In Ciudad Juárez and other parts of Mexico, the killings of children and young people are now routine headlines. In particular, the last weeks have been a rough time for many families in the border city. On Feb. 23, a half-dozen young people between the ages of 8 and 16 were sprayed with bullets while playing in the border city's Granjas de Chapultepec neighborhood. Sisters Briseida and Karen Barraza Carrasco, aged 15 and 14, respectively, were slain together their 12-year-old friend Esmeralda Lozoya Enríquez.

On the morning of Feb. 25 Mexican soldiers reported finding the bodies of María Magdalena ("Malena") Reyes Salazar, her brother Elías Reyes Salazar and Elías' wife, Luisa Ornelas Soto, by the Juárez-Porvenir highway, some three kilometers from their home in Guadalupe Distrito Bravos, near Ciudad Juárez in the northern state of Chihuahua. The three had been kidnapped by unidentified armed men on Feb. 7. [We first reported, following our source, that they were seized while riding in a truck; some reports now say they were taken from their home.] Six members of the Reyes Salazar family have been murdered in the past two years.

Mexican federal police on Feb. 28 announced the capture of Victor Torres Garcáa AKA Édgar Mauricia Barrera Corrales AKA "El Papirrin"—alleged leader of a drug network that calls itself "The Resistance." "El Papirrin" was detained in Uruapan, Michoacán, along with two alleged associates, several guns and bags of drugs. La Resistencia was so-named because it was formed as an alliance of various cartels to resist the drive by Los Zetas to dominate Mexico's narco networks. "El Papirrin" was said to be a veteran of the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's militarization of the struggle against drug trafficking is "a war from above" largely for the benefit of US interests, according to a letter published on Feb. 14 and written by Subcommander Marcos, the spokesperson of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), which is based in the southeastern state of Chiapas.

Mexican Federal Police allegedly shot radio journalist Gilardo Mota Figueroa as he covered a protest Feb. 15 against President Felipe Calderón’s visit to Oaxaca City. Mota Figueroa told Crónica de Oaxaca that during clashes with Oaxaca’s teachers union, a Federal Police officer opened fire on the crowd from a distance of about six meters. One of the bullets struck Mota Figueroa in the leg. Another 2-4 bullets were embedded in an armored SUV that authorities had left parked on the street.

The sister of a murdered woman from Ciudad Juárez is the latest activist in the border city to suffer an aggression against her person or property. On the evening of Feb. 16, armed men set fire to the house of Malu García Andrade, while she was attending a hunger strike/protest encampment in support of other human rights activists under siege. No one was injured in the fire, but Garcia's home suffered serious damages.

February's freezing fury has left a path of crumpled crops, pummeled harvests and dashed dreams in the countryside of northern Mexico. Hardest hit was the northwestern state of Sinaloa, known as the "Bread Basket of Mexico," where about 750,000 acres of corn crops were reported destroyed after unusually cold temperatures blanketed the north of the country in January and early February. Sinaloa is among Mexico's major producers of white corn, the variety of maize used to make staple tortillas. Heriberto Felix Guerra, secretary of the federal Secretariat for Social Development (SEDESOL), called the weather-related losses "the worst disaster" in the history of Sinaloa.

Gunmen on a highway in northern Mexico killed an agent of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau on Feb. 14, and wounded another. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the agents were assigned to the ICE attaché office at the US embassy in Mexico City, and were been shot in the line of duty while driving between the city and Monterrey. ICE identified the deceased as Special Agent Jaime Zapata and the wounded agent as Victor Avila, who was shot twice in the leg. Gunmen apparently ambushed their SUV in San Luis Potosí state. (AP, Feb. 16; NYT, Feb. 15)