Special forces from the Mexican army and navy killed one of the country's top drug kingpins, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, in a firefight in Cuernavaca late Dec. 16. Beltrán Leyva, who was also wanted in the US, was the highest-level drug lord killed since President Felipe Calderón launched his offensive against the cartels in December 2006. Some 400 troops surrounded his apartment in a luxury complex, sparking a two-hour gun battle, in which Beltrán Leyva's henchmen—known as the "Fuerzas Armadas de Arturo"—responded with automatic weapons and grenades. Six of the the henchmen were killed, one as he jumped from a window, as well as one member of the navy's Special Forces.

On Dec. 9 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an influential Washington, DC-based think tank, released "Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons From Mexico Under NAFTA," a study on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and related neoliberal economic policies on Mexico's economy. The study found that in the period since the agreement went into effect in 1994, Mexico's annual per capital growth rate has been slow (1.6% in 1992-2007, compared to 3.5% in 1960-1979) and job growth has been weak, with net losses in agriculture and manufacturing (except for the export-oriented maquiladora sector).

The Mexican authorities must protect residents of disputed land who have been intimidated and attacked by the security guards of local landowners who are contesting the ownership of the land, Amnesty International said Dec. 11. The call comes after a woman living in the Lomas de Poleo area in Chihuahua state was shot and injured at her home by two men in balaclavas.

On Dec. 10, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights delivered a sharp rebuke to the Mexican government, accusing it of inaction in preventing, investigating and prosecuting the murders of young women in the border city of Juárez. The Court specifically found that authorities failed to adequately investigate the murders of Claudia Ivette Gonzalez, 17; Irma Monreal Herrera, 15; and Laura Berenice Ramos, 20—who were among the eight victims whose bodies were discovered in 2001 in a cotton field across the street from the city's Association of Maquiladoras.

On Dec. 4 tens of thousands of laid-off Mexican electrical workers and their supporters again took to the streets of the capital to protest President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's sudden liquidation of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10. The center-right government claims it took the step because the company was inefficient and was losing money; opponents say the government is seeking to privatize the LFC and to break the powerful independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), which represented the company's 44,000 active employees and some 23,000 retirees.

An attacker on a motorcycle shot and killed indigenous leader and anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca outside his home in Chicomuselo, a town in the mountains of southern Mexico's Chiapas state Nov. 27. Abarca "was assassinated in a cowardly fashion outside his home," said Gustavo Castro of the Mexican Network of Communities Affected by Mining (REMA), adding that another member of the group was seriously wounded in the attack.

After missing work for several days, José Emilio Galindo Robles, the regional director for Radio Universidad de Guadalajara in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, was found dead inside his home Nov. 23, Milenio reports. Authorities have given little information about the case but have confirmed that the journalist was killed. A motive had not been confirmed.

Tens of thousands of unionists, campesinos, students, and members of grassroots organizations and left and center-left parties demonstrated in Mexico's Federal District (DF, Mexico City) and more than 20 of the country's 31 states on Nov. 11 to express solidarity with some 44,000 electrical workers laid off when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa abruptly liquidated the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) the night of Oct. 10.