For the second time in less than two years, an indigenous community in the southwestern Mexican state of Michoacán has erected barricades and seized control of security matters. Located in the Purépecha highlands of the Pacific coast state, the small community of Urapicho in Paracho municipality has been under the self-declared control of the people for about a month now. The news was publicized last week with the posting of a video on YouTube that shows armed and masked men, some clothed in military-style camouflage clothing, attending a sand-bagged checkpoint, where motorists are searched. Two masked spokespersons explain the reasons for the uprising and the goals of their movement.

On Oct. 10, the US Justice Department announced the seizure of more than $31 million in funds allegedly "connected to an international money laundering scheme run by a drug trafficking organization operated by members of the Sánchez-Paredes family," a Peruvian clan deemed by US law enforcement to be a drug trafficking organization (DTO). The funds were held in nine US banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase, none of which have been charged with any wrongdoing. Additional moneys in three Peruvian bank accounts have also been frozen. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York found that the family was using its gold mining interests as a front for cocaine trafficking:

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on Oct. 12—recognized in Latin America as Día de La Raza—issued an official apology to indigenous communities in the Amazon for deaths and destruction caused by the rubber boom beginning a century ago. From 1912 to 1929 the Peruvian firm Casa Arana, led by rubber baron Julio César Arana with British backing, exploited rubber near La Chorrera in what is now Colombia's Amazonas department. Up 100,000 people were killed and communities devastated in the operations, with indigenous rainforest dwellers forced into slave labor and slain or displaced if they resisted. The situation was brought to the world's attention following an investigation by British diplomat Roger Casement, who had previously documented similar atrocities in the Belgian Congo.

Guatemalan authorities on Sept. 26 arrested the presumed leader of a Zetas cell in the region along the border with Mexico, where the group's incursion has recently forced the displacement of local residents. Daniel Juan Nicolás, AKA "El Mono" was apprehended in the municipality of Santa Cruz Barillas in the department of Huehuetenango, near the border with Mexico, reported La Prensa Libre. Prior to his arrest, Juan Nicolás allegedly directed the Zetas' operations in the town of Sinlaj for ten months. The town reportedly served as a place to store shipments of drugs and arms, and was home to a Zetas training camp.

Mara Salvatrucha, the Salvadoran street gang that got its start in the heart of Los Angeles' Koreatown, has been officially designated by federal authorities as a "transnational criminal organization." MS-13, as it's also known, "is being targeted for its involvement in serious transnational criminal activities, including drug trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder, assassinations, racketeering, blackmail, extortion, and immigration offenses," the US Department of the Treasury stated. That means the federal government can use "economic sanctions" against the gang, which has also established a foothold in El Salvador. The designation gives the Treasury Department the power to freeze any financial assets from the gang or its members and prohibits financial institutions from engaging in any transactions with members of the group. 

The Mexican Navy announced that the notorious Heriberto Lazcano AKA "El Lazca"—maximum leader of Los Zetas—was killed along with his chauffeur in a shoot-out near a baseball park in Progreso, Coahuila, Oct. 7. But two days later, the body was lost when an armed commando raided the funeral home where it was being held in the nearby town of  Sabinas. Naval authorities insist a positive identification had been made through fingerprint analysis, although the results of DNA tests are still being awaited. Mexico's Governance Secretary Alejandro Poiré blamed a "lack of coordination" between federal and Coahuila forces for the loss of the body.

Friendly fire caused the death of US Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie and the wounding of a fellow agent near the Arizona-Mexico border this week. Three agents were patrolling a remote sector about five miles north of the border where sensors indicated the presence of smugglers, when two agents mistakenly opened fire on the third, authorities now say. Ivie himself is now said to have fired first. The clarification came after nearly a week of speculation that Mexican smugglers shot the agents. Yet, in a little-noticed contradiction to what is now the official story, Mexican police arrested two suspects within days of the shootings—raising the possibility that the arrests were a politically motivated response to US pressure. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was quick to politicize the death of the agent, claiming possible links to the "Fast and Furious" weapons scandal. Since Ivie was apparently killed by another US agent—using a service weapon, according to ballistic reports—Grassley may have to rescind his statement. (Mexico Solidarity Network, Oct. 8; AP, Oct. 7)

US officials suspect that organized crime was behind an Aug. 24 attack by Mexican federal police on a US embassy car on a road near the Tres Marías community, south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos, the Associated Press wire service reported on Oct. 2. In the incident, a dozen police agents in several unmarked cars attacked an armored US car with diplomatic license plates in which two agents of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a member of the Mexican Navy were traveling to a Navy installation for a training session—apparently part of the aid the US provides to Mexico's "war on drugs."