms (GMO) in the way it handles experimental corn crops, according to a complaint the Greenpeace organization has filed with federal environmental protection authorities. The group charges that the government has failed to monitor experimental transgenic corn adequately, has allowed the corn to be planted on private farms, and hasn't ensured that the plants are disposed of properly after cultivation.

Nine indigenous Mixe residents at the remote Oaxaca municipality of Santiago Choápam were killed and some 20 wounded when they were ambushed on a mountain road May 14. The ambush took place near the hamlet of El Portillo as the campesinos were making their way from their homes at La Tani hamlet to the municipal center for a political rally ahead of extraordinary elections called for Choápam after the results of December polling were annulled due to reported irregularities. The community, near the Veracruz state line, is harshly divided between two political factions—one led by the family of a former state deputy with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Dámaso Nicolás, the other by César Mateos of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Mateos accuses Nicolás of being a "cacique" (political boss) who maintains power over the municipality through corruption and intimidation, despite the fact that it elects its leaders through the traditional indigenous process called usos y costumbres (uses and customs), in which candidates ostensibly have no party affiliation. (Cronica de Hoy, OEM-Informex, May 15; Excelsior, Diario Oaxaca, May 14)

Quetzalcóatl Leija Herrera, the president of the Center of Studies and Projects for Integral Human Development (Ceprodehi) in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, was found dead in the early morning of May 4 near the main plaza in Chilpancingo, the state capital. According to the Forensic Medical Service, he was been badly beaten, especially on the head, and died of the injuries.

Tens of thousands of people participated in a silent "March for Peace With Justice and Dignity" in Mexico City on May 8 to call for an end to the US-backed militarization of Mexico's fight against drug trafficking. Protesters, most of them dressed in white, carried signs reading: "No more blood," "Justice," "Peace," "Let's stop the bullets," "Life isn't trash" and, above all, "We've had it up to here" (estamos hasta la madre). More than 35,000 Mexicans have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa sent troops into the streets soon after taking office in December 2006.

Rescue crews recovered the last of 14 bodies May 8 from the Pozo 3 coal mine hit by a gas explosion in Mexico's northern Coahuila state, while Labor Secretary Javier Lozano called for an overhaul of mine safety in Mexico and the federal Prosecutor General opened an investigation into the disaster. Mexican officials said the May 3 blast was caused by a buildup of gas. A teenage boy who was evidently employed illegally at the mine, Jesús Fernando Lara Ruiz, had his right arm blown off in the explosion. The National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMSRM) said the mine's work force was not unionized, and protested the "completely unsafe conditions under which coal mines operate in the country, and especially in this region known as the coal belt."

As momentum builds for the May 8 protest against violence and impunity in Mexico, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) announced its support for the movement started by poet Javier Sicilia. In a communiqué dated April 28, the EZLN leadership declared it would wholeheartedly support the struggle by conducting a silent march of Zapatista base communities in the Chiapas highland city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas on May 7.

Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's militarization of the fight against drug trafficking has increased the level of violence against women, a leading Mexican feminist, María Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos, told the Spanish wire service EFE on April 29. "Everything that is happening favors violence against women," she said. Calderón's strategy "cultivates a very violent culture" and "establishes an ideology of violence, of defeat, of war… That's a very macho culture, very misogynist, and we women are left defenseless."

The number of bodies found in clandestine graves in the northern Mexican city of Durango reached 104 after the discovery of eight more corpses April 27. The total bodies pulled from two sets of clandestine graves this month is now approaching 300, after 183 were also found buried in the border state of Tamaulipas to the northwest. The prosecutor general's office for Durango state said the 104 bodies had been found in hidden graves around the city since April 11, and that they had been buried for at least one year.