Violence continues to escalate in the conflicted northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. On Sept. 3, at least 25 were killed as soldiers stormed a training camp allegedly set up by Los Zetas in Ciudad Mier. It is still unclear if there were soldiers among the dead. That same day, another five presumed Zetas were killed in a highway shoot-out with soldiers in neighboring Nuevo León state. (AlJazeera, AP, Sept. 3) On Aug. 28, three grenade attacks on military and police checkpoints in the cities of Reynosa and Tampico left a total of 25 wounded—three gravely, including two members of the Tampico police force. The attacks in Reynosa prompted the closure of the Hidalgo Bridge that links the border town with McAllen, Tex. A grenade attack was also reported in Monterrey, capital of Nuevo León. (Crónica de Hoy, Aug. 30; La Jornada, Aug. 29)

Two cars exploded Aug. 27 in Ciudad Victoria, capital of Mexico's conflicted Tamaulipas state—one in front of the local office of the Televisa TV network, which was being guarded by a congingent of soldiers; the other in front of a municipal police station. No casualties were reported, but the blast at Televisa's Canal 26 knocked out the signal for several hours. The blasts come as authorities are investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants in Tamaulipas this week.

On Aug. 24, Mexico's Navy found 72 bodies on a ranch located in the municipality of San Fernando, Tamaulipas, some 150 kilometers from the US border. The discovery was made after Navy personnel conducting operations in the vicinity repelled an attack by presumed narco-gunmen, in which one marine and three assailants were killed. After the gunfight, an 18-year-old man, Luis Freddy Lala Pomavilla of Ecuador, staggered to the Navy's highway checkpoint requesting medical attention, having suffered a bullet wound to his face. Lala proved to be the sole survivor of the massacre at the nearby ranch, where the bodies were subsequently found.

The decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge Aug. 22 in the south-central city of Cuernavaca, Morelos. The Beltran Leyva Cartel claimed responsibility for the killings in a message left with the bodies. The beheaded and mutilated bodies were hung by their feet from the Tabachines bridge in the south of the city, near an on-ramp to the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. The message threatened: "This is what will happen to all those who support the traitor Edgar Valdéz Villarreal"—a reference to the former high-level Beltran Leyva operative code-named "la Barbie" who has broken with the cartel and is now the subject of a massive manhunt by Mexican federal police. On Aug. 10 a condo complex in Mexico City's posh Bosques de las Lomas district was besieged by a massive federal police contingent backed up helicopters on an apparently erroneous tip that "La Barbie" was there. In an incident that failed to make headlines outside Cuernavaca, the day before the bodies were found the home of a purported Valdéz Villarreal supporter in the city was torched by unknown assailants. A note left by the "Pacifico Sur Cartel" threatened to target more properties. (AP, La Jornada, Aug. 22; Diario de Morelos, Aug. 21; Poder360, Aug. 10)

Pablo López Alavés, a Zapotec leader of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón" (CIPO-RFM), was abducted Aug. 15 by a group of some 20 masked and black-clad men armed with rifles who stopped his car outside his pueblo of San Isidro Aloapam when he was going to gather wood with his wife, two daughters and five-year-old son. The gunmen broke his car window before forcing him from his vehicle and transferring him to their own unmarked truck. The family members returned to the pueblo and alerted his CIPO-RFM comrades, who in turn alerted the authorities and began a search. It was initially assumed he was kidnapped by paramilitaries in league with local talamontes, or illegal timber exploiters, whose operations CIPO-RFM has long opposed. But the following day authorities revealed he is being held at the state prison at Etla, apparently on assault charges. In 2000, López Alavés had faced charges of "attacking the means of communication" related to roadblocks protesting the talamontes, but was acquitted. CIPO-RFM calls the current charges politically motivated and is demanding his release. (CIPO-RFM communique, Aug. 18; CIPO-RFM communique, Aug. 17)

Six city police officers were arrested Aug. 20 in connection with the killing of a mayor in a suburb of Monterrey, Mexico. The suspects included the officer who guarded the house where Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos was seized on Aug. 15. The officer was supposedly abducted with the mayor, but later freed unharmed. The body of the 38-year-old mayor was found bound, gagged and blindfolded three days later on a road outside town. The officers confessed to involvement in the Cavazos' killing, said Nuevo León state Prosecutor General Alejandro Garza y Garza, who added that other suspects are still being sought.

On Aug. 12 the Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued recommendations in the case of two graduate students killed the early morning of March 19 during a gunfight between soldiers and alleged drug cartel members in front of the prestigious Institute of Technology and Higher Education's Monterrey campus (ITESM) at Monterrey in the northern state of Nuevo León. The incident took place as part of a heavily militarized "war on drugs" that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa put into motion shortly after taking office in December 2006; the government and the army claim that most of the thousands of victims are cartel members.

A full session of Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) decided by a 9-2 vote on Aug. 10 that same-sex marriages performed in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) are valid in all the country's states, although each state remains free to regulate marriages performed in its own territory. The court had ruled on Aug. 5 that the DF's law allowing same-sex marriage was constitutional, denying a challenge from federal attorney general Arturo Chávez Chávez.