On July 18, agents of Mexico's Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) detained 10 municipal police officers from Arteaga, Michoacán, in the torture and slaying of 12 federal agents whose bodies were found dumped along a highway. Prosecutors also charged a former mayor of the town of La Huacana, where the mutilated bodies were found July 13 piled beside a road along with warning notes. Four bodies showing signs of torture were dumped at the same spot in June. A man claiming to be Servando Gómez, leader of La Familia cartel, called a local TV station last week and said he was attacking government forces simply to defend his followers' families and friends. (AP, July 19; Milenio, July 18)

Heavily armed gunmen tossed grenades and opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles on Mexican federal police bases and checkpoints in the state capital of Morelia and in five other towns in Michoacán in the wee hours of July 11, immediately after the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, an alleged high-ranking member of La Familia drug cartel. Attacks were reported in Zitácuaro, Lázaro Cárdenas, Pátzcuaro, Taretan, Huetamo and Apatzingan—where assailants shot up a hotel where federal agents were staying. Five federal police agents and two soldiers were killed, with several more injured.

Followers of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) and Section 22 teachers' union marched in Oaxaca City earlier this month to protest the imprisonment of local activist Juan Manuel Martìnez Moreno in the 2006 slaying of New York video journalist Brad Will. Judge Salvador Cordero Colmenares issued an order June 20, condemning Martìnez Moreno to prison while the case against him is pending. An appeals court judge, Rosa Ilena Noriega Pèrez, on July 2 refused to issue an amparo, or judicial order protecting Martìnez Moreno pending further investigation—despite a history of serious irregularities in the case.

Our June issue featured the stories "The 'Colombianization' of Chihuahua" and "Mexico's Resurgent Guerillas," both from Frontera NorteSur. They noted escalating narco-war violence throughout Mexico, growing talk of military intervention in Washington, and the re-emergence of a guerilla insurgency in the impoverished southern mountains. Our June Exit Poll was: "Is Mexico on the brink of a new Revolution, 100 years after the last one? Will this one also mean nearly a decade of anarchy? Will it be anarchy in the good sense or the bad sense, or (as last time) both?" Much to our chagrin, we received only one response:

State and federal security forces killed 12 gunmen said to be connected to La Familia narco syndicate June 26 in Apaseo El Alto, a small village near the popular resort town of San Miguel Allende in Mexico's central Guanajuato state. Two days earlier in Ciudad Juárez, unidentified assailants tossed petrol bombs into a billiard hall and a money exchange office—the latest in a string of apparently retaliatory arson attacks. More than 30 businesses were burned in the city last year. A June 7 battle killed 16 gunmen and two soldiers in the Pacific beach resort of Acapulco. Official tallies place the toll of drug-related violence in Mexico at 3,000 so far this year—and 10,800 since President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006. Calderón said this week that Mexico is at an "historic crossroads" in the war on the narco gangs.

Local residents in the Mexican village of Xico blocked roads for several days to prevent construction of a cellphone tower at the local pueblo of San Marcos. Following violent confrontations at the roadblocks between pro- and anti-antennae residents, Xico mayor Rogelio Soto Suárez called in elite anti-riot forces from the Veracruz state Auxiliary Police Institute (IPAX) to permit construction of the tower "by force." Activists say they petitioned town authorities to have the tower relocated further away from the pueblo and its schoolhouse, fearing the health impacts on their children. (Marcha news agency, Xalapa, June 16)

In the latest outrage on Mexico's grisly narco-wars, gunmen in Morelia, Michoacán, June 19 tossed a grenade at an ambulance and then opened its doors to kill a patient who had narrowly survived an earlier shooting, as paramedics ran for their lives. Vehicles carrying four masked gunmen cut off the ambulance around 2 AM. After the grenade blast set the ambulence on fire and the two paramedics fled, the gunmen opened the back doors and fired on the man and his wife, who was accompanying him. The 20-year-old woman is in serious condition at a local hospital, police said.

Mexican army troops captured 25 gunmen at a ranch in Chihuahua state June 13, who witnesses say had disguised themselves as soldiers. The troops also seized 29 automatic rifles during the raid at the pueblo of Nicolás Bravo, Madera municipality, in the Sierra Tarahumara. The National Defense Secretary (SEDENA) has mobilized 5,000 more troops to the Sierra's dope-growing "Triángulo Dorado" to hunt down opium and marijuana crops.