Mexican campesino rights activist América del Valle applied for political asylum at the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico City on the morning of June 23, citing "four years of unceasing political persecution." Del Valle is a member of the Front of the Peoples in Defense of the Land (FPDT), a campesino movement that formed in 2001 and successfully opposed plans to build a new international airport on farmlands in and around San Salvador Atenco municipality northeast of Mexico City in México state.

Mexican singer Sergio Vega AKA "El Shaka" was shot dead June 27—only hours after he had issued a statement denying reports that he had been murdered. Vega was on his way to a concert in Alhuey, Sinaloa, when gunmen opened fire on his red Cadillac as it passed through the pueblo of Barobampo. "It's happened to me for years now, someone tells a radio station or a newspaper I've been killed, or suffered an accident," Vega told entertainment website La Oreja hours before his death. (El Debate, Mazatlán, June 27; BBC News, CBS News, June 28)

Mexico's independent labor movement reacted angrily to the government's use of hundreds of police agents the night of June 6 to break a three-year strike at the giant Cananea copper mine in the northern state of Sonora. Later the same night, police stormed the sealed Pasta de Conchos mine in the northern state of Coahuila, where family members were protesting the failure to retrieve the bodies of miners killed in a methane explosion on Feb. 19, 2006; only two of the 65 bodies have been recovered. Both mines are owned by the powerful Grupo México corporation.

Gunmen shot and killed Jesús Manuel Lara Rodríguez, mayor of the Mexican border town of Guadalupe as his wife and child watched on June 19. Lara Rodríguez was hit by 10 bullets from an assault rifle as he walked from his car outside his second home in Ciudad Juárez. An outspoken opponent of the drug cartels' reign of terror in the region, Lara had received numerous death threats. He had recently purchased the home in Juárez, the closest city to Guadalupe, believing his family would be safer there. (CNN, El Dairio, Juárez, June 20)

After three days of searching, Mexican army troops and Quintana Roo state police on June 18 discovered 12 bodies in four cenotes (natural wells) near the Cancún airport. Last week, six bodies were found in another presumed narcofosa (narco-grave) in Cancún. Authorities were apparently tipped off to mass graves by arrested sicarios (assassins), and 19 more have been arrested in their connection. Among those detained are a former member of the Kaibiles, the Guatemalan army's special forces, and an ex-agent of the Cancún municipal police. Authorities did not say which faction the detained belong to, but press accounts have identified them as members of Los Zetas. (El Universal, AFP, June 18; Diario de Quintana Roo, June 17)

More than 200 people have been killed over the past seven days in Mexico's most violent week since President Felipe Calderón unleashed federal forces against the country's warring drug cartels. In the latest slayings, on June 16 Nuevo León state investigators in the Monterrey suburb of Apodaca recovered the bodies of five municipal police officers who had been abducted at dawn from their homes by armed men. Their bodies, with signs of torture, were found in an abandoned plot of land with a threatening "narco-message." One had been decapitated. Dozens of police have been killed in the Monterrey area in recent months. Authorities also said an armed commando executed three local youths in the Monterrey barrio of Primero de Mayo. (El Universal, El Financiero, Houston Chronicle, June 16)

Violence in Mexico claimed the lives of 15 federal police officers and 29 prison inmates in three separate incidents June 14. Twelve officers were killed when police returning from patrol in four pickups were ambushed by gunmen in the city of Zitácuaro, Michoacán. Several assailants were also killed or wounded, but officials did not provide exact figures. Gunmen also killed three federal police agents on patrol in Ciudad Juárez, and wounded one more. At Aguaruto prison in Culiacán, Sinaloa, 21 inmates were shot to death and three guards were wounded when a group of prisoners attacked members of a rival gang within the facility. Hours later, eight more prisoners were stabbed to death by other inmates. An AK-47 assault rifle and two large-caliber handguns were confiscated. (CNN, AP, LAHT, June 15)

Bill Conroy writes for the Narcosphere, June 12:

A special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations, claims a former CIA asset who has a long history in the covert operations theater.