At around 11 PM the night of Oct. 10, Mexican soldiers and federal police agents occupied facilities of the government-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) in Mexico City and several central Mexican states, reportedly using force to remove workers on the night shift. About an hour later Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's center-right administration published a decree liquidating the company and terminating some 41,000 active employees. The decree promised respect for the workers' labor rights: the government said it would guarantee severance pay and pensions, at an estimated cost of some $20 billion pesos ($1.512 billion).

Prosecutors in Guadalajara, Mexico, say they have filed charges against two suspected members of a gang blamed for what the press has dubbed the "clown jewels" caper. The gang—some members dressed in clown costumes—burst into a jewelry store July 26 and made off with at least $900,000 worth of loot. The clown costumes were later found abandoned in a car. The Jalisco state prosecutor's office says two of six suspects have been caught and charged while a third has been detained pending investigation. One of the suspects reportedly confessed to being the one of the men behind the masks. (AP, Oct. 9)

Members of the independent Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) were guarding the Mexico City facilities of the state-owned Central Light and Power Company (LFC) to make sure the federal government could not "throw the switch and blame the workers," union president Martín Esparza Flores said after a labor forum in the capital on Oct. 3. The union charged on Sept. 29 that President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa's center-right administration was contemplating a quasi-military occupation of the plants within a week on the pretext that the SME was planning to cause a blackout. The LFC provides power for the Federal District, and México, Morelos, Puebla and Hidalgo states.

The Canada-based Linear Gold Corp. ceded to pressure from indigenous communities who oppose plans to exploit gold and silver deposits at Ixhuatán in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, and announced the closure of its offices in the state on Sept. 28. Along with the company Blackfire Exploration Corporation, Linear Gold Corp. holds most of the concessions granted by the Mexican government to foreign mining outfits in the conflicted state. The company's statement upon closing its Chiapas offices cited the world financial sitaution, and left open the possibility of resuming local operations. The Mexican Network of the Mining-Affected (REMA) had held numerous protests against the project. (No a la Mina, Sept. 28)

Internationally-known Mexican environmentalist and forest defender Felipe Arreaga was killed Sept. 16, while driving his ATV in Petatlan, Guerrero. The longtime campesino leader was struck by a mini-bus and died a few hours later in a hospital in nearby Zihuatanejo. Although Petatlan is the site of a military base, it lacks civilian medical facilities capable of handling serious injuries. The driver of the mini-bus fled the scene of the crash, and many circumstances of the incident are still unclear.

Taking a cue from Argentina's Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, relatives of disappeared persons staged a loud demonstration in Tijuana on Sept. 25. Banging pots and pans, protesters gathered outside the Baja California state government building to demand answers about the whereabouts of 320 people forcibly disappeared or kidnapped. In an action that attracted public attention, relatives of the disappeared plastered pictures of their loved ones on the exterior of the government offices.

Gunmen stormed El Aliviane drug rehab center in Ciudad Juárez Sept. 3 and executed at least 16 people, lining the victims up behind the building and shooting them one by one. (LAT, Sept. 3) Meanwhile in Michoacán, the state sub-secretary for Citizen Protection, José Manuel Revueltas López, was assassinated in a two-truck drive-by shooting just outside the state Public Security Secretariat in Morelia, the capital. Two body-guards and a by-stander were also killed in the attack. (La Jornada, Sept. 3)

The heads of three major Canadian, Mexican and US labor federations responded to the Aug. 10 "Tres Amigos" summit—a meeting of Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, Mexican president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa and US president Barack Obama in Mexico City—with a joint statement criticizing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a 15-year-old agreement on trade between the three countries. The statement was signed by Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) president Kenneth Georgetti; Francisco Hernández Juárez, president of the National Workers Union (UNT), Mexico's second-largest union federation; and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, the largest US labor federation.