Don Samuel Ruíz García, bishop emeritus of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the Chiapas highlands, died in Mexico City on Jan. 24 at the age of 86. Known to his flock as Don Samuel or Tatic—"father" in the Maya tongue—Bishop Ruíz was long an advocate for the poor in marginalized Chiapas state, and came to national prominence when he brokered peace talks with the Zapatista rebels in 1994. The day after his passing, thousands of indigenous campesinos from throughout Chiapas filed past the coffin at a memorial mass in the San Cristóbal cathedral that also commemorated the 51st anniversary of his ordination there. Bishop Raúl Vera López of Saltillo, who served as Bishop Ruíz's coadjutor in Chiapas from 1995 to 1999, presided over a memorial mass in Mexico City. The Vatican issued a message hailing him as the "bishop of the poor." Even President Felipe Calderón—on the opposite side of political battles with Bishop Ruíz in life—said his death "constitutes a great loss for Mexico." (Upside Down World, Feb. 9; NYT, El Universal, Jan. 26; Catholic News Service, Jan. 25)

Speaking at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics on Feb. 7, US Army Undersecretary Joseph Westphal—the army's second highest ranking civilian official—invoked an "insurgency" mounting in Mexico. His talk focused on the Middle East and South Asia, but in response to a student's question about strategic blind spots in US foreign policy, Westphal said: "One of them in particular for me is Latin America and in particular Mexico. As all of you know, there is a form of insurgency in Mexico with the drug cartels that’s right on our border."

Thousands of unionists and campesinos marched in Mexico City on Jan. 31 in what has become a traditional annual protest against the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the federal government's neoliberal economic policies. This year about 40,000 people participated, according to the organizers; the Mexico City police estimated 22, 000. Martín Esparza, general secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), called for driving President Felipe Calderón out of office, even though his term ends in less than two years. "This government only has a few months left," Esparza told the marchers, "but we should overthrow it, the way they did in Tunisia and the way it's being done in Egypt. We need to raise up a civil and peaceful insurgency throughout the country." (La Jornada, Feb. 1)

There were at least eight killings last year in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León "that evidence indicates were the result of unlawful use of lethal force by army and navy officers," according to a Feb. 3 press release from the New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch (HRW). A recent fact-finding mission by the group to Nuevo León also "documented more than a dozen enforced disappearances in which the evidence points to the involvement of the army, navy, and police," HRW said.

The security chief at Topo Chico prison in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey was assassinated Feb. 5, his mutilated body found in a plastic box in an abandoned car near the facility. Francisco Martínez Ramírez, who had worked there for three decades and was nearing retirement, had been abducted from his home the previous day. He is the third employee to be murdered in recent months at the prison, which has also been the target of a series of grenade attacks. (Diario de Coahuila, Feb. 6; BBC News, Feb. 5)

A secret US diplomatic cable released by the WikiLeaks group and published by the Spanish daily El País on Jan. 23 reveals that the main Mexican intelligence agency, the Center for Investigations and National Security (CISEN), "has allowed USG [US government] officers to interview foreign nationals detained at Mexican immigration detention centers dispersed around the country for potential CT [counterterrorist] information of interest." The May 16, 2008 cable—described as a "scene setter for the visit to Mexico of FBI deputy director John S. Pistole"—also reported that "senior migration officials" in Mexico "are sympathetic to our concerns" and are working with the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency to locate terrorism suspects. El País noted that "Mexico is a very nationalist country where the intervention of third parties causes political and social frictions."

Hundreds of students, residents, artists, religious people and activists from some 70 organizations started a fast the morning of Jan. 29 in Ciudad Juárez, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, to mark the first anniversary of the Jan. 30, 2010 massacre of 15 youths in the city's Villas de Salvárcar neighborhood. "No more blood!" "No more impunity!" and "No more feminicides!" were among the slogans of the commemoration. Later in the morning a group of the fasters marched to Puerto de Anapra, near Sunland Park, New México, where they and US residents held a ceremony in memory of the victims. The demonstrators were divided by a metal fence the US government has built at the border and watched over by US Border Patrol agents.

The new governor of Mexico's conflicted Oaxaca state, Gabino Cué Monteagudo, was sworn in last month after winning on the ticket of United for Peace and Progress Coalition, made up of all the state's major opposition parties (PAN, PRD, PT and Convergencia). But much of the state bureaucracy remains loyal to the long-entrenched machine of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Upon taking office, Cué says he found the bureaucracy crippled by years of endemic corruption. "There were no computers," he said. "We found that the staff payroll didn't match who actually was working... The bank statements were out of balance. The state automotive fleet was in terrible shape." Cué also faces local conflicts in 47 of the state's 570 municipalities, where local elections were annulled because of irregularities. (Miami Herald, Jan. 26)