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.

In Oaxaca on Nov. 9, Mexican federal magistrate Javier Leonel Santiago Martínez ruled that evidence the federal government had presented against activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) for the murder of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will was "false" and "prefabricated." Will was shot during a demonstration against Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz on Oct. 27, 2006; activists and Will's friends and family have insisted that he was killed by Ruiz's supporters, not by APPO activists. Magistrate Santiago ordered district judge Rosa Ileana Ortega Pérez to free Martínez Moreno within 48 hours. The government can appeal, and the activist's attorney, Gilberto López, said he didn't expect his client to be released immediately. (EFE, Nov. 9; Milenio, Mexico, Nov. 9)

Business leaders in Ciudad Juárez are calling on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to police the Mexican border city in the face of escalating drug-related violence. Groups representing maquiladora plants, retailers and other businesses announced Nov. 12 that they will submit a request to the Mexican government and the Inter American Human Rights Commission. Members of the Maquiladora Association of Ciudad Juarez and Chamber of Commerce say the peacekeepers are needed to end the wave of extortion, kidnappings and murders.

Margarito Montes Parra, leader of the General Popular Worker and Campesino Union (UGOCP), was assassinated Oct. 30—together with 14 family members and comrades, including his wife and two children—when their small convoy was ambushed by gunmen near Cajeme, Sonora. The Red Cross said 18 were injured in the attack, which took place at Los Alamitos ranch on the Hornos-Tesopaco highway.

The International Tribunal on Freedom of Association, a new body investigating violations of the right to unionize, held its opening sessions on Oct. 26 and 26 in Mexico City. Created by more than 30 Mexican and foreign civil society organizations, the tribunal includes 16 authors, academics and labor and human rights activists from eight different countries. They heard testimony and received documents from 16 cases brought by trade unions alleging that the Mexican government had violated International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 87, on freedom of association and the right to organize, and Convention 98, on the right to collective bargaining.

The US Department of Justice announced Nov. 1 that Mexico's extradition of 11 fugitives to the United States the previous day has brought the number of extraditions this year to a record 100. The individuals face charges ranging from conspiracy to distribute and distribution of narcotics, to money laundering, molestation, and murder.

Staging raids in 38 cities across 19 states, the Justice Department claimed a major blow against the stateside networks of Mexico's La Familia Michoacana narco gang this week. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Oct. 22 announced the arrests of 303 people in the past two days, the culmination of a four-year investigation dubbed "Operation Coronado."