Timeline Mexico 2003-2010

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2003        Jan 6, In Mexico a bus with failing brakes swerved off a mountain highway and into a deep ravine in Zacatecas state, killing 18 people and injuring 23.
    (AP, 1/7/03)

2003        Jan 15, Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani ended a two-day visit to Mexico's capital, declaring that fighting government corruption will be crucial in lowering crime.
    (AP, 1/15/03)

2003        Jan 19, Alfredo Zalce (b.1908), Mexican revolutionary artist, died.
    (www.zalce.com/)

2003        Jan 21, A 7.6-7.8 earthquake ripped through western and central Mexico, killing at least 29 people and leaving 10,000 homeless.
    (SFC, 1/23/03, p.A1)(AP, 1/21/04)
2003        Jan 21, Mexico appealed to the World Court to stop the execution of 51 of its citizens in the United States.
    (AP, 1/21/03)

2003        Jan 28, In Mexico, gunmen in San Juan Chamula ambushed police trying to arrest mur-der suspects, sparking a gunbattle that left 5 people dead.
    (AP, 1/28/03)

2003        Jan 31, In Mexico City tens of thousands of farmers clogged main streets, demanding greater protection against U.S. imports and seeking more government aid.
    (AP, 1/31/03)

2003        Feb 5, The World Court ruled that the United States must temporarily stay the execution of three Mexican citizens on U.S. death rows.
    (AP, 2/5/03)

2003        Feb 10, Mexican army troops seized 2.2 tons of cocaine from a plane that landed in northern Mexico after it reported mechanical problems. The three men onboard were arrested.
    (AP, 2/11/03)

2003        Feb 13, Thailand officials arrested SF financier Thomas Frank White at the request of the Mexican government for the rape of a teenage boy. In 2004 White was indicted in SF on 2 counts of sex tourism.
    (SSFC, 9/11/05, p.A2)

2003        Feb 14, Popocatepetl volcano southeast of Mexico City erupted but caused no signifi-cant damage.
    (AP, 2/14/03)

2003          Feb 16, In Mexico’s central Mexico state voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum in support of executing kidnappers, armed robbers and murderers.
    (AP, 2/17/03)

2003          Feb 17, In Mexico the bodies of 3 women were found in the desert outside of Ciudad Juarez, the latest victims in a string of killings in the border city.
    (AP, 2/18/03)

2003          Feb 25, In Mexico a court upheld the conviction of an Egyptian man,  Abdel Latif Sharif, for one of the first in a series of murders of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, but low-ered the man’s prison sentence to 20 years.
    (AP, 2/26/03)

2003          Mar 10, Two helicopters from Mexico’s Attorney General’s office were shot down near Tlapa, Guerrero, in the nation’s western mountains during an anti-narcotics operation, killing all 5 officials on board.
    (AP, 3/11/03)

2003        Mar 14, In Matamoros, Mexico, police arrested drug lord Osiel Cardenas Guillen (35), aka "El Loco."
    (SFC, 3/15/03, p.A7)

2003        Mar 24, Mexico City police chief Marcelo Ebrard said that Leoluca Orlando, former mayor of Palermo, Italy, will be hired to combat crime. His work will complement Rudolph Giuliani's who hired on for $4.3 million.
    (AP, 3/25/03)

2003        Mar 24, In Texas a fire in a sugar-cane field killed 5 illegal Mexican immigrants hiding there.
    (WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A1)

2003        Mar 27, Mexican federal agents killed 2 suspected drug runners in a shootout near the Texas border.
    (AP, 3/27/03)

2003        Mar 29, In Mexico a small government plane crashed in the mountains of southern Mex-ico, killing all five people aboard. Passengers included Porfirio Encino Hernandez, state sec. for Indian affairs; his son and brother; Berenice Lopez, the daughter of former Gov. Javier Lopez; and pilot Guadalupe Gil.
    (AP, 4/1/03)

2003        Apr 2, In Mexico 9 people were found tortured and killed near the border city of Nuevo Laredo in apparent drug-related violence.
    (AP, 4/2/03)

2003        Apr 4, Mexican police over the last 2 days arrested 9 members of the powerful Juarez Cartel during raids across the country.
    (AP, 4/4/03)
2003        Apr 4, Adalberto Martinez (87), song and dance actor, died. He appeared in over 100 Mexican films and TV series from 1947-2000.
    (SSFC, 4/6/03, p.A23)

2003        Apr 7, Mexico said it would prepay $3.84 billion in the last outstanding Brady par bonds. They originally totaled $34 billion.
    (WSJ, 4/9/03, p.A10)

2003        Apr 9, Abraham Zabludovsky (78), Polish-born Mexican architect, died. His projects in-cluded the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City.
    (SFC, 4/11/03, p.A28)

2003        Apr 12, Mexican army troops manning a roadblock near the Arizona border seized a truck packed with more than four tons of marijuana.
    (AP, 4/13/03)

2003        Apr 21, In Uruapan, western Mexico, gunmen disguised as police killed six members of a family in a suspected drug gang dispute.
    (AP, 4/21/03)

2003        May 21, The Mexican Justice Department said that 258 women had been killed since 1993 in Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 5/22/03)

2003        Jun 6, In Balastrera, Mexico, a landslide followed by the blast of a ruptured gas pipeline hit a truck-stop town between Mexico City and Veracruz. 15 people were missing from the area.
    (AP, 6/6/03)

2003        Jun 12, The first-ever Mexican freedom of information law took effect, designed to ex-pose the government and its once guarded records and secrets to greater public scrutiny.
    (AP, 6/12/03)

2003        Jun 18, Andrew Luster, a convicted rapist who is heir to the Max Factor fortune, was ar-rested after 5 months on the run. He was picked up by Mexican police in Puerto Vallarta as he scuffled with bounty hunters who had trailed him from California.
    (AP, 6/18/03)

2003        Jul 4, In Mexico gunmen in Las Choapas, Veracruz, killed a man believed to be a mi-grant trafficker and then fatally shot four bystanders, including a 12-year-old boy, apparently to avoid leaving witnesses.
    (AP, 7/5/03)

2003        Jul 6, Mexican voters issued a severe judgment on Pres. Vicente Fox's first three years in office, electing another divided Congress in which his party will have fewer seats and increas-ing the power of the former ruling party and the leftist opposition.
    (AP, 7/7/03)

2003        Jul 17, A US company launched Mexican sales of microchips that can be implanted un-der a person's skin and used to confirm health history and identity.
    (AP, 7/17/03)
2003        Jul 17, In Mexico a landslide triggered by heavy rains in the southern state of Oaxaca swept away two houses and killed nine people, including five children.
    (AP, 7/18/03)

2003        Jul 30, The last Volkswagen Beetle was produced in Puebla, Mexico. The first Beetles had arrived in 1956. Mexico had begun producing its own version of the Beetle in 1964.
    (WSJ, 7/31/03, p.A1)(SSFC, 9/14/08, p.A10)

2003        Aug 1, Mexican soldiers used a bazooka to return fire against cars believed to be carry-ing drug traffickers during a wild pre-dawn battle, killing three suspects.
    (AP, 8/1/03)

2003        Aug 4, Mexico's federal government dispatched some 650 federal agents to Tijuana in the latest attempt to curb smuggling and corruption in the rough border city.
    (AP, 8/4/03)

2003        Aug 15, Mexican troops arrested one of the country's most-wanted drug-traffic suspects, Armando Valencia, along with seven top figures in his ring in Tlajomulco near Guadalajara.
    (AP, 8/16/03)

2003        Aug 24,  Hurricane Ignacio sideswiped the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
    (AP, 8/24/08)

2003        Aug 29, In central Mexico a truck carrying sulphuric acid collided head-on with a sport-utility vehicle on a mountain road, killing five people and forcing dozens of people to hospitals after they inhaled the fumes.
    (AP, 8/30/03)

2003        Sep 3, It was reported that Lake Chapala in Jalisco state had lost some 80% of its water over the last 10 years due to heavy development in central Mexico and agricultural diversion of water from the Rio Lerma.
    (WSJ, 9/3/03, p.B1)

2003        Sep 10, In Cancun, Mexico, the WTO began its fifth ministerial meeting, with trade min-isters from 146 countries expected to attend a five-day gathering to thrash out many problems surrounding the latest "round" of trade liberalization talks.
    (AP, 9/10/03)
2003        Sep 10, In Puebla, Mexico, a clandestine fireworks factory exploded, killing at least six people and injuring 12 others.
    (AP, 9/10/03)

2003        Sep 14, In Cancun, Mexico, the WTO talks collapsed when delegates from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia walked out accusing wealthy nations of failing to offer sufficient compro-mises on agriculture and other issues.
    (SFC, 9/15/03, p.A3)(AP, 9/14/08)

2003        Sep, British scientists found 40,000-year-old human footprints in central Mexico, shatter-ing theories that mankind arrived in the Americas tens of thousands of years later from Asia. The footprints were found in an abandoned quarry close to the Cerro Toluquilla volcano and were subsequently studied and dated by a multinational team of scientists.
    (AFP, 7/5/05)

2003        Oct 10, It was reported that members of an elite Mexican army unit have deserted and formed a drug gang, using their military training to launch a violent battle for control of Nuevo Laredo. An estimated 31 of 350 members of the Special Air Mobile Force Group, posted to the border state of Tamaulipas in the 1990s, had deserted and joined the drug turf war.
    (AP, 10/10/03)

2003        Oct 20, Pres. Bush met with Mexico's Pres. Vicente Fox in Thailand and asked him to set aside disputes over immigration and Iraq.
    (AP, 10/20/03)

2003        Oct 24, In Mexico Mariano Diaz Mendez, a Pentecostal pastor of Indian descent, was shot twice inside the car in a roadside ditch in San Juan Chamula, a majority Catholic township just outside San Cristobal.
    (AP, 10/25/03)

2003        Oct 27, The southern California fires crossed into Mexico. The death toll climbed to 15 and damages were estimated to top $500 million.
    (SFC, 10/28/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 10/28/03, p.A1)

2003        Oct 28, In Mexico City high-level officials of the Organization of American States ended two day of talks with a new security agenda.
    (AP, 10/29/03)

2003        Oct 29, A Mexican electoral court annulled the results of the July 6 elections for the governorship of the southern state of Colima after concluding that the outgoing governor inter-fered in the race.
    (AP, 10/30/03)

2003        Nov 4, In Arizona Mexican President Vicente Fox stressed the importance of continuing a dialogue on immigration issues with the United States as he started a tour of 3 border states.
    (AP, 11/5/03)

2003        Nov 5, Mexican President Vicente Fox asked New Mexico state leaders for better treat-ment of illegal immigrants from his country.
    (AP, 11/5/03)

2003        Nov 7, The defending champion US baseball team failed to qualify for the 2004 Athens Olympics, losing to Mexico 2-1 in the quarterfinals of a qualifying tournament in Panama City, Panama.
    (AP, 11/7/08)

2003        Nov 11, Mexican diplomat Adolfo Aguilar Zinser (1949-2005), gave a speech to students at Mexico City's Ibero-American University, in which he claimed that the political and intellectual class of the United States sees Mexico as "a country whose position is that of a back yard" (patio trasero) and that Washington was only interested in "a relationship of convenience and subordination" and "a weekend fling" (un noviazgo de fin de semana). President Fox requested his resignation on 18 November.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Aguilar_Z%C3%Adnser)

2003        Nov 12, Imelda Ortiz Abdala, a former Mexican consul to Lebanon, was arrested on charges of helping a smuggling ring move Arab migrants into the United States from Mexico. Federal agents over the previous 2 days arrested alleged ring leader Salim Boughader Muchar-rafille along with alleged collaborators Melissa Ataja Valdez and Orlando Alfaro, in Tijuana. Ortiz Abdala was released in Feb 2005 after Foreign Relations Department officials testified that she acted properly and was never in a position to authorize visas on her own, according to Mexican court documents.
    (AP, 11/13/03)(AP, 7/15/05)

2003        Nov 17, Mexico dismissed UN Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar following his comments that the US regards Mexico as a 2nd-class country.
    (SFC, 11/19/03, p.A17)

2003        Nov 25, Sales of Mexican green onions plunged after a hepatitis outbreak in the US was traced to northwestern Mexico, forcing farmers in this valley to defend the safety of their pro-duce and find ways to stay afloat financially.
    (AP, 11/25/03)

2003        Nov 27, Mexican government prosecutors said that they've uncovered a document showing that soldiers tortured suspected rebel prisoners during the 1970s, sometimes forcing them to drink gasoline and then setting them afire.
    (AP, 11/27/03)
2003        Nov 27, In Mexico City union members, left-wing activists and farmers by the thousand marched to the central plaza in a major display of opposition to the president's plans to raise taxes on food and medicine and sell state-owned assets.
    (AP, 11/27/03)

2003        Nov, Mexico broke a decades-old tradition of rejecting U.S. aid workers and decided to grant permission for the first group of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers ever to work there.
    (AP, 1/26/04)

2003        Dec 1, In Mexico Isidro Galeana (65), a former state judicials police commander, was declared a fugitive after a judge ordered his arrest on suspicion of kidnapping alleged leftists during the Mexican government's campaign against radical activists in 1974.
    (AP, 12/2/03)

2003        Dec 5, A bus plunged into a valley in the northern Mexico state of Zacatecas, killing 15 people and injuring 15 others.
    (AP, 12/6/03)

2003        Dec 9, In southern Mexico Salvatrucha gang members attacked illegal immigrants from Central America on a train, killing three people and wounding four in the latest in a series of vio-lent incidents in the region. The Mara Salvatrucha spanned Central America. It was named for its Salvadoran founders, who claimed to be as wise as trout.
    (AP, 12/10/03)(Econ, 5/22/04, p.31)

2003        Dec 12, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Mexico in a bid to extend a string of re-cent diplomatic and economic successes in North America. In 2002 China shipped $6.3 billion in goods to Mexico, undercutting many local goods.
    (SFC, 12/4/03, p.A22)(AP, 12/12/03)

2003        Dec 13, Chinese Premier Web Jiabao sought to assure Mexican leaders that their coun-try's economy is not threatened by China's lower wages and cheaper goods, saying the two na-tions are partners, not rivals.
    (AP, 12/13/03)

2003        Dec 27, Juan Garcia Ponce (71), a renowned Mexican art critic, translator and prize-winning novelist, died. Ponce was born in Merida, the capital of Yucatan state, on Sept. 22, 1932. The author of at least 50 books, Ponce wrote novels, plays, screenplays and essays and was considered a master of erotic literature.
    (AP, 12/28/03)(SFC, 12/29/03, p.A12)

2003        The Mexican housing industry built some 450,000 new homes, many of them near the town of Tecamac, north-east of Mexico City.
    (Econ, 8/28/04, p.33)

2003        Ricardo Salinas Pliego beat administrative insider-trading charges in Mexico on proce-dural grounds. Later he and a partner set up a shell company to buy Unefon debt for pennies and then resold the debt to Unefon, which they controlled, for the full price. The move netted them $109 million each at Unefon’s expense.
    (WSJ, 12/8/05, p.A11)

2003        Mexico passed legislation calling for native languages to be recognized as official lan-guages of the state along with Spanish. Mexico also created a National Institute of Indigenous Languages, which began mapping where different indigenous languages were spoken.
    (WSJ, 2/24/06, p.A8)

2004        Jan 3, Isidro Galeana (65), a former state police commander and the first former gov-ernment official to face arrest for his role in Mexico's "dirty war" of the 1960s and 1970s, died of a heart attack.
    (AP, 1/4/04)

2004        Jan 5, In Mexico heavily armed men in military and police-style uniforms raided the western prison at Apatzingan in Michoacan state and freed 25 inmates.
    (AP, 1/6/04)

2004        Jan 12, A 2-day meeting began for leaders of the 34 members of the Organization of American States opened in Monterrey, Mexico.
    (AP, 1/12/04)

2004        Jan 13, In Mexico the 34-nation Summit of the Americas ended. The United States reached out to its neighbors on free trade and battling corruption, smoothing tense relations with Latin American leaders.
    (AP, 1/13/04)(SFC, 1/14/04, p.A1)

2004        Jan 20, In Mexico gunmen ambushed and shot to death two federal agents and an army captain as they drove along a Mexico City expressway.
    (AP, 1/21/04)

2004        Jan 27, Mexican Army troops arrested Javier Torres Felix, an alleged leader of one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in western Mexico.
    (AP, 1/28/04)
2004        Jan 27, Mexican authorities in Ciudad Juarez said at least 11 bodies were found at a house that had been occupied by alleged drug lord Humberto Santillan Tabares.
    (ST, 1/28/04, p.A8)

2004        Jan, La Gloria English School opened on Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Maggie and Tom Washa of Wisconsin opened the school to help the local Mayan children.
    (SSFC, 9/25/05, E5)

2004        Feb 1, In Tepeyac, Mexico, a fight broke out between two families at an illegal cockfight-ing den, and seven people were killed.
    (AP, 2/3/04)

2004        Feb 6, In Mexico deputy ministers from 34 nations in the Americas failed to reach agreement on a framework for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, stymied by differences on the contentious issue of U.S. farm subsidies.
    (AP, 2/6/04)

2004        Feb 11, The bodies of 2 Americans, Francisco A. Antonielli (33) and James F. Bowtte (43), were discovered in a parking garage at the airport in Tijuana, Mexico, the apparent victims of a drug-related gunbattle.
    (AP, 2/11/04)

2004        Feb 17, Jose Lopez Portillo (83), former Mexican president (1976-1982) who governed through an oil-driven boom to a debt-induced bust, died of complications from pneumonia.
    (AP, 2/18/04)

2004        Mar 5, Pres. Bush welcomed Mexican Pres. Fox to his Texas ranch for a 2-day visit.
    (SFC, 3/06/04, p.A3)
2004        Mar 5, Mexican Air Force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state. The video was publicly aired May10.
    (AP, 5/11/04)

2004        Mar 6, It was reported that 4 compromising videos have been released showing Mexican political party leaders and public servants accepting briefcases full of cash, gambling at the high rollers' table in Las Vegas and offering to procure business contracts for millions of dollars.
    (AP, 3/6/04)

2004        Mar 16, It was announced that Carlos Slim, owner of Mexico’s Telmex, planned to buy a controlling interest in Brazil’s biggest long distance operator, Embratel.
    (Econ, 3/20/04, p.64)

2004        Mar 19, A Mexican police raid led to the arrests of 42 immigration agents and other gov-ernment employees accused of running a network that smuggled migrants into the US.
    (AP, 3/23/04)(SFC, 3/24/04, p.A1)

2004        Mar 27, Adan Sanchez (19), Mexican-American singer, died in a car crash in Sinaloa, Mexico. He was the son of narco-ballad singer Chalino Sanchez, murdered in 1992.
    (WSJ, 4/9/04, p.B1)

2004        Mar 29, In Mexico Pres. Fox unveiled a sweeping revision of the legal system.
    (WSJ, 3/30/04, p.A16)

2004        Mar 30, Cuba arrested Carlos Ahumada, a Mexican businessman, wanted in Mexico for his role in a graft scandal involving Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador. Ahumada was soon deported to Mexico.
    (WSJ, 4/29/04, p.A14)

2004        Mar 31, The International Court of Justice ruled that the United States violated the rights of 51 Mexicans on death row and ordered their cases be reviewed.
    (AP, 3/31/04)

2004        Mar, A biology professor said the monarch butterfly population wintering in Morelia, Mexico, was down 75%. Logging had severely impacted the area.
    (SFC, 2/24/05, p.A10)

2004        Apr 5, A flash flood swept through two border communities in northern Mexico, flooding rivers, washing away houses and killing 15 people. Dozens more were reported missing.
    (AP, 4/5/04)

2004        Apr 10, In Mexico a gas explosion leveled two buildings, killed at least six people and injured more than a dozen others in the border town of Nuevo Progreso.
    (AP, 4/11/04)

2004        Apr 12, In Mexico Morelos state Gov. Sergio Estrada ordered the firing of all 552 state police officers following charges that commanders provided protection to drug traffickers.
    (SFC, 4/13/04, p.A2)

2004        Apr 15, In western Mexico, an explosion tore through a small fireworks store in Tonala, killing seven people including a small child.
    (AP, 4/16/04)

2004        Apr 21, Otto Herrera (39), a Guatemalan man described by U.S. authorities as Central America's most-wanted drug smuggler, was captured by Mexican agents at Mexico City's Juarez Int'l. Airport. Mexico made the arrest at the request of U.S. authorities who had offered a $5 million reward for his capture.
    (AP, 4/22/04)

2004        May 2, In Mexico a small plane carrying federal anti-narcotics agents crashed, killing all seven people on board.
    (AP, 5/4/04)

2004        May 5, Mexico celebrated the 142nd anniversary of its victory over French forces.
    (AP, 5/6/04)

2004        May 6, A Mexican court sentenced eight drug-gang members to 40 years each in prison for their roles in the 1993 shooting of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and 6 others at a Guadalajara airport.
    (AP, 5/7/04)

2004        May 10, In Matamoros, Mexico, drug outlaw Alberto Guerrero, his bodyguard and 3 teenage girls were killed by a spray of bullets outside the Wild West dance hall. Ex-army com-mandos turned traffickers, known as Zetas, were responsible.
    (SFC, 6/22/04, p.D3)

2004        May 22, Bombs exploded outside three banks in Jiutepec, central Mexico, heavily dam-aging them but causing no injuries. A note near the bombing sites signed by a group calling it-self the Comando Jaramillista Morelense 23 de Mayo — in tribute to the peasant leader Ruben Jaramillo, who was murdered along with his family by state forces on May 23, 1962.
    (AP, 5/23/04)

2004        May 27, Cuba and Mexico agreed to return their respective ambassadors following a dispute earlier this month.
    (WSJ, 5/28/04, p.A1)

2004        May 31, Felipe Calderon, Mexico's energy secretary resigned, a day after President Vicente Fox criticized him for an early jump into the 2006 presidential races.
    (AP, 5/31/04)

2004        May, A small poll of Mexicans ranked Mexico’s Congress as the worst government insti-tution. Lawmakers met for only 2 days a weeks and 21 weeks a year. The average deputy earned $146,000 plus benefits. 200 of 500 lower house deputies were picked by party leaders.
    (WSJ, 7/8/04, p.A10)

2004        Jun 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Mexico for talks with his Pres. Fox, who has said he hoped to increase military cooperation with Moscow. Putin, the 1st Russian head-of-state to visit Mexico, said the two major oil producing nations should share knowledge on oil exploration and the energy sector.
    (AP, 6/7/04)
2004        Jun 7, The US Supreme court ordered US highways to be opened to long-haul Mexican trucks, rejecting objections by labor and environmental groups.
    (SFC, 6/8/04, A1)

2004        Jun 16, Jose Fernando Jimenez Lecona, Mexico City police official, was shot to death outside his home. Lecona, head of a high-risk crimes unit, was investigating a string of brazen kidnappings.
    (SFC, 6/18/04, p.A3)

2004        Jun 22, Francisco Ortiz Franco, Mexican newspaper, editor was shot to death in Ti-juana.
    (AP, 6/22/05)

2004        Jun 27, Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans wearing white staged a silent march through the heart of their nation's capital to protest kidnappings, violent crimes and the failures of law enforcement to curb them.
    (AP, 6/27/04)

2004        Jul 5, Pres. Fox named Emilio Goicoechea Luna, a business chamber leader and sena-tor, as the new chief of staff, and Ruben Aguilar Valenzuela, a presidential analyst, as media relations chief. The 2 positions were held by Alfonso Durazo who resigned saying that the first lady's political ambitions are out of control and Fox is acting like the autocrats he replaced.
    (AP, 7/6/04)
2004        Jul 5, Voters in Zacatecas, Mexico, elected Amalia Garcia (PRD), the country's first fe-male governor since the end of one-party dominance. Pres. Fox's National Action Party lost badly in Chihuahua and Durango. It finished a distant third in Zacatecas,
    (AP, 7/5/04)

2004        Jul 18, Mexico and Cuba said they will reinstate ambassadors in each other's countries at the end of the month.
    (AP, 7/18/04)

2004        Jul 25, Carmen Gutierrez, a doctor who won Mexico's Woman of the Year award (1997), was found dead in a canal on the outskirts of Mexico City. She was kidnapped Jul 22.
    (AP, 7/29/04)

2004        Jul, The ship Mary Nour, filled with Russian cement, was denied permission to unload its cargo in Mexican ports under pressure from Cemex SA.
    (WSJ, 12/14/04, p.A12)

2004        Aug 1, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (b.1958) was elected governor of Oaxaca, Mexico, by a narrow 2% margin. Defeated candidate Gabino Cue, nominated by an alliance mainly of Convergencia and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), repeatedly alleged electoral fraud.
    (http://tinyurl.com/jnpk8)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.48)

2004        Aug 8, In San Juan Chamula, Mexico, hundreds of enraged residents of this impover-ished Indian community locked the mayor and three other municipal officials in jail, claiming they embezzled funds from public works projects.
    (AP, 8/8/04)

2004        Aug 22, Gilberto Higuera Guerrero, alleged leader of the powerful Arellano Felix drug gang, was arrested before dawn at a house in the border city of Mexicali.
    (AP, 8/23/04)

2004        Aug 29, Mexico City's leftist Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led more than 150,000 demonstrators in a march to protest efforts to impeach him.
    (AP, 8/30/04)

2004        Aug 30, Mexico’s state oil company said it believes that vast untapped oil reserves lie in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
    (WSJ, 8/31/04, p.A10)

2004        Aug 31, In Mexico suspects beat to death Francisco Arratia Saldierna (55), a newspaper columnist and dumped his body outside the offices of the Red Cross in the border city of Mata-moros.
    (AP, 8/31/04)

2004        Sep 1, Capping a day of angry street protests and a strike by some 200,000 health care workers, President Vicente Fox spent much of his state-of-the-nation speech urging Mexicans to not give up on democracy, saying its "inherent problems are not cause for discouragement.
    (AP, 9/1/04)

2004        Sep 17, Mexico and Japan signed a free trade agreement that Mexicans hope will ease their reliance on the United States while encouraging Japan to build more factories there. PM Junichiro Koizumi wrapped up a four-day Latin American trip then headed for New York to pitch for a permanent Japanese seat on the UN Security Council.
    (AP, 9/17/04)

2004        Oct 13, A Mexican judge found bus driver Victor Garcia Uribe, guilty of eight slayings, giving prosecutors their second conviction in the decade-long series of murders of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 10/13/04)

2004        Oct 21, Four gunmen abducted three U.S. citizens on a rural highway in southern Mex-ico, shot and killed two of them and left the third, a pregnant woman, bound and gagged. Her testimony led to arrests the next day of Isidro Diaz Pineda, Reynaldo Hernandez Ramirez, Francisco Velazquez Paredes and David Gaona Mondragon, all of Tierra Caliente.
    (AP, 10/23/04)

2004        Oct 29, Mexican police and federal agents alleged Zetas leader Rogelio Gonzalez Pi-zana, alias "El Kelin," a top drug hit man during a fierce shootout in the border city of Mata-moros. Scores of suspected assassins and drug smugglers used hand grenades and assault ri-fles to fire back at authorities.
    (AP, 10/30/04)

2004        Nov 7, In central Mexico gunmen, identified as local police officers, opened fire on a group of revelers returning from a weekend dance, killing 7 people, including 2 children.
    (AP, 11/9/04)

2004        Nov 12, Mexico and a US environmental group agreed on a plan to protect 370,000 acres of tropical forest on the Yucatan Peninsula. Officials said it was the largest conservation project in the country's history.
    (AP, 11/12/04)

2004        Nov 15, Mexico's former ruling party, trying to fight its way back to the presidency, over-whelmingly won two gubernatorial elections and held razor-thin leads in two other races.
    (AP, 11/16/04)

2004        Nov 23, In Mexico City a mob angry about recent child abductions cornered plainclothes federal agents taking photos of students at a school and burned the officers alive, mistaking the agents for kidnappers.
    (AP, 11/24/04)

2004        Nov 25, In Mexico the bodies of 9 people, including three federal agents, were discov-ered at two sites outside Cancun, and police are blaming the killings on a drug turf war.
    (AP, 11/26/04)
2004        Nov 25, Mexican federal investigators said that two Mexico City police and 27 other people face homicide charges in the horrific vigilante killings of two federal agents this week.
    (AP, 11/26/04)

2004        Nov 28, In Mexico gunmen killed Gregorio Rodriguez, a newspaper photographer, as he and his family ate in a restaurant the state of Sinaloa, the home turf of nearly all of Mexico's top drug bosses.
    (AP, 11/29/04)

2004        Dec 2, Interior Secretary Santiago Creel announced authorities had arrested 224 street gang members during a weeklong sweep across Mexico.
    (AP, 12/3/04)

2004        Dec 5, Authorities outside Mexico City found the body of Enrique Salinas (51), the for-mer Pres. Salinas’ brother, with a bag tied around his head. 2 federal police officers were ar-rested in 2005 for trying to extort money Salinas prior to his murder.
    (AP, 7/15/05)   

2004        Dec 6, President Vicente Fox fired Mexico City's police chief for allegedly bungling the response to a mob attack that killed two federal police officers.
    (AP, 12/6/04)(WSJ, 12/7/04, p.A1)(SFC, 7/15/05, p.A3)

2004        Dec 19, It was reported that Pres. Vicente Fox’s administration had failed thus far  to dent corruption inside Mexico’s 445 prisons and jails.
    (SSFC, 12/19/04, p.A21)

2004        Dec 22, In Mexico an explosion at a pumping station near Santiago Tuxtla caused a burst of high pressure that ruptured the oil line 70 miles away in Nanchital. 210,000 gallons of oil flowed into the Coatzacoalcos River, creating a 10-mile-long slick extending into the gulf.
    (AP, 12/24/04)

2004        Dec 23, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly will be fined as much as $200,000 and could face criminal charges for spilling 5,000 barrels of crude into a river leading to the Gulf of Mexico a day earlier.
    (AP, 12/23/04)

2004        Dec, The Mexican government began distributing a comic-book guide that warns would-be migrants about the perils of crossing illegally into the US and offers tips to stay safe.
    (AP, 1/5/05)

2004        Jorge Hank (48) was elected major of Tijuana. His father was a former mayor of Mexico City and Jorge himself had amassed an estimated $1 billion fortune through hundreds of casi-nos and betting parlors throughout Latin America.
    (SSFC, 8/5/07, p.A15)

2004        Development began of the new Film Colony on the edge of San Miguel de Allende, Mex-ico’s 1st privately financed film studio complex.
    (Econ, 1/10/04, p.31)

2004        Mexico’s population grew almost 1.1 million in 2004 to 105,909,000.
    (SFC, 12/29/04, p.A3)

2004        Earl Shorris authored “The Life and Times of Mexico,” a collective biography of the country’s people.
    (SSFC, 12/12/04, p.E6)

2005        Jan 1, Mexico was forecast for 3.1% annual GDP growth with a population at 106.2 mil-lion and GDP per head at $6,300.
    (Econ, 1/8/05, p.92)

2005        Jan 6, President Vicente Fox announced that all Mexican children with cancer will re-ceive free treatment as long as they need it.
    (AP, 1/6/05)
2005        Jan 6, In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, 10 alleged gang members were convicted in the kill-ings of 12 women, some of the hundreds who have been found slain there in recent years. The Los Toltecas members were arrested in 1999, after the reputed leader of their group, Jesus Manuel Guardado, alias "El Tolteca," was identified by a 14-year-old girl as the man who sexu-ally assaulted and tried to kill her.
    (AP, 1/7/05)

2005        Jan 11, Mudslides in Tijuana, Mexico, killed 3 children and damaged 140 homes.
    (SFC, 1/13/05, p.A3)

2005        Jan 14, Over 750 Mexican federal police and soldiers seized control over the nation's top-security prison amid reports of a planned escape, possible murder plots and a jailhouse al-liance between two reputed drug trafficking kingpins.
    (AP, 1/14/05)(SFC, 1/15/05, p.A3)

2005        Jan 20, In Mexico 6 prison workers were shot to death and left outside their lockup in Matamoros, following a federal crackdown against drug gangs at lockups across the nation.
    (AP, 1/20/05)

2005        Jan 22, Consuelo Velazquez (84), whose song "Besame Mucho" became a standard in many languages and styles of music, died in Mexico City.
    (AP, 1/25/05)

2005        Jan 24, China's vice president expressed a strong desire to increase economic and dip-lomatic cooperation with Mexico while meeting with Mexican lawmakers.
    (AP, 1/24/05)

2005        Feb 5, In Mexico assailants staged 3 nearly simultaneous guerrilla-style attacks in Aca-pulco, killing 3 police officers and a teenage boy a day before a tense gubernatorial election.
    (AP, 2/6/05)

2005        Feb 6, Mexico's main leftist party, the Democratic Revolution Party, ended 76 years of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. De-mocratic Revolution held on to the governorship of Baja California Sur, while the PRI held on to Quintana Roo, the site of Cancun.
    (AP, 2/7/05)

2005        Feb 15, In Mexico the bodies of 12 men killed by hitmen believed linked to drug gangs were found in the northern state of Sinaloa, in what appears to be one of the deadliest one-day tolls in violent drug battles in recent years.
    (AP, 2/15/05)

2005        Feb 17, Two US Border Patrol agents in Texas stopped a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana and shot Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, an admitted Mexican drug smuggler, as he fled back across the Rio Grande. In 2006 agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were sen-tenced to 11 and 12 years in prison for offenses that included violating the smuggler’s civil rights and failure to report the shooting to superiors. In 2007 Latino gang members beat Ignacio Ramos at the Yazoo City Federal Correctional Complex in Mississippi. Both agents were freed in 2009 following a commute of their sentences by outgoing Pres. George Bush.
    (SFC, 10/20/06, p.A6)(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.A11)(SFC, 2/18/09, p.A6)

2005        Feb 23, Mexico’s high court blocked prosecution of ex-President Echeverria for “dirty war” crimes in the 1970s ruling that the statute of limitations has run out.
    (WSJ, 2/24/05, p.A1)

2005        Feb 24, In western Mexico an executive jet crashed, killing the governor of Colima state and all five other people aboard.
    (AP, 2/24/05)

2005        Feb 28, Mexican prosecutors charged 27 state, federal and local police in Cancun with running a drug ring or aiding in the murder of their fellow officers, busting one of Mexico's larg-est police-protection rackets and solving the mystery behind the killing of three federal agents in November.
    (AP, 3/1/05)

2005        Mar 9, In southern Mexico a federal government helicopter searching for gunmen pro-tecting drug plantations crashed into a mountain, killing all nine soldiers and two pilots onboard.
    (AP, 3/10/05)

2005        Mar 13, Vigilantes in Oaxaca, Mexico, killed a state police officer setting him on fire in revenge for the shooting of a taxi driver in a barroom brawl.
    (AP, 3/13/05)

2005        Mar 23, Pres. Bush, Pres. Fox, and PM Paul Martin at a one-day summit in Texas signed a deal that provides for sweeping co-operation between Canada, Mexico and the US on security, economic and health issues. There was no sign of progress on touchy trade disputes. They agreed to boost border security and forge common approaches on everything from cargo inspection to maritime and aviation safety.
    (AP, 3/24/05)

2005        Apr 5, Guadalupe Garcia Escamilla (39), radio reporter, was wounded in the chest, ab-domen, legs and arms during an attack in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. She died from her wounds April 16.
    (AP, 4/17/05)

2005        Apr 7, Mexico City's leftist mayor formally declared his intention to run for president next year even as Congress was to decide whether he should face criminal charges for allegedly disobeying a court order in a land-use case.
    (AP, 4/8/05)

2005        Apr 8, Lawmakers stripped Mexico City's mayor of immunity from prosecution, clearing the way for criminal charges. The shaky legal case against Lopez Obrador alleges that in 2001, the city government failed for 11 months to obey a court order to vacate contested land that it had expropriated for the purpose of building a road.
    (AP, 4/8/05)
2005        Apr 8, Raul Gibb Guerrero, director of La Opinion of Poza Rica newspaper, was shot to death in an apparent ambush by drug hit men, the 2nd attack on Mexican journalists in a week.
    (AP, 4/9/05)

2005        Apr 14, In Mexico 3 would-be casino developers were killed outside a popular Monterrey restaurant. The murders delayed a congressional vote to amend a gambling ban and sparked calls for stricter controls on the few places Mexicans are allowed to place bets.
    (AP, 5/1/05)

2005        Apr 18, The annual Goldman Environmental Prizes were awarded in San Francisco. Re-cipients included Isidro Baldenegro (39) of Mexico for his efforts on land rights and forest pro-tection for the Tarahumara Indians
    (SFC, 4/18/05, p.B2)

2005        Apr 20, Mexican prosecutors charged Mexico City's popular leftist mayor with abuse of authority in a case that could knock him out of the 2006 presidential race.
    (AP, 4/21/05)(WSJ, 4/21/05, p.A1)

2005        Apr 24, Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators thronged Mexico City's central square and surrounding streets to protest the federal prosecution of the capital city mayor, a leading contender for president in 2006.
    (AP, 4/25/05)

2005        May 4, Mexico's government cleared the capital's mayor of wrongdoing, conceding de-feat in a nasty political fight that ousted an attorney general and raised criticisms that President Vicente Fox was trying to block his top rival from running for president.
    (AP, 5/5/05)

2005        May 9, Leftist Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced that he will resign on July 31 to run for president.
    (AP, 5/9/05)

2005        May 13, Pres. Fox praised the dedication of Mexicans working in the US, saying they're willing to take jobs that "even blacks" won't do. Pres. Fox apologized for his comments a few days later saying he regretted any hurt feelings his statements may have caused.
    (AP, 5/17/05)(SFC, 5/17/05, p.A3)

2005        May 16, Mexican President Vicente Fox regretted any hurt feelings for saying that Mexi-cans in the United States were doing the work that even blacks wouldn't.
    (AP, 5/16/06)

2005        May 24, In Mexico Eduardo Villalobos, the director of a state prison in the border city of Mexicali, was shot to death in an ambush outside his home.
    (AP, 5/24/05)

2005        Jun 3, Oscar Espinosa Villarreal, former Mexico City mayor (1994-1998) and tourism secretary, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for embezzling government funds and ordered to pay more than $26 million in reparations.
    (AP, 6/4/05)

2005        Jun 5, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser (b.1949), Mexican scholar and diplomat, died.
    (Econ, 6/18/05, p.83)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Aguilar_Z%C3%Adnser)

2005        Jun 8, In Mexico Alejandro Dominguez took office as police chief of Nuevo Laredo, say-ing he wasn't afraid of anything. Nine hours later, he was ambushed and killed by gunmen who fired some three dozen times.
    (AP, 6/9/05)

2005        Jun 10, In Mexico lawyers for the brother of a former Mexican president sought his re-lease on bail after an appeals court threw out his 27-year murder sentence.
    (AP, 6/10/05)

2005        Jun 11, In Mexico a plain clothes federal officer, sent to investigate the killing of the po-lice chief of Nuevo Laredo, was shot and killed a local policeman. In response the government announced new program dubbed “Safe Mexico” to curb drug related violence and corruption.
    (Econ, 6/18/05, p.34)

2005        Jun 14, Raul Salinas, the brother of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was released on bail after 10 years in prison on charges he masterminded the 1994 killing of a political rival.
    (AP, 6/14/05)

2005        Jun 15, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that former Mexican President Luis Echeverria can be charged with genocide for his alleged involvement in the 1971 massacre of student pro-testers.
    (AP, 6/15/05)

2005        Jun 19, Mexico City introduced metrobus, a new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.
    (SSFC, 8/7/05, p.A11)

2005        Jun 21, Nuevo Laredo Mayor Daniel Pena said that 150 police officers will be fired after failing a screening process that included background checks and drug testing. Former Mexican soldiers, turned into drug hit men (Zetas), have taken the border city to the brink of anarchy, in-filtrating local police and threatening anyone who gets in their way.
    (AP, 6/21/05)

2005        Jun 22, Consuelo Velazquez (b.1916), Mexican pianist and composer, died. Her music included Besame Mucho, first recorded in 1941 by Emilio Tuero. It was the romantic vision of a chaste, convent-educated teenager growing up in 1930s Mexico, and was inspired by the sight of a smooching couple in the street.
    (www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/jan/26/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1)

2005        Jun 26, In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 44 kidnap victims were freed in a series of raids by soldiers and federal agents. Deputy Attorney General Gilberto Higuera said those rescued were apparently "involved in criminal activities and were not victims of kidnappings" for ransom.
    (AP, 6/27/05)

2005        Jun 28, Lawmakers overwhelming approved a law allowing millions of Mexicans living abroad to vote by mail in next year's presidential election.
    (AP, 6/28/05)
2005        Jun 28, Mexico's Zapatista rebels suggested they would seek to open a political front with workers, farmers and students, a decision the government interpreted as a move toward joining mainstream politics and away from armed struggle.
    (AP, 6/28/05)

2005        Jun 29, Mexico released a series of five stamps depicting a child character from a comic book started in the 1940s that is still published in Mexico. The stamps depicted an exaggerated black cartoon character known as Memin Pinguin.
    (AP, 6/30/05)

2005        Jun 30,  Pres. Fox signed a bill allowing millions of Mexicans living abroad to vote by mail in next year's presidential election.
    (AP, 7/1/05)
2005        Jun 30, In Honduras Central American leaders agreed to create a regional special forces unit to fight drug trafficking, gang violence and terrorism within their borders. The 2-day regional meeting included the presidents of Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Gua-temala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama.
    (AP, 6/30/05)

2005        Jul 3, In Mexico State the former ruling party (PRI) added momentum for the upcoming presidential race with a crushing victory.
    (AP, 7/4/05)

2005        Jul 6, In Mexico Omar Pimentel (37), Nuevo Laredo's new police chief, survived his 1st day on the job with 3 bodyguards shadowing his every move, but one of his police officers was killed and 2 other policemen badly wounded by shots fired from a truck at their private car.
    (AP, 7/7/05)
2005        Jul 6, In Acapulco, Mexico, gunmen fired a spray of bullets at Jose Ruben Robles Cata-lan, a former Guerrero state official as he entered a hotel lobby with his 6-year-old grandson, killing him and his chauffeur.
    (AP, 7/6/05)

2005        Jul 8, In rural southeastern Mexico a series of explosions at a natural gas pipeline killed two people and set fire to houses, cars and cattle near Cunduacan.
    (AP, 7/10/05)

2005        Jul 11, Hugo Alberto Wallace (36), a divorced entrepreneur, was kidnapped as he left a movie theater in Mexico City. In 2007 Brenda Quevedo was arrested in Louisville, Kentucky, af-ter Maria Isabel Miranda, the mother of Wallace, received a tip and tracked her down. Frus-trated with investigators' lack of progress in her son's 2005 kidnapping, Miranda launched her own investigation, tracking down five suspects. In 2009 Quevedo was extradited to Mexico.
    (www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/world/americas/04kidnapping.html)(AP, 9/26/09)

2005        Jul 18, Hurricane Emily slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as a powerful Cate-gory 4 storm.
    (AP, 7/18/05)

2005        Jul 20, In Mexico more than 1,000 people marched through the streets of the colonial capital of southern Oaxaca state to demand that picketers disband a blockade that has trapped journalists inside a newspaper building for about a month.
    (AP, 7/21/05)
2005        Jul 20, Hurricane Emily slammed into northeastern Mexico with 125 mph winds.
    (AP, 7/20/05)

2005        Jul 22, Mexican authorities raided a kidnapping ring that filmed its victims being held in-side a cage and beaten. An abducted businessman was freed and five people were arrested. The gang operated in Mexico City and outlying areas in Puebla and Mexico State.
    (AP, 7/23/05)

2005        Jul 31, In southern Mexico former soldier Oscar Flores (35) killed his wife, infant nephew and a police officer in a vicious rampage that left 10 people dead before being wounded by po-lice and killed by an angry crowd.
    (AP, 8/1/05)

2005        Aug 1, In Tonala, Mexico, assailants threw grenades into a crowded cockfighting ring before dawn, killing four people and wounding 25 others.
    (AP, 8/2/05)

2005        Aug 6, Leonardo Rodriguez Alcaine (b.1919), Mexican trade union leader and a long-serving legislator of the Revolutionary Institutional Party, died. He presided over the Workers' Confederation of Mexico (CTM) from July 21, 1997 until his death.
    (Econ, 11/12/05, p.39)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Alcaine)

2005        Aug 12, A Mexican judge issued an arrest warrant for Gen. Francisco Quiros, accused of ordering the disappearance of leftist folk singer Rosendo Radilla on Aug 25, 1974. Quiros was already in prison serving a drug sentence.
    (AP, 8/12/05)
2005        Aug 12, New regulations in Tijuana, Mexico, called for the city to issue electronic cards to replace pink, pocket-size health history books given to Tijuana's 4,700 registered prostitutes. The new standards were modeled after those in the Mexican cities of Monterrey and Acapulco.
    (AP, 9/16/05)
2005        Aug 12, Peter Hommerson, a fugitive charged with killing a wealthy Illinois couple on Jan 23, 1996, was captured at a Mexican resort after tourists recognized him from a crime watch television program.
    (AP, 8/12/05)

2005        Aug 25, In central Mexico a rain-swollen river overflowed its banks and flooded the town of Aguililla, leaving five people dead and five others missing.
    (AP, 8/26/05)

2005        Aug, Judi Werthein (38), Argentine-born artist, introduced special shoes at Insite, an art exhibition in San Diego and Tijuana, designed to help migrants cross the US-Mexico border. The “Brinco” sneakers were equipped with a compass, flashlight and other special features.
    (SFC, 11/18/05, p.A2)

2005        Sep 1, President Vicente Fox, in his last state-of-the-nation address, urged citizens to stay committed to Mexico's newfound democracy and to remind them that they are in charge of the nation's future.
    (AP, 9/2/05)

2005        Sep 3, In Tlacotepec, Mexico, 75 miles north of Acapulco, fireworks stored at a building that also illicitly sold gasoline exploded, killing seven people and injuring four.
    (AP, 9/3/05)

2005        Sep 8, A Mexican army convoy began crossing into the US to bring aid to victims of Hur-ricane Katrina.
    (AP, 9/8/05)
2005        Sep 8, El Salvador said that “Operation International” simultaneous raids this week in El Salvador, the US, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico netted 660 dangerous gang members.
    (AP, 9/9/05)

2005        Sep 10, In Mexico 7 Guatemala men were caught near the Guatemalan border with six large-caliber rifles and 1,600 rounds of ammunition. They faced charges of weapons trafficking.
    (AP, 9/30/05)

2005        Sep 11, Mexico's ruling National Action Party gave former Energy Secretary Felipe Calderon a surprise victory in the first round of its three-part presidential primary.
    (AP, 9/11/05)

2005        Sep 12, In Mexico Chinese President Hu Jintao promised Mexican leaders that he would crack down on the millions of dollars worth of Chinese contraband entering their nation, goods that undermine Mexican businesses ranging from sandal makers to religious icon sellers.
    (AP, 9/12/05)

2005        Sep 15, A fire engulfed Mexico's most famous fireworks market, setting off a chain of explosions in Tultepec, a town northeast of the nation's capital. The fire destroyed hundreds of open-air stands just ahead of Independence Day celebrations.
    (AP, 9/15/05)

2005        Sep 16, The Volcano of Fire in western Mexico blasted ash and gas three miles high, with an explosion that was heard in villages 10 miles from the crater.
    (AP, 9/16/05)

2005        Sep 19, In Mexico a special federal prosecutor sought the arrest of ex-President Luis Echeverria and other former officials for their alleged involvement in the massacre of student protesters in 1968.
    (AP, 9/19/05)

2005        Sep 21, A cabinet minister who helped lead Mexico's anti-drug fight, his deputy and seven others died in a helicopter crash in the mountains west of Mexico City. The helicopter, carrying Public Safety Secretary Ramon Martin Huerta, Federal Preventive Police Chief Tomas Valencia, five other passengers and a crew of two, had taken off from a military parade ground in Mexico City.
    (AP, 9/22/05)

2005        Sep 26-2005 Sep 27, Intense rains throughout southern Mexico and parts of Central America caused rivers to overflow, killing at least 3 people and forcing thousands to flee their homes.
    (AP, 9/28/05)

2005        Sep, In Mexico Bishop Ramon Godinez declared that drug traffickers often donate to the church. He argued that the money is "purified" once it passes through parish doors.
    (AP, 10/5/05)

2005        Oct 1, The outer bands of Hurricane Otis lashed the coast of western Mexico as the storm crawled toward the Baja California peninsula, forcing hundreds of families to evacuate their homes and flooding roads in Cabo San Lucas.
    (AP, 10/2/05)

2005        Oct 2, Felipe Calderon, Mexico's former energy secretary, appeared headed toward an-other victory in the 2nd round of the ruling National Action Party's 3-part presidential primary.
    (AP, 10/2/05)

2005        Oct 4, Hurricane Stan slammed into Mexico’s Gulf coast.
    (AP, 10/4/06)

2005        Oct 5, Hurricane Stan knocked down trees, ripped roofs off homes and washed out bridges in southeastern Mexico, but it was the storms it helped spawn that were far more de-structive, killing more than 65 people in Central America. Officials in El Salvador said 49 people had been killed, mostly due to two days of mudslides sparked by rains. 9 people died in Nicara-gua, including six migrants believed to be Ecuadorians killed in a boat accident. Four deaths were reported in Honduras, three in Guatemala and one in Costa Rica.
    (AP, 10/5/05)

2005        Oct 6-2005 Oct 8, In Guatemala rescue workers searched for victims of a mudslide near Lake Atitlan, a volcano-ringed lake popular with tourists. Panabaj and Tzanchaz were entombed by a mudflow half a mile wide. The death toll in the region from flooding sparked by Hurricane Stan soon climbed to 617 with 42 dead in Mexico, 72 dead in El Salvador and 11 dead in Nica-ragua.
    (SFC, 10/7/05, p.A3)(AP, 10/9/05)(Econ, 10/15/05, p.43)

2005        Oct 11, It was reported that a serial killer, dubbed the "Mataviejitas," or "Little Old Lady Killer," was stalking Mexico City. The killer was said to wear women's clothes and strangled and battered old ladies in their homes.
    (AP, 10/11/05)

2005        Oct 21, Hurricane Wilma slammed into the island of Cozumel, starting a long, grinding march across Mexico's resort-studded coastline. Wilma flooded streets, knocked out power and stranded thousands of tourists in sweltering shelters. Hurricane Wilma tore into Mexico’s Yuca-tan peninsula, after killing 13 people in Haiti and Jamaica.
    (AP, 10/21/05)(AP, 10/22/06)

2005        Oct 22, Hurricane Wilma crawled over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, keeping some 30,000 tourists huddled in hotels and shelters amid shrieking winds and shattering glass.
    (AP, 10/22/05)

2005        Oct 23, Mexico's ruling party chose Felipe Calderon, the nation's former energy secre-tary, as its candidate for presidential elections next July.
    (AP, 10/23/05)
2005        Oct 23, Hurricane Wilma drifted northward away from Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula where the storm left 8 people dead. In 2006 insurers put the damage from Wilma at $3 billion, the largest insured losses in Mexican history.
    (AP, 10/23/05)(Econ, 10/29/05, p.38)(AP, 10/19/06)

2005        Oct 24, Luis Velasquez (51), A Roman Catholic parish priest was found shot to death in his car with his hands cuffed in the rough border city of Tijuana, in what police said appeared to be an organized-crime killing.
    (AP, 10/24/05)

2005        Oct 27, The Mexican government announced that former "bracero" guest workers, who labored in the United States between the 1942 and 1964, will get a one-time payment of about $3,500. The aging workers, who have protested for years, described the payment as insulting and said it should be at least $9,175.
    (AP, 10/27/05)(SFC, 10/28/05, p.A22)

2005        Oct 28, Mexico became the 100th country to ratify the treaty founding the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, which the United States has opposed.
    (AP, 10/28/05)

2005        Nov 4, In Argentina Mexico’s Pres. Vicente Fox said that a majority of nations in the Western Hemisphere will consider moving forward with negotiations to create a huge new free trade zone without the participation of dissenting countries like Venezuela.
    (AP, 11/4/05)

2005        Nov 9, Mexico reported that consumer prices fell to a record low in October and that in-flation was rapidly approaching the central bank’s target of 3%.
    (WSJ, 11/10/05, p.A15)

2005        Nov 10, Mexican prosecutors announced they have filed kidnapping and organize crime charges against seven police officers accused of protecting hit men working for the feared Ti-juana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel.
    (AP, 11/11/05)

2005        Nov 11, Mexican agents arrested Ricardo Garcia Urquiza, a former medical student, who seized control of the remnants of the Juarez cartel.
    (AP, 11/21/05)

2005        Nov 14, Mexico said it will sever diplomatic ties with Venezuela if Pres. Chavez doesn't apologize for warning Mexican leader Vicente Fox: "Don't mess with me." Mexico and Vene-zuela called their ambassadors home in a sharp dispute between presidents Hugo Chavez and Vicente Fox over the latter's relations with Washington.
    (AP, 11/14/05)(AP, 11/15/05)

2005        Nov 15, In northwest Mexico a tanker truck hauling toxic ammonium chloride slammed into a passenger bus, killing 38 people as both vehicles plunged down an embankment.
    (AP, 11/16/05)

2005        Nov 16, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that rape within marriage is a crime.
    (SFC, 11/17/05, p.A12)

2005        Nov 17, Mexico's Supreme Court voted 11-1 that the Pascual Cooperative, a bottler specializing in Mexico's traditional fruit-flavored and fruit-based soft drinks, did not rate protec-tion as a public interest.
    (AP, 11/18/05)

2005        Nov 20, The Vatican beatified 13 Mexicans who died during a Roman Catholic uprising in the late 1920s that was crushed by the Mexican government.
    (AP, 11/20/05)

2005        Nov 28, Mexico changed its constitution to allow state and local police to pursue drug traffickers, removing a major stumbling block in anti-drug efforts that had long been the exclu-sive realm of federal officers.
    (AP, 11/28/05)

2005        Nov 29, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that suspects facing life in prison can be extra-dited, overturning a 4-year-old ban that had prevented many of the country's most notorious criminals from being sent to the United States.
    (AP, 11/29/05)

2005        Nov 30, Mexican officials said that they are investigating a homemade DVD purporting to show four drug hitmen for the Gulf Cartel being beaten and interrogated, then one of them being shot in the head.
    (AP, 12/01/05)

2005        Dec 1, The Mexican Attorney General's office said 11 federal agents were charged with kidnapping for picking up four alleged drug hit men and possibly helping kill them.
    (AP, 12/02/05)

2005        Dec 2, The Mexico City government said 5 federal agents arrested in connection with the videotaped torture and killing of drug hitmen have been released from prison for lack of evi-dence.
    (AP, 12/03/05)

2005        Dec 10, Mexican police raided a house outside Mexico City, capturing two alleged kid-nappers and rescuing three people, including an 8-year-old girl, who had been held for more than two months. Police detained Israel Vallarta, a Mexican, and Marie Louise Cassez Flor-ence, a Frenchwoman. The two belong to a gang called "The Zodiac," tied to at least 10 kid-nappings and one murder. Florence Cassez was later sentenced to 60 years in prison for 3 kid-nappings.
    (AP, 12/10/05)(AP, 3/10/09)

2005        Dec 14, Officials said Mexico and the US broke up a counterfeiting ring that printed an estimated $5 million in fake $100 bills in Mexico and sold them across the border.
    (AP, 12/15/05)

2005        Dec 15, A Mexican judge committed 8 relatives to the psychiatric ward of a prison for the ritualistic slayings of two young family members that shocked Mexico with their brutality. Of-ficials said the parents, grandparents and aunts of a 7-month-old and 13-year-old hacked a baby to death and fatally stoned a teenager earlier this month after they became convinced the girls were demons or possessed by the devil.
    (AP, 12/16/05)

2005        Dec 17, The Mexican government slammed the US Congress for approving an immigra-tion bill that would tighten border controls and make it harder for undocumented immigrants to get jobs.
    (AP, 12/17/05)
2005        Dec 17, In Mexico 6 people were stabbed or battered to death during a prison gang fight in Ciudad Juarez, across the US border from El Paso, Texas.
    (AP, 12/17/05)

2005        Dec 20, The Mexican government, angered by a U.S. proposal to extend a wall along the border to keep out migrants, pledged to block the plan and organize an international cam-paign against it.
    (AP, 12/21/05)

2005        Dec 29, Seven policemen in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas were detained on suspicion of stealing relief packages intended for hurricane victims.
    (AP, 12/29/05)

2005        Dec 31, Guillermo Martinez (18) died in a Tijuana hospital one day after he was shot by a US Border Patrol agent near a metal wall separating that city from San Diego. On Jan 2 Mex-ico opened an investigation into the killing saying he was shot while sneaking into California, us-ing the death to draw attention to a contentious US anti-immigration measure. In 2008 the US Dept. of Justice cleared the Border Patrol agent of any wrongdoing.
    (AP, 1/3/06)(SFC, 2/16/08, p.A4)

2005        Dec, Mexico’s attorney general’s office released a report that said 1,493 of 7,000 federal agents had been investigated for possible wrongdoing and that 457 had been indicted.
    (SFC, 12/28/05, p.A9)
2005        Dec, In Mexico Lydia Cacho, a journalist who wrote a book about pedophilia in Cancun, was arrested and charged with libel. Titled "The Demons of Eden," the book linked Jean Succar Kuri to a prominent businessman in the central state of Puebla. Cacho was freed on bail and Kuri was extradited from the US in 2006 to face charges in Mexico.
    (AP, 7/16/06)

2005        The US SEC filed civil fraud charges against Ricardo Salinas Pliego and 2 other top ex-ecutives at TV Azteca for allegedly failing to disclose their involvement in Unefon under a provi-sion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law. Salinas pulled his companies from the NYSE.
    (WSJ, 12/8/05, p.A11)

2005        Mexico counted 1,600 murders this year linked to organized crime.
    (Econ, 6/16/07, p.45)

2006        Jan 1, Subcomandante Marcos (b.1957), identified by the Mexican government as Rafael Guillen, began a tour of 31 Mexican states under the name “Delegate Zero.” The leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebels, wearing a ski mask to protect his identity, railed against the gov-ernment and free trade to kick off a six-month tour of Mexico aimed at reshaping the nation's politics.
    (WSJ, 1/5/06, p.A12)(AP, 1/2/06)

2006        Jan 6, Comandante Ramona (47), a leader of Mexico's Zapatista rebel movement and an advocate for women's rights, died after a decade-long struggle with a kidney disease.
    (AP, 1/6/06)

2006        Jan 9, Diplomats from Mexico and Central America demanded guest worker programs and the legalization of undocumented migrants in the United States, while criticizing a US pro-posal for tougher border enforcement.
    (AP, 1/10/06)

2006        Jan 11, Felipe Calderon, ruling-party presidential hopeful, registered his campaign with election officials, saying he understands the problems facing common Mexicans and will stem the flow of migrants who head north in search of higher-paying jobs.
    (AP, 1/12/06)

2006        Jan 13, Raul Anguiano (b.1915), Mexican painter, sculptor and muralist, died in Mexico City.
    (SFC, 1/17/06, p.B5)

2006        Jan 23, Raul Osiel Marroquin was arrested in Mexico City. On Jan 26 he described kill-ing four gay men. His arrest was the 1st confirmation of a serial killer targeting homosexuals.
    (AP, 1/26/06)

2006        Jan 24, A Mexican government commission said it will distribute at least 70,000 maps showing highways, rescue beacons and water tanks in the Arizona desert to curb the death toll among illegal border crossers.
    (AP, 1/24/06)
2006        Jan 24, At least 10 men in Mexican military-style uniforms crossed the Rio Grande into the United States on a marijuana-smuggling foray, leading to an armed confrontation with Texas law officers near Neely's Crossing, Texas. The three sport utility vehicles made a quick U-turn and headed south toward the border, a few miles away.
    (AP, 9/6/09)

2006        Jan 25, Juana Barraza (48) was arrested while fleeing from a home where an elderly woman was slain. She was suspected to be the serial murderer known as the "Mataviejitas," or "Little Old Lady Killer." Barraza's fingerprints matched those left at the scene of 10 other mur-ders, plus at the scene of an attempted murder.
    (AP, 1/26/06)
2006        Jan 25, US authorities discovered what they say is the largest and most sophisticated tunnel under their border with Mexico, one that was used by drug trafficking gangs. The tunnel began near Tijuana’s airport and ended 2,400 feet away in a warehouse on the US side of the border. The find included 2 tons of marijuana.
    (AFP, 1/27/06)(SFC, 1/27/06, p.B14)

2006        Jan 26, Mexico said it will suspend its plan to distribute maps to migrants wanting to cross the US border illegally. An official said the decision was made because the maps would show anti-immigrant groups where migrants likely would gather.
    (AP, 1/26/06)

2006        Jan 27, Angel Hidalgo Espinosa, the leader of a farmers' group in Mexico's southern Chiapas state, was convicted in the 2001 slayings of 8 peasants and sentenced to 37 years in prison.
    (AP, 1/27/06)
2006        Jan 27, In Mexico authorities got into a shootout with drug traffickers in Acapulco and at least 4 people were killed.
    (SFC, 1/28/06, p.A6)

2006        Jan 29, The Mexican government said the US Border Patrol in New Mexico arrested Francisco Javier Gutierrez, a Mexican immigration official, who was allegedly trying to help a group of undocumented migrants sneak into the US.
    (AP, 1/30/06)

2006        Feb 2, Mexican authorities captured Oscar Arriola Marquez, leader of the Arriola Marquez cartel, wanted in the US on cocaine trafficking and money laundering charges, and ranked among the world's most-wanted fugitives.
    (AP, 2/3/06)

2006        Feb 4, A three-day energy meeting in Mexico City wrapped up after moving to a Mexi-can-owned hotel. It was the first private-sector oil summit between Cuba and the US. The meet-ing between Cuban officials and US energy executives was moved to another hotel after the Hotel Maria Isabel Sheraton asked the Cubans to leave. On Feb 6 Mexico launched an investi-gation into whether the US government pressured the American-owned hotel into expelling Cu-ban guests.
    (AP, 2/6/06)

2006        Feb 7, The owner of a Mexican newspaper in Nuevo Laredo said there will be no more investigative coverage of drug gangs, a day after the paper's offices were sprayed with bullets and a reporter hospitalized with five gunshots.
    (AP, 2/7/06)

2006        Feb 13, In Monterrey, Mexico, 2 police chiefs, Hector Ayala and Javier Garcia, were shot and killed within hours of each other in a violence-plagued region near the US where drug smugglers have been battling for control of key routes across the border.
    (AP, 2/14/06)

2006        Feb 14, In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, armed men forced their way into a hospital and killed a teenager under treatment for an earlier attempt on his life.
    (SFC, 2/18/06, p.A10)

2006        Feb 15, In central Mexico a bus careened off a windy highway and into a ravine in the Sierra Gorda mountains, killing 23 people and injuring 14.
    (AP, 2/16/06)

2006        Feb 19, A gas explosion in a northern Mexico coal mine trapped 65 miners some 600 feet below ground with a limited supply of oxygen. In 2007 a judge ordered the arrest of 5 mine managers and inspectors on charges of negligent homicide in the deaths of the miners.
    (AP, 2/19/06)(WSJ, 2/21/06, p.A1)(AP, 3/20/07)

2006        Feb 21, In Cancun, Mexico, Domenico Ianiero, 59, and his wife, Annunziata, 55, of Woodbridge, Ont., were found in their hotel rooms at the all-inclusive five-star resort on the Ma-yan Riviera in the early morning. Their throats had been slashed. The crime apparently took place after a rehearsal dinner ahead of a wedding in which the Lily, one of the Ianieros' twin girls, was to be married at the resort. Prosecutors in Cancun said two Canadian women were suspected in the killing and had fled to Canada.
    (CP, 2/22/06)

2006        Feb 25, In Mexico mining officials said there was little hope of finding any of miners alive from the Feb 19 gas explosion at the Industrial Minera Mexico mine near San Juan Sabinas.
    (SSFC, 2/26/06, p.A3)

2006        Feb 28, Mexico City officials moved to shut down a US-owned hotel that angered many Mexicans when it kicked out a Cuban delegation under pressure from Washington. The Shera-ton Maria Isabel Hotel would be closed because it was in violation of building codes. The hotel could reopen when it had corrected the violations and paid a $15,000 fine. The threat of closure was dropped the next day.
    (AP, 3/1/06)(AP, 3/2/06)
2006        Feb 28, Some 4,000 Mexican miners struck copper mines owned by the operator of the coal mine where 65 men died in an explosion last week.
    (AP, 2/28/06)

2006        Mar 6, In Mexico Diego Santoy (21) was captured at a police roadblock in the southern state of Oaxaca, four days after he allegedly stabbed his ex-girlfriend, Erika Pena, 18, strangled her 3-year-old sister and stabbed to death her 7-year-old brother.
    (AP, 3/8/06)

2006        Mar 7, More than 20,000 union workers marched in downtown Mexico City, accusing the government of meddling in the affairs of the national miners union by seeking to oust its leader.
    (AP, 3/7/06)
2006        Mar 7, In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, heavily armed assailants killed a state police chief and an officer and wounded two more officers in a brazen midmorning ambush.
    (AP, 3/7/06)

2006        Mar 10, An anchorman for a Mexican radio station was shot to death by gunmen waiting for him in the bushes in front of his house in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.
    (AP, 3/10/06)

2006        Mar 13, Mexico’s attorney general said he will close a special prosecutor's office dedi-cated to investigating atrocities committed by the government during its two-decade campaign to weed out suspected guerrillas and leftists.
    (AP, 3/13/06)

2006        Mar 14, Mexico announced a new deepwater oil discovery that could exceed the declin-ing reserves at the giant offshore Cantarell field.
    (WSJ, 3/14/06, p.A11)

2006        Mar 16, The 4th World Water Forum opened in Mexico City.
    (AP, 3/16/06)

2006        Mar 16, In Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 4 plainclothes federal police agents were killed after an unknown number of gunmen sprayed the unmarked pickup truck they were riding in with more than 30 bullets. The slayings came a day after 600 new members of the Federal Preven-tative Police arrived in Nuevo Laredo as part of extra-security efforts.
    (AP, 3/16/06)

2006        Mar 17, A bus carrying dozens of teenagers on a school field trip toppled off a bridge on the outskirts of Mexico's capital, killing 7 people and injuring at least 28.
    (AP, 3/18/06)

2006        Mar 22, In Mexico Omar Pimentel (38), the police chief of the border city of Nuevo Laredo, resigned. He said he was tired from the stress of working in a city dominated by drug cartels fighting a bloody turf war.
    (AP, 3/24/06)

2006        Mar 24, The Mexican government said a US-owned hotel that expelled Cuban guests under pressure from the Treasury Department must pay $112,000 in fines for violating Mexican commerce law.
    (AP, 3/24/06)

2006        Mar 26, In Mexico the bodies of six men, blindfolded, handcuffed and shot to death, were found packed inside a pickup truck on the side of a highway leading to the Texas border.
    (AP, 3/26/06)

2006        Mar 27, The US Senate Judiciary Committee approved a proposal to legalize undocu-mented migrants and provide temporary work visas. Mexicans cheered the approval and cred-ited huge marches of migrants across the US as the decisive factor behind the vote.
    (AP, 3/28/06)

2006        Mar 28, A Mexican judge ordered an Argentine journalist to remove references to one of the first lady's sons in a book that claims he benefited financially from his family's political con-nections. The book "Cronicas Malditas," or roughly "Accursed Chronicles" (2005), alleged that two of Sahagun's three sons, principally Manuel Bribiesca, had used their connections to get preferential treatment on federal government work contracts during the administration of Presi-dent Vicente Fox, which began in December 2000.
    (AP, 3/28/06)

2006        Mar 30, Pres. Bush arrived in Cancun, Mexico, for 2 days of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) talks with Canadian PM Stephen Harper and Mexico’s Pres. Fox.
    (Reuters, 3/30/06)(WSJ, 3/30/06, p.A1)
2006        Mar 30, Mexico’s Congress passed legislation dubbed the Televisa Law” confirming the country’s longstanding TV duopoly. President Vicente Fox officially signed off on controversial reforms to the country’s Federal Radio and Television law on April 11. In 2007 the legislation faced court actions.
    (http://cbrayton.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/mexico-the-birth-of-the-televisa-law/)

2006        Mar 31, President Bush, closing a three-nation NAFTA summit, defended requiring se-cure documents from border-crossing Canadians and pushed Mexico to prevent more of its people from illegally entering America.
    (AP, 3/31/06)

2006        Apr 3, Dozens of Mexican newspapers, frustrated by fruitless police probes of slain and missing journalists, simultaneously published the first in a series of reports on the cases.
    (AP, 4/3/06)

2006        Apr 6, In Mexico hundreds of machete-wielding farmers opposed to a hydroelectric dam project briefly seized a pumping plant, cutting off much of the water supply to Acapulco just days before tourists flock to the Pacific resort for their Easter vacations.
    (AP, 4/6/06)

2006        Apr 7, The US Court of International Law ruled that US Customs violated a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in applying a law known as the Byrd amendment to antidumping and countervailing duties on goods from Canada and Mexico.
    (Reuters, 4/7/06)

2006        Apr 10, Mexican soldiers seized 5 1/2 tons of cocaine worth more than $100 million from a commercial plane arriving from Venezuela.
    (AP, 4/12/06)

2006        Apr 12, Two people were killed in a grenade attack on a restaurant and a shop owner was gunned down as violence shook towns on Mexico's resort-studded Pacific coast.
    (AP, 4/13/06)

2006        Apr 16, The Rev. Cesar Torres (42) killed Veronica Andrade Salinas (22), who was pregnant, at his parish on Mexico City's eastern outskirts. He used a kitchen knife to cut off her head and hack her body to pieces, which he packed the pieces into plastic bags and dumped near a cemetery in Chimalhuacan. The couple had an 18-month-old daughter. Torres admitted to the murder on April 19.
    (AP, 4/19/06)

2006        Apr 17, In Mexico an overcrowded bus speeding home from a religious festival veered off a highway emergency ramp and crashed through a metal barrier, plunging more than 650 feet into a ravine near Maltrata, a town about 125 miles east of the capital. 58 people were killed. There were 2 survivors.
    (AP, 4/19/06)

2006        Apr 19, The Mexican Congress enacted a law that allows journalists to protect the confi-dentiality of their sources.
    (SFC, 4/20/06, p.A3)

2006        Apr 20, In Mexico a violent confrontation between 800 federal and state police agents and more than 500 striking steelworkers left two workers dead and dozens of workers and po-lice agents injured at the Siderurgica Lazaro Cardenas-Las Truchas, SA (Sicartsa) steel plant in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas in the state of Michoacan. The decapitated heads of two police officials were found dumped in front of a government building in Acapulco.
    (http://ww4report.com/node/1879)(AP, 4/20/06)

2006        Apr 26, A Mexican boycott urged people to shun all products from U.S. businesses on May 1, a sort of "Day Without Americans," timed to coincide with the "Day Without Immigrants" boycott planned by activists north of the border.
    (AP, 4/26/06)
2006        Apr 26, In southern Mexico a speeding truck loaded with Guatemalan migrants en route to the United States collided head-on with another truck, killing 10 migrants and injuring 16.
    (AP, 4/27/06)

2006        Apr 28, Mexican lawmakers approved a bill that would allow people to possess small amounts of cocaine, heroin, even ecstasy for their personal use.
    (AP, 4/29/06)
2006        Apr 28, Mexican police in Tijuana found the body of a US citizen kidnapped nearly 3 weeks earlier. They said he had been beaten, strangled, stripped naked and stashed in the trunk of a car. George Kwok Choi Chu, a seafood wholesaler, worked in Tijuana but lived across the border in San Diego.
    (AP, 4/29/06)

2006        May 1, A day-long protest dubbed "A Day Without Gringos" drew thousands of Mexicans into the streets and kept many away from US-owned supermarkets and fast-food restaurants to support rallies in the United States demanding immigration reform.
    (AP, 5/1/06)

2006        May 3, Mexican President Vicente Fox refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill, hours after US officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism."
    (AP, 5/3/06)
2006        May 3, In Mexico one person was killed as machete-wielding protesters near Mexico City clashed with police, blocking highways, throwing molotov cocktails and briefly seizing six officers. The residents attacked police after several of their companions were arrested in the nearby town of Texcoco.
    (AP, 5/4/06)

2006        May 4, Just before dawn hundreds of law enforcement officials fired tear gas and crashed through human barricades to take control of San Salvador Atenco, a rebellious town outside Mexico City, hours after protesters released six badly beaten police hostages.
    (AP, 5/4/06)

2006        May 9, Mexican lawmakers handed federal investigators a box of evidence that they claim shows that two of President Vicente Fox's stepsons were involved in fraud and illicit en-richment through real estate deals.
    (AP, 5/9/06)

2006        May 14, Mexican President Vicente Fox telephoned President Bush to express his con-cern about the border between the two nations, a day before Bush's planned Oval Office speech on immigration.
    (AP, 5/14/07)

2006        May 15, Pres. Bush endorsed a guest worker program and a program for citizenship for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. He also called for the development of a tamper-proof ID card for workers and pledged to send the National Guard to tighten security along the US border with Mexico.
    (SFC, 5/16/06, p.A1)

2006        May 19, The Vatican said it had asked Rev. Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the conservative order Legionaries of Christ (1941), to renounce celebrating public Masses and live a life of "prayer and repentance" following its investigation into allegations he sexually abused seminarians.
    (AP, 5/19/06)

2006        May 23, Mexico’s Pres. Fox began a five-day trip to the US in Utah before moving on to Washington state and California. Immigration was the major focus of Fox's trip as the US Sen-ate considered legislation to strengthen border security
    (AP, 5/23/06)
2006        May 23, In Mexico 3 men were shot to death in two different attacks in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, bringing to at least 115 the number of people slain by violence this year.
    (AP, 5/24/06)

2006        May 25, Mexican President Vicente Fox addressed the California legislature. He praised a US Senate which had just approved sweeping immigration reforms as a "monumental step forward" in the relationship between his country and the United States.
    (AP, 5/26/06)

2006        Jun 1, California Gov. Schwarzenegger reluctantly reached an agreement with the fed-eral government to deploy 1,000 members of the California National Guard along the US-Mexico border.
    (SFC, 6/2/06, p.B1)

2006        Jun 5, Mexico proposed creating an environmental reserve (the Rio Bravo del Norte proposal) about 30 feet wide and 600 miles long on the Texas border, a "green wall" to protect the Rio Grande from the roads and staging areas that smugglers use to ferry drugs and mi-grants across the frontier.
    (AP, 6/5/06)

2006        Jun 8, The US offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, a reputed Mexican drug cartel chieftain, whose group al-legedly smuggles tons of cocaine and marijuana north each year.
    (AP, 6/9/06)

2006        Jun 14, In Mexico some 3000 elements of the state ministerial police, preventive police and Oaxaca state firemen began to violently remove a sit-in of 70,000 workers from Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) with tear gas, smoke grenades, stun gre-nades and firearms. Thus far there have been 13 reported arrests, 4 injuries, 5 bullet wounds, and between 6 and 9 deaths, as well as a break-in to the Teachers' Union building and the de-struction of the installations of Radio Plantón (a free/non-licensed community radio station that has been a point of reference for social movements in Oaxaca).
    (www.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/840911.shtml)

2006        Jun 17, Mexican authorities in Guadalajara arrested Pedro Castorena, the leader of a far-flung ring that allegedly made and distributed forged immigration and identification docu-ments in the US. Castorena was indicted in Denver last July on charges of conspiracy, fraud, misuse of visas and money laundering.
    (AP, 6/19/06)

2006        Jun 23, In Mexico Enrique Rueda Pacheco, the leader of about 70,000 striking teachers in southern Oaxaca state, said they won't interfere with the July 2 presidential election, and promised to meet with a civic commission to try to resolve their pay demands. The monthlong strike has left 1.3 million children in grade and high schools in Oaxaca without classes.
    (AP, 6/23/06)

2006        Jun 26, In Mexico assailants armed with automatic rifles shot and killed a top policeman and his bodyguard as they drove home in the resort city of Cancun.
    (AP, 6/27/06)

2006        Jul 2, Mexico held presidential elections. Felipe Calderon calling himself “the candidate of jobs,” faced Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: “For everyone’s good, the poor first.” Lopez Villanueva, head of the Francisco Villa Popular Front, arranged to have 10,000 members as poll watchers for Lopez Obrador.
    (Econ, 6/10/06, p.36)(WSJ, 6/28/06, p.A1)

2006        Jun 28, Gunmen shot and killed Ignacio Perales Gomez, a prominent Mexico City police investigator, outside his home. Perales was a lead investigator in several of the city's notable cases including that of jailed businessman Carlos Ahumada, a Mexico City construction mogul linked to a bribery scandal that rocked the country in 2004.
    (AP, 6/29/06)

2006        Jun 29, Mexican police found a human head by the main entrance to Acapulco’s City Hall, the fourth such grisly discovery this year.
    (AP, 6/30/06)

2006        Jun 30, Former Mexican President Luis Echeverria was placed under house arrest on genocide charges stemming from a 1968 student massacre, an unprecedented move coming just two days before the country elects a new president. Authorities found two more human heads in front of a government office in Acapulco, accompanied with threatening messages linked to the drug trade.
    (AP, 7/1/06)

2006        Jul 2, Mexico held presidential elections. Felipe Calderon (43) calling himself “the candi-date of jobs,” faced Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador: “For everyone’s good, the poor first.” Lopez Villanueva, head of the Francisco Villa Popular Front, arranged to have 10,000 members as poll watchers for Lopez Obrador. A tight race delayed the results to July 5. The per capita GDP was $10,000. Oil production was 3.35 million barrels per day. On July 6 Calderon was named the winner by 234,000 votes. The final outcome rested with the electoral court, Trife, and its deci-sion was due by September 6.
    (Econ, 6/10/06, p.36)(WSJ, 6/28/06, p.A1)(Econ, 7/15/06, p.35)(AP, 7/7/07)

2006        Jul 3, Two bitter rivals declared themselves Mexico's next president, sparking fears of violence. Electoral officials said they wouldn't name a winner until a vote-by-vote hand count.
    (AP, 7/3/06)

2006        Jul 4, Lopez Obrador, Mexico’s leftist presidential candidate, called for a recount of elec-tion results that showed him trailing his conservative rival by 1 percentage point.
    (AP, 7/4/06)

2006        Jul 5, Mexico’s recount of election results put Lopez Obrador ahead of Louis Calderon with 83% of the votes tallied.
    (WSJ, 7/6/06, p.A1)

2006        Jul 6, Felipe Calderon won the official count in Mexico's disputed presidential race, a come-from-behind victory for the stiff technocrat. But his leftist rival refused to concede and said he'd fight the results in court. Calderon won 35.9% of the vote against Obrador’s 35.3%.
    (AP, 7/7/06)(Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.4)

2006        Jul 8, Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged his supporters to take to the streets, claiming the governing party stole his victory in Mexico's extremely narrow elections. Obrador called on a huge crowd of supporters to keep peacefully protesting as he goes to court to challenge what he called his fraudulent electoral defeat.
    (AP, 7/8/06)(AP, 7/9/06)
2006        Jul 8, A Mexican federal judge threw out genocide charges against former President Luis Echeverria, ruling that a 30-year statute of limitations had run out.
    (AP, 7/9/06)
2006        Jul 8, In western Mexico 4 children, who won an airplane ride for good grades at school, were killed along with the pilot when the small aircraft crashed near Tepic.
    (AP, 7/12/06)

2006        Jul 11, In Mexico a man was shot to death in front of Acapulco's City Hall and a naval officer was abducted, the latest violence in this resort city hit by a wave of drug-related crime. The 2 men slain were later identified as military officers responsible for the mayor's security.
    (AP, 7/11/06)(AP, 7/13/06)

2006        Jul 12, Tens of thousands of supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador headed to Mexico City, leaving mountain towns and sprawling industrial cities to demand a ballot-by-ballot recount.
    (AP, 7/12/06)

2006        Jul 15, US authorities extradited Jean Succar Kuri, a Mexican businessman with alleged ties to associates of a powerful state governor, to face charges in Mexico of child pornography, statutory rape and corruption of minors.
    (AP, 7/16/06)

2006        Jul 16, In Mexico City Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador led hundreds of thousands of marchers demanding a full recount of in the disputed election.
    (SFC, 7/17/06, p.A3)

2006        Jul 21, In Oaxaca, Mexico, protests initiated by striking teachers continued. Protest leaders said their fight is not with the tourists but with Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging the state election in 2004 and using force to repress dissent.
    (AP, 7/21/06)

2006        Jul 24, Gunmen raided a pharmaceutical laboratory in Mexico City, killing four guards and stealing about a ton of ephedrine, a key ingredient in making methamphetamine.
    (AP, 7/24/06)

2006        Jul 31, In Mexico supporters of the country’s leftist presidential candidate paralyzed the Mexico City’s financial district and said they won’t leave until the top electoral court rules on their demands for a recount in the disputed race.
    (AP, 7/31/06)
2006        Jul 31, Mexican police found the body of a woman on a dirt road in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Abigail Rodriguez (29), who apparently had been killed by a blow to the head and thrown out of a moving car, was the 14th woman found dead in Juarez so far this year.
    (AP, 8/1/06)

2006        Aug 2, In Oaxaca, Mexico, about 500 women banging spoons against pots and pans seized a state-run television station and broadcast a homemade video that showed police kick-ing protesters out of Oaxaca's main square last month. In southern Monte Orden village heavy rains caused a mountainside to give way, burying 2 homes and killing 11 people, 4 of them children.
    (AP, 8/2/06)
2006        Aug 2, Production at Cantarell, Mexico’s biggest oil field, was reported to be declining. The site accounted for about 60% of Mexico’s oil. A third of Mexico’s federal budget depended on oil sales.
    (WSJ, 8/2/06, p.A4)

2006        Aug 4, In Mexico's southernmost Chiapas state a 7-year-old boy and his father died, bringing to 10 the number of people killed after eating poisonous mushrooms. Officials said re-cent genetic mutations have made some mushrooms, consumed for years in Indian communi-ties, newly poisonous.
    (AP, 8/4/06)

2006        Aug 5, Mexico's top electoral court rejected a full recount in the disputed presidential election, ordering a 9% partial count instead, angering leftist protesters camped in the capital demanding a new vote-by-vote tally over their fraud allegations.
    (AP, 8/5/06)(WSJ, 8/7/06, p.A1)

2006        Aug 9, In Mexico the body of Enrique Perea Quintanilla (50), publisher of the magazine Dos Caras, Una Verdad (Two Faces, One Truth) was found on a dirt road about 10 miles from Chihuahua City. Authorities said that organized crime was likely behind the killing.
    (AP, 8/11/06)

2006        Aug 10, In Mexico leftist activists blockaded bank headquarters and called for a march on the offices of federal prosecutors, as officials recounted some of the ballots from the dis-puted presidential election.
    (AP, 8/10/06)

2006        Aug 12, A passenger bus skidded off a highway in central Mexico and rolled down a 320-foot slope, killing 13 people and injuring a dozen others.
    (AP, 8/12/06)

2006        Aug 13, In Mexico a recount confirmed Calderon as the next president. Lopez Obrador vowed to mount new legal challenges.
    (WSJ, 8/14/06, p.A1)

2006        Aug 14, US authorities arrested Tijuana drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix (38) aboard a boat off Mexico's Pacific coast. Mexican analysts doubted the significance of Arellano Felix's arrest as the gang has effectively lost much of its influence over the years. In 2007 Felix pleaded guilty to federal crimes that carried a mandatory life sentence. He agreed to forfeit $50 million and the yacht on which he was captured.
    (AP, 8/17/06)(SFC, 9/18/07, p.A3)

2006        Aug 15, US officials arrested Edgar Alvarez Cruz on immigration violations in Denver. He was suspected of participating in the rapes and killings of at least 10 women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, where more than 100 young women have been killed since 1993.
    (AP, 8/17/06)

2006        Aug 19, Mexican prosecutors announced that they have charged two policemen with protecting the Arellano Felix drug trafficking gang. Mexican police said they had broken up a vote-buying scheme in Chiapas on the eve of state elections.
    (AP, 8/20/06)

2006        Aug 21, In Mexico’s Chiapas state Juan Sabines, of Lopez Obrador's Democratic Revo-lution Party (PRD), held a razor-thin lead over Jose Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who also is backed by President Vicente Fox's National Action Party. Oaxaca sank further into chaos as protesters armed with machetes, pipes and clubs seized 12 private radio stations, cut off highways, and blockaded bus terminals and newspaper offices.
    (AP, 8/21/06)

2006        Aug 23, Assailants threw grenades at the offices of a newspaper in the resort city of Cancun in the latest in a series of attacks on news outlets across Mexico.
    (AP, 8/24/06)

2006        Aug 27, Mexican electoral officials said Juan Sabines, a leftist candidate, won the gov-ernor's race in Mexico's volatile southernmost state of Chiapas, edging out Jose Antonio Agui-lar, backed by President Vicente Fox's party by about 6,300 votes.
    (AP, 8/27/06)

2006        Aug 28, Mexico’s top electoral court announced that a partial recount found no wide-spread evidence of fraud.
    (SFC, 8/29/06, p.A1)

2006        Aug 29, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico's leftist presidential candidate, rejected a court decision upholding his rival's slim lead in the disputed July 2 race and called on his sup-porters not to recognize a government led by Felipe Calderon.
    (AP, 8/29/06)

2006        Aug 30, Hurricane John lashed tourist resorts with heavy winds and rain as the danger-ous Category 4 storm marched up Mexico's Pacific coast.
    (AP, 8/30/07)

2006        Aug 31, Hurricane John pummeled Mexico's resort-studded Pacific Coast with wind and rain.
    (AP, 8/31/06)

2006        Sep 1, In Mexico City riot police, steel barriers, and water cannons surrounded Mexico's Congress as protesters vowed to stop President Vicente Fox from delivering his final state-of-the-nation address. Mexican lawmakers, protesting conservative Felipe Calderon's victory in the July 2 presidential election, stormed the congressional stage and refused to yield, making Fox the first president in modern Mexican history not to deliver his annual address to Congress. Fox handed in a written copy of his report and delivered it over television.    
    (AP, 9/1/06)(AP, 9/2/06)

2006        Sep 5, The president of Mexico's top electoral court recommended that the full tribunal uphold the slim lead of ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon. Marcelo Garza, the top police in-vestigator for Nuevo Leon, a northern Mexican state that borders Texas, was shot to death by a lone gunman outside an art gallery.
    (AP, 9/5/06)(AP, 9/6/06)

2006        Sep 6, Mexico’s newly declared President-elect Felipe Calderon began building his gov-ernment and his supporters called on backers of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to end weeks of national protests over the disputed July 2 election. Gunmen barged into a bar in cen-tral Mexico and tossed five human heads on the dance floor. An avalanche left 10 villagers dead in northern Mexico.
    (AP, 9/6/06)(AP, 9/7/06)

2006        Sep 7, In Mexico a landslide buried buses and cars on a highway in the central state of Puebla and killed at least four travelers.
    (AP, 9/7/06)

2006        Sep 8, In Mexico a small plane crash near Ensenada on the US-Mexico border killed three American medical volunteers.
    (AP, 9/10/06)

2006        Sep 12, In Mexico gunmen ambushed and killed Enrique Barrera, police chief of the town of Linares in the border state of Nuevo Leon, in the latest slaying of a law officer in a re-gion ravaged by a war between drug gangs.
    (AP, 9/13/06)

2006        Sep 15, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox backed down from a confrontation with thou-sands of leftist sympathizers of Manuel Lopez Obrador, moving the annual Independence Day celebration away from Mexico City's main square to avoid protesters. Fox decided to move the ceremony to the central town of Dolores Hidalgo, where Miguel Hidalgo made the first call for independence from Spain in 1810. Supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador ended the street protest that clogged the heart of the capital for nearly seven weeks, but they vowed to find other ways to resist the incoming conservative president.
    (AP, 9/15/06)

2006        Sep 16, In Mexico hundreds of thousands of supporters of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador elected him the leader of a "parallel government" opposed to President-elect Felipe Calderon's administration. Mexico extradited accused drug kingpin Francisco Rafael Arellano Felix to the US, making him the first major Mexican drug lord to be sent north to face trial on drug charges. He later pleaded guilty to federal charges of selling cocaine in a San Diego mo-tel. Hurricane Lane, a Category 3 storm, battered Mazatlan.
    (SFC, 9/18/06, p.A7)(AP, 9/17/07)

2006        Sep 18, The 184-nation IMF approved reforms to increase the voice of China, South Ko-rea, Turkey, and Mexico to reflect their growing economic sway.
    (SFC, 9/19/06, p.D2)

2006        Sep 19, A group of sexual abuse survivors filed a lawsuit against Mexican Cardinal Nor-berto Rivera, claiming he hid evidence to protect a priest accused of molesting boys. A lawyer for the Chicago-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. Rivera, now Mexico's top-ranking cardinal, helped cover up abuse by the Rev. Nicolas Aguilar involving 50 boys when Aguilar served as a parish priest in central Puebla state in 1987. Rivera was bishop of Tehuacan in Puebla state at the time.
    (AP, 9/19/06)

2006        Sep 23, In Mexico the governor of Oaxaca state warned 70,000 striking teachers that they would be replaced and lose their pay unless they immediately returned to work.
    (AP, 9/24/06)

2006        Sep 28, Mexico’s President-elect Felipe Calderon asked Congress to get tougher on criminals, create a universal health care system and generate jobs so millions of Mexicans do not have to migrate to the US to find work. Calderon also called for reducing the gap between rich and poor and called for a return to life sentences for hardened criminals, including violent kidnappers.
    (AP, 9/28/06)

2006        Sep 29, In Mexico a judge and four jail guards were killed in separate attacks in the Pa-cific resort city of Acapulco.
    (AP, 9/29/06)

2006        Oct 5, In Oaxaca, Mexico, a teacher was hacked to death. A colleague claimed the man was killed for opposing a teachers' strike. Jaime Rene Calva Aragon was on his way to a meet-ing when he was killed by two assailants wielding hefty ice picks.
    (AP, 10/6/06)

2006        Oct 14, In Mexico at least one man opened fire on protesters manning a roadblock in Oaxaca paralyzed by months of conflict, killing one demonstrator and wounding another.
    (AP, 10/15/06)

2006        Oct 15, Mexican authorities arrested a soldier accused of opening fire on a street barri-cade in Oaxaca, killing one demonstrator and wounding another. Elections in Mexico’s Tabasco state showed Andres Rafael Granier of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) defeating Democratic Revolution candidate Cesar Raul Ojeda by 10 points. The next day the PRD ac-cused its rivals of fraud.
    (AP, 10/15/06)(AP, 10/16/06)

2006        Oct 17, In central Mexico an explosion in an area packed with small fireworks factories Capulhuac, 20 miles west of Mexico City, left four people dead and a man with severe burns. In western Mexico 14 people were killed when a passenger bus crashed into the back of a tractor trailer. A spark touched off an explosion aboard a gasoline tanker ship at Pemex's Pajarito ma-rine terminal in the city of Coatzacoalcos, killing eight people and injuring nine others.
    (AP, 10/17/06)

2006        Oct 18, Mexican police discovered two human heads in a backpack in the Pacific state of Guerrero, the latest decapitation victims in a continuing wave of violence.
    (AP, 10/19/06)

2006        Oct 19, Mexico's Senate ruled there was no reason to oust Oaxaca's embattled state governor, eliminating the last formal legal recourse for thousands of protesters who for months have demanded the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz. Jorge Bustos, a commander with the de-funct Federal Security Directorate, was arrested in Mexico City in connection with the 1974 dis-appearance of six alleged guerrilla members. Bustos had arrested six members of the Brigada Lacandona, a 1970s guerrilla faction, who disappeared after Hidalgo state authorities turned them over to the federal intelligence agency.
    (AP, 10/19/06)(AP, 10/20/06)

2006        Oct 20, In Mexico radical protesters and teachers, who have taken over the city of Oax-aca, appeared to be parting ways after the teachers' leaders agreed to end a strike and return to work.
    (AP, 10/21/06)

2006        Oct 21, In Mexico’s Michoacan state, the home state of President-elect Felipe Calderon, 420 homicides were reported for this year, including 19 police chiefs and commanders. Juan Antonio Magana, the state's attorney general, said well over half the killings were drug-related.
    (AP, 10/21/06)

2006        Oct 26, Teachers in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca voted to end a five-month-old strike, allowing 1.3 million children to return to classes and potentially taking the sting out of anti-government protests besieging this historic city.
    (AP, 10/26/06)
2006        Oct 26, President Bush signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to give Republican candidates a pre-election platform for asserting they're tough on illegal immigration.
    (AP, 10/26/06)

2006        Oct 27, In Oaxaca, Mexico, Bradley Roland Will (36), a US journalist and two Mexican men were shot to death. The clashes occurred as leftist protesters barricaded streets as part of a five-month-old campaign to oust the governor. In 2008 two supporters of a protest movement in southern Mexico were arrested for the fatal shooting of the US journalist. Officials said Juan Manuel Martinez, was the gunman, and Octavio Perez was an accomplice who helped cover up the crime. Eight other alleged accomplices were still sought.
    (AP, 10/28/06)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.48)(AP, 10/18/08)

2006        Oct 28, Mexico’s President Vicente Fox announced he was sending federal police into the violence-wracked southern state capital of Oaxaca after a US journalist and two Mexican men were shot to death. The bodies of 3 state police officers, one of whom had been decapi-tated, were found in a sport utility vehicle abandoned outside the resort city of Acapulco.
    (AP, 10/28/06)(AP, 10/28/06)

2006        Oct 29, In Mexico federal forces stormed Oaxaca and pushed protesters and striking teachers out of the city center they had occupied for five months, leaving the colonial city re-sembling a battleground, with riot police and burned vehicles lining the streets. At least one demonstrator was killed.
    (AP, 10/30/06)

2006        Oct 30, The Mexican government authorized the extradition of ex-Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) to face embezzlement charges in his country.
    (AP, 10/31/06)

2006        Oct 31, In Mexico youths roamed the streets of Oaxaca tossing gasoline bombs, hijack-ing vehicles and vowing to keep fighting for the state governor's ouster. Congress urged the governor to resign and leftist leaders urged national support for the movement.
    (AP, 10/31/06)

2006        Nov 2, In Mexico, protesters besieging Oaxaca City forced federal police to retreat from the gates of the state university after six hours of pitched fighting and the rector's call for an end to the government "attack."
    (AP, 11/3/06)

2006        Nov 3, In Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who refused to accept an election tri-bunal's decision that his opponent narrowly won the presidential election, named his "resis-tance" government Cabinet.
    (AP, 11/3/06)

2006        Nov 6, In Mexico City simultaneous explosions hit the Federal Electoral Tribunal, a bank branch and the headquarters of the former ruling party early in the day. Authorities deactivated a homemade explosive device at a second bank branch.
    (AP, 11/6/06)

2006        Nov 7, More than 15,000 white-clad supporters of Oaxaca's embattled governor marched through Oaxaca in their biggest show of strength in a six-month conflict that has left at least nine people dead.
    (AP, 11/7/06)

2006        Nov 9, Mexico City's assembly passed legislation to legally recognize gay civil unions in the capital, the first such vote by a legislative body in the history of the conservative country.
    (AP, 11/9/06)

2006        Nov 10, In Mexico Misael Tamayo Hernandez, editor of El Despertar de la Costa, was found dead in a hotel room in Zihuatanejo, a day after running stories about organized crime and corruption in the city government. Hector Gaxiola, a district police chief in the border city of Tijuana, was shot and killed a day after surviving another attempt on his life. His brother was found next to him. Both had been shot dozens of times.
    (AP, 11/11/06)

2006        Nov 14, Second-grader Saul Arellano, a US citizen, appeared in Mexico's 500-member Chamber of Deputies to plead for help in lobbying Washington to stop the deportation of his mother, an illegal immigrant who has taken refuge in a Chicago church. His efforts paid off with a resolution calling on the US Congress to suspend the deportation of Elvira Arellano (31) and any other illegal immigrant parents of US citizens. US officials said there is no right to sanctuary in a church under US law, and nothing to prevent them from arresting Elvira Arellano, who has lived at the church since Aug. 15, the day she was supposed to surrender for deportation.
    (AP, 11/14/06)

2006        Nov 15, Aides to former leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said he will seek contributions from ordinary Mexicans to support a parallel, "legitimate" admini-stration he declared after losing the July 2 elections to President-elect Felipe Calderon by a ra-zor-thin margin.
    (AP, 11/16/06)

2006        Nov 16, Jose Manuel Nava (53), a former general manager of one of Mexico's oldest newspapers, was found slain in his apartment in the capital, officials said, a week after he went public with his book criticizing the federal government, the business community and newspaper employees.
    (AP, 11/16/06)

2006        Nov 18, The Mexican government released a long-awaited report that for the first time officially blamed "the highest command levels" of three former presidencies for the massacres, tortures and slayings of hundreds of leftists from the 1960s to the 1980s. In Michoacan state at least three of 10 lawyers being held hostage by inmates were killed after police raided the Mil Cumbres prison in Morelia to try to rescue them.
    (AP, 11/18/06)

2006        Nov 19, In Mexico a public defender died of his injuries after being shot by inmates who took a group of lawyers hostage near the central Mexican city of Morelia, bringing the death toll in the incident to five.
    (AP, 11/20/06)
2006        Nov 19, Mexican Gen. Francisco Quiros, imprisoned for drug trafficking and implicated in the disappearance of leftists during Mexico's "dirty war," died from cancer. In 2005 a judge ordered Quiros arrested for the 1974 kidnapping of singer Rosendo Radilla, who disappeared after being seized by soldiers at a roadblock.
    (AP, 11/20/06)

2006        Nov 20, Mexico’s defeated presidential candidate Lopez Obrador planned to be sworn in as the country's "legitimate president" as Mexico celebrated its 1910 revolution.
    (AP, 11/20/06)

2006        Nov 21, Roberto Marcos Garcia (50), chief reporter for the weekly Testimonio crime magazine in Mexico’s port city of Veracruz, was toppled from his motorcycle and run over by unidentified assailants who then shot him at close range.
    (AP, 11/21/06)(SSFC, 12/10/06, p.A21)

2006        Nov 22, In Mexico a violent Mexican drug gang took out a rare, half-page ad in newspa-pers in which they claimed to be anti-crime vigilantes who wanted to stop kidnapping, robbery and the sale of methamphetamine in the western state of Michoacan.
    (AP, 11/23/06)

2006        Nov 23, In Mexico Police chief Baltazar Gomez and Osvaldo Rodriguez, both of the Monterrey suburb of Santa Catarina, were killed just after midnight by a gunman who followed them inside a convenience store where they had gone after attending a funeral. Crusading journalist Jesus Blancornelas, who relentlessly investigated drug cartels and government cor-ruption despite an attempt on his life and the killing of colleagues, died of a chronic illness in Ti-juana.
    (AP, 11/23/06)

2006        Nov 25, In Mexico singer Valentin Elizalde (27) was ambushed and gunned down along with his manager and driver following a performance in Reynosa. His ballads included narco-corridos, which honored the exploits of drug dealers.
    (SSFC, 11/26/06, p.A19)

2006        Nov 26, In Mexico bands of youths rampaged through downtown Oaxaca, torching build-ings and cars hours after federal police used tear gas to drive off a violent mob of leftists in the latest spasm of protests against the state governor. 30 to 40 armed men entered the La Bar-ranca hunting ranch near the US border and kidnapped five men including 3 Texans. Librado Pina Jr. (49), owns the popular deer-hunting ranch near Hidalgo, was released on Dec 18. His son and 2 others had been released earlier. There was no word on the ranch's Mexican cook, Marco Ortiz.
    (AP, 11/26/06)(AP, 11/29/06)(AP, 12/18/06)
2006        Nov 26, Raul Velasco (73), who hosted one of Mexico's most popular and enduring tele-vision programs, "Siempre en Domingo," died at his home in Acapulco.
    (AP, 11/26/06)

2006        Nov 28, In Mexico gunmen attacked a police car in the border city of Tijuana, killing Gerardo Santiago Prado, the police chief of Mesa de Otay, his bodyguard and a secretary.
    (AP, 11/30/06)

2006        Nov 29, A Mexican court reinstated an arrest warrant for former President Luis Echever-ria, just four months after a federal judge had dismissed the same charges of genocide in con-nection with a 1968 student massacre.
    (AP, 11/29/06)

2006        Nov 30, Mexican police found the bullet-ridden bodies of two men, including a missing journalist, just days after the body of another slain reporter was found in the area. Police dis-covered the body of reporter Adolfo Sanchez Guzman (32) near Ciudad Mendoza, 75 miles west of Veracruz, not far from where his car was found abandoned on Nov 28. Police on Dec 1 arrested Juan Carlos Palestino (30) and Julian Rosas Palestino (34) after witnesses said the two brothers had been looking for Martinez. The brothers had accused Martinez of stealing their truck.
    (AP, 12/1/06)(AP, 12/5/06)

2006        Nov, In Mexico credit card interest rates averaged over 30% despite efforts by Guillermo Ortiz, head of the Central Bank, to get banks to lower their costs. 80% of the country’s banking assets were foreign owned.
    (Econ, 11/25/06, p.76)

2006        Dec 1, Felipe Calderon took the oath of office as Mexico's president amid jeers and whistles, in a chaotic ceremony before congress preceded by a brawl between lawmakers still divided over the nation's tight presidential election.
    (AP, 12/1/06)

2006        Dec 2, Mexico's new president pledged to substantially raise the wages of the armed forces, calling them a crucial weapon against heavily armed drug gangs terrorizing the nation.
    (AP, 12/2/06)

2006        Dec 3, Mexico’s newly sworn-in president Felipe Calderon decreed a 10% pay cut for himself and his cabinet members, echoing a central campaign promise of the leftist rival he beat by a razor-thin margin.
    (AP, 12/3/06)

2006        Dec 5, Mexico’s Pres. Calderon, under pressure to promote the social programs his left-ist rival championed, presented an austere budget that increases spending for social programs to help the country's poorest. Mexican police arrested Flavio Sosa, the symbolic leader of a six-month-long protest movement that took over southern Oaxaca city, hours after he gave a news conference saying he had come to the capital to start talks with the government.
    (AP, 12/5/06)

2006        Dec 6, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon announced a program to help Mexico's 100 poorest communities, responding to leftist critics who accuse the conservative leader of wanting to help only the rich.
    (AP, 12/7/06)

2006        Dec 6, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon announced a program to help Mexico's 100 poorest communities, responding to leftist critics who accuse the conservative leader of wanting to help only the rich.
    (AP, 12/7/06)

2006        Dec 8, In Mexico more than 100 prisoners escaped from a state penitentiary a few miles from Cancun's resort zone after hundreds of inmates overpowered guards with knives and bats. Police quickly recaptured most of the men, but there were still 17 at large. More than 250 fed-eral police agents surrounded the offices of the Oaxaca state police force and seized its weap-ons to determine whether any were used in shootings during six months of demonstrations in Oaxaca City. Assailants shot dead an Indian activist in Mexico's conflict-ridden state of Oaxaca. The bullet-ridden corpse of Raul Marcial Perez was found on a road near the Mixtec Indian community of Agua Fria about 120 miles north of Oaxaca City.
    (AP, 12/9/06)(AP, 12/10/06)

2006        Dec 10, Leonel Cota, president of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), Mexico's largest leftist party, led thousands of protesters in a march to the center Oaxaca, demanding the resignation of the state governor and the withdrawal of thousands of federal police.
    (AP, 12/11/06)

2006        Dec 12, Mexico's new president launched his first major offensive against drug gangs, sending more than 6,500 federal forces to Michoacan, his violence-plagued home state, to crack down on turf wars that have left hundreds dead in a wave of execution-style killings and beheadings. The body of Luis Felipe Zavala, cousin of Mexico's first lady Margarita Zavala, was found in his minivan in the city of Naucalpan in Mexico State.
    (AP, 12/12/06)(AP, 12/14/06)

2006        Dec 13, A group of about 300 Mazahua Indians briefly seized a water treatment plant on Mexico City's western outskirts and temporarily cut off one of the main sources of water for the metropolis of 18 million people. The protest was motivated by demands for more government development aid. The government teamed up with doctors, academics and a US-based drug company to announce a campaign to reduce the number of smokers in Mexico by more than 10 percent in three years.
    (AP, 12/14/06)

2006        Dec 15, In Mexico Elias Valencia, a suspected head of the Valencia cartel, was arrested along with four other people at a mountain ranch near the town of Aguililla in Michoacan state.
    (AP, 12/17/06)

2006        Dec 16, In Mexico hundreds of federal police officers packed up their tents and marched out of Oaxaca’s central square, ending their seven-week occupation to put down a lengthy pro-test by leftists that had left nine people dead. A Mexican air force plane crashed into the sea near the resort city of Acapulco and rescue teams were searching for its four crew members.
    (AP, 12/16/06)

2006        Dec 19, Officials said thousands of soldiers sent to seize control of one of Mexico's top drug-producing regions have discovered widespread cultivation of a hybrid marijuana plant that is easy to grow and difficult to kill.
    (AP, 12/19/06)

2006        Dec 28, In central Mexico a passenger bus collided with a freight train, killing 22 people.
    (AP, 12/28/06)

2006        Mexico’s Transportation and Communications Secretary Luis Tellez alleged in a re-corded conversation that former President Carlos Salinas (1988-1994) stole from a secret gov-ernment fund. The contents of the conversation were made public in February, 2009. Tellez re-signed 2 weeks later following threats that other recordings would be revealed.
    (SFC, 3/4/09, p.A2)
2006        In Mexico some Zetas, former military special-forces members, broke away from their Gulf cartel associations to form the La Familia organized crime group.
    (Econ, 7/25/09, p.34)
2006        Mexico, the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, counted a population of some 106 million people. An estimated 500,000 Mexicans left the country each year in search of bet-ter opportunities.
    (Econ, 11/18/06, Survey p.3,16)
2006        Mexico counted 2,200 murders this year linked to organized crime. Reporters Without Borders later counted 9 journalists killed this year in Mexico along with 3 missing.
    (Econ, 6/16/07, p.45)(Econ, 10/27/07, p.47)

2007        Jan 2, Mexico said it is sending some 3,300 soldiers and federal police officers to fight drug gangs in the crime-plagued border city of Tijuana, which has become a major smuggling route for cocaine and methamphetamine entering the United States.
    (AP, 1/3/07)

2007        Jan 4, Jorge Bajos Valverde, a Mexican state legislator, was gunned down in the center of Acapulco on his way to an interview at a radio and TV station.
    (AP, 1/5/07)

2007        Jan 5, Mexican officials in Michoacan state said they had found nine bodies in a shallow grave in the city of Uruapan.
    (AP, 1/6/07)

2007        Jan 6, Mexican federal and state police manned checkpoints within Tijuana’s city limits as local police suspended their patrols because soldiers sent to crack down on drug gangs and corruption seized most of their guns on suspicion they aided traffickers.
    (AP, 1/6/07)

2007        Jan 9, In Mexico Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has refused to accept his slim loss to President Felipe Calderon in July's election, launched a weekly TV show mocking the gov-ernment's battle against crime and unemployment and promising to promote a law targeting Mexico's monopolies.
    (AP, 1/10/07)

2007        Jan 12, Francisco Javier Dominguez-Rivera (22) of Puebla, Mexico, was killed in a con-frontation with the unidentified agent north of the US-Mexico border in Arizona between Bisbee and Douglas. On Jan 16 the Mexican government sent a diplomatic note to the United States protesting the fatal shooting.
    (AP, 1/16/07)

2007        Jan 13, It was reported that swarms of locusts had descended on the Mexican state of Yucatan and threatened over 12,000 acres of vegetation.
    (SFC, 1/13/07, p.B8)

2007        Jan 14, Gunmen burst into the home of Jaime Meraz Martinez, a political leader in the northern Mexican state of Durango, and fatally shot him, two family members and an employee.
    (AP, 1/15/07)

2007        Jan 15, President Felipe Calderon launched a program to create jobs for young Mexi-cans and curb the flow of millions of migrants to the United States.
    (AP, 1/15/07)

2007        Jan 16, Pedro Diaz Parada, a drug cartel leader, was arrested in the southern state of Oaxaca and taken to Mexico City. This was the first major drug arrest under the administration of President Felipe Calderon.
    (AP, 1/18/07)

2007        Jan 18, President Felipe Calderon signed an accord with businesses to curb soaring tortilla prices and protect Mexico's poor from speculative sellers and a surge in the cost of corn driven by the US ethanol industry.
    (AP, 1/18/07)
2007        Jan 18, Truck driver Albano Ramirez Santos tried to commit suicide by throwing himself onto the tracks of the Mexico City subway and was later beaten to death by police. Santos was reportedly despondent over the theft of his truck.
    (AP, 1/21/07)

2007        Jan 19, Mexico extradited four major drug traffickers to the US, including Osiel Cardenas, head of the so-called Gulf Cartel. President Felipe Calderon announced that 7,600 soldiers have massed in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero to go after drug gangs that have committed beheadings and other violence in the resort city of Acapulco in recent months.
    (AP, 1/19/07)(AP, 1/20/07)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.p33)

2007        Jan 24, In southern Mexico a bus plunged into a ravine in remote mountains, killing at least 29 people.
    (AP, 1/25/07)

2007        Jan 26, Six federal police officers involved in President Felipe Calderon's anti-drug op-eration were being investigated for extortion after they were videotaped taking money from a driver in the border city of Tijuana.
    (AP, 1/27/07)

2007        Jan 27, Police in Tijuana, Mexico, got their guns back three weeks after they were forced to turn over weapons to federal authorities because of allegations they were colluding with drug traffickers.
    (AP, 1/27/07)

2007        Jan 31, In Mexico City some 75,000 unionists, farmers and leftists marched to protest price increases in basic foodstuffs like tortillas, a direct challenge to the new president's market-oriented economic policies blamed by some for widening the gulf between rich and poor.
    (AP, 2/1/07)
2007        Jan 31, In Mexico a lesbian couple registered what officials called Mexico's first gay civil union in the northern city of Saltillo.
    (AP, 1/31/07)

2007        Feb 1, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon praised a new law that obligates federal and local authorities to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women, and he promised a "relentless" fight against gender-related abuse.   
    (AP, 2/1/07)

2007        Feb 3, In Mexico thousands of protesters marched in Oaxaca to demand the resignation of the state governor. A man's chopped up body was discovered in Acapulco dumped in plastic garbage bags.
    (AP, 2/3/07)(Reuters, 2/5/07)

2007        Feb 6, In Mexico more than a dozen armed assailants staged and videotaped simulta-neous attacks against two offices of the state attorney general in Acapulco, killing five agents and two secretaries.
    (AP, 2/6/07)

2007        Feb 14, Mexican immigration agents allegedly locked 10 Guatemalan and two Salva-doran migrants in a trailer after they refused to pay a bribe against of $110 each. In late 2008 the country's National Human Rights Commission called for a government investigation.
    (AP, 12/31/08)

2007        Feb 15, Assailants shot dead four police officers in the western Mexican city of Aguascalientes, the latest in a wave of slayings of law enforcement officers across Mexico.
    (AP, 2/15/07)

2007        Feb 18, Officials said the Mexican government will expand its anti-drug raids to two states across the border from Texas, deploying more than 3,000 soldiers, sailors and federal police.
    (AP, 2/19/07)

2007        Feb 19, Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced that soldiers waging an offen-sive against drug traffickers will get a pay hike of 45 percent this year in a bid to insulate them from corruption. This coincided with a decision to lower his own pay by 10% and abolish pen-sions for Mexican presidents.
    (AP, 2/19/07)(SSFC, 7/8/07, p.A7)

2007        Feb 22, The Bush administration announced its plan to have US inspectors oversee Mexican trucking companies that carry cargo across the border.  Mexico responded to the US announcement by saying it will allow trucks from 100 US companies to travel across the border. The news that Mexican trucks will be allowed to haul freight deeper into the US drew an angry reaction the next day from labor leaders, safety advocates and members of Congress.
    (AP, 2/23/07)

2007        Feb 26, Four Mexican soldiers were arrested and accused of raping and murdering a 73-year-old woman a day earlier in a case that outraged Indian groups in Soledad Atzompa in Veracruz state. In May a special prosecutor found no evidence that soldiers beat and raped Ernestina Ascensio Rosario. An autopsy on Ascensio's body showed that she died of acute anemia from internal bleeding in her digestive tract.
    (AP, 3/1/07)(AP, 5/1/07)

2007        Feb 27, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that the armed forces cannot kick out HIV-positive members because doing so is discriminatory and unconstitutional. Mexico's head of migration pledged to improve the agency's detention centers in response to criticism that Mex-ico fails to give Central American immigrants the same respect it demands for its own citizens in the United States.
    (AP, 2/28/07)
2007        Feb 27, CompUSA said it will close 126 retail stores by the end of May. The restructure would leave 103 stores and include a $440 million cash infusion from parent company US Commercial Corp., a holding company in Mexico City controlled by Carlos Slim.
    (SFC, 2/28/07, p.C3)

2007        Feb, Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico City’s newly elected mayor, sent 600 police on a raid to evict residents from 73 apartments in a building in Tepito, said to be a drug-dealing center. Raids there and nearby netted 2 kilos of cocaine, 30 tons of DVDs and 90 kilos of marijuana.
    (Econ, 3/10/07, p.34)
2007        Feb, Mexican customs agent Jorge Santillan seized a truck crossing from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico, carrying a grenade launcher and 17 grenades along with 18 ri-fles and 17 pistols. Days later, the agent was shot to death with a Kalashnikov assault rifle.
    (AP, 8/15/07)

2007        Mar 3, In southern Mexico gunmen killed two members of Mexico's former ruling party in the mountain city of Tlapa in Guerrero state.
    (AP, 3/3/07)

2007        Mar 6, In Mexico gunmen wounded Gen. Francisco Fernandez, the top security official in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, and killed his driver.
    (AP, 3/7/07)

2007        Mar 9, President Felipe Calderon proposed sweeping reforms to Mexico's justice sys-tem, including US-style trials and a unified criminal code. Mexican federal police detained 81 Chinese immigrants and 22 immigration agents after the Chinese were discovered hiding in the Cancun airport terminal, possibly with the protection of Mexican immigration officers.
    (AP, 3/10/07)

2007        Mar 10, In northern Mexico 8 people were killed and 11 were injured when a bus slammed into a tractor trailer carrying aluminum beams.
    (AP, 3/10/07)

2007        Mar 13, In Mexico Pres. Bush met with Pres. Felipe Calderon in Merida. Bush sought to soothe strained ties by promising to prod Congress to overhaul tough US immigration policies, but Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized US plans for a 700-mile border fence. Hun-dreds of demonstrators marched to the US Embassy in Mexico City, attacking riot police with concrete blocks, metal bars and tearing down barricades to protest Bush's visit.
    (AP, 3/14/07)(AP, 3/13/08)

2007        Mar 15, Mexican Federal agents seized the cash, eight luxury vehicles, seven weapons and a machine to make pills during a raid at a house in Lomas de Chapultepec. The attorney general later said the $206 million in cash seized was connected to one of the hemisphere's largest networks for trafficking pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in methamphetamines. The ring had been operating since 2004 and was run by a native of China who had gained Mexican citizenship. A recount put the cashed seized to over $207 million.
    (AP, 3/17/07)(AP, 3/22/07)

2007        Mar 16, In Mexico an economist and a journalist became the first couple united under Mexico City's new gay civil union law.
    (AP, 3/16/07)

2007        Mar 17, Hundreds of Mexican federal police and soldiers surrounded the headquarters of Tabasco's state police and arrested top current and former commanders in a raid apparently linked to an assassination attempt against the state's public safety secretary. Mireya Lopez Portillo, the daughter of a retired Mexican general, and her husband, a television network ex-ecutive, were shot to death while traveling in a sport utility vehicle in Mexico City. This raised fears the army is being targeted for attacks because of its broadening role in law enforcement.
    (AP, 3/18/07)
2007        Mar 17, The Arenitas waste water treatment plant, that Mexican officials say will help prevent pollution of US waterways, was inaugurated in the city of Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, Calif.
    (AP, 3/18/07)

2007        Mar 26, An American border inspector was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for taking cash and cars from smugglers, allowing them to shuttle illegal immigrants from Mexico into the United States.
    (AP, 3/26/07)

2007        Mar 27, Police in Mexico City kicked off a campaign to exchange guns for computers and other gifts in an attempt to reduce firearm deaths. Two bodies were found wrapped in plas-tic bags and sheets behind a television station in Mexico's port city of Veracruz, apparent vic-tims of drug-related violence.
    (AP, 3/27/07)(AP, 3/28/07)

2007        Mar 29, In northern Mexico gunmen killed two police officers and six other people in less than 48 hours, the latest victims in a wave of drug-related violence.
    (AP, 3/30/07)

2007        Mar 30, A video purportedly showing the beheading of a drug cartel hit man appeared on video-sharing Web site YouTube, and its makers called on Mexicans to kill more members of the gang.
    (AP, 4/1/07)

2007        Apr 1, In Monterrey, Mexico, a tractor-trailer lost its brakes and killed nine people as it plowed through a residential area. The driver of a tractor-trailer was charged with homicide after testing positive for drugs.
    (AP, 4/2/07)(AP, 4/5/07)

2007        Apr 6, Amado Ramirez, the Acapulco correspondent for Mexico's top television news network, was shot to death.
    (AP, 4/7/07)

2007        Apr 11, A Mexican court ordered the reinstatement of ousted mineworkers union leader Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, more than a year after the government turned him out of office based on complaints of corruption.
    (AP, 4/11/07)

2007        Apr 12, Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed a law eliminating prison sentences for libel or defamation, drawing praise from media watchdog groups.
    (AP, 4/12/07)
2007        Apr 14, In Mexico a speeding bus crashed into a tractor-trailer outside the border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing 28 people and injuring 11 others.
    (AP, 4/15/07)(AP, 4/15/07)

2007        Apr 15, A 14-year-old matador who left Spain to escape his home country's ban on young bullfighters was nearly gored to death in a Mexican City ring, his lung punctured by a 900-pound bull.
    (AP, 4/16/07)

2007        Apr 16, Police found 17 bodies stuffed in cars or dumped on streets in garbage bags across Mexico in the latest wave of violence apparently triggered by warring drug gangs.
    (AP, 4/17/07)
2007        Apr 16, Nicaraguan police announced the arrest of more than two dozen local members of Mexico's powerful Sinaloa drug cartel but said they were still seeking the group's leader.
    (AP, 4/16/07)

2007        Apr 18, Mexican police and soldiers battled gunmen at a hospital in Tijuana in violence that left at least three people dead before the authorities subdued the attackers. Authorities said next day that the gunmen were hit men for the city's Arellano Felix drug cartel.
    (AP, 4/18/07)(AP, 4/19/07)

2007        Apr 21, In Mexico a Durango state police commander was kidnapped and killed and two other officers were shot dead in a gun battle with his abductors.
    (AP, 4/22/07)

2007        Apr 22, Marcos Leyes Perez, the son of the US consul in southern Oaxaca state, was stabbed during an apparent mugging.
    (AP, 4/23/07)

2007        Apr 23, Eleazar Medina Rojas, described as a key member of the powerful Gulf drug cartel, was arrested in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, along with his father, four other cartel members and four women. Authorities reported the killing of Jorge Gonzalez, police chief of Cardenas, in the southern Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Mexican police found the body of Saul Noe Martinez Ortega (36), a newspaper editor abducted last week in the border city of Agua Prieta. He had been dead at least six days and was found in neighboring Chihuahua state.
    (AP, 4/23/07)

2007        Apr 24, Mexico City lawmakers voted to legalize abortion during the first three months of pregnancy, a landmark decision likely to heighten church-state tensions in the Roman Catholic nation and lead to a bitter court battle.
    (AP, 4/25/07)

2007        Apr 26, A new measure legalizing abortions in Mexico City was published into law, allow-ing doctors to almost immediately begin terminating pregnancies in their first trimester.
    (AP, 4/26/07)

2007        Apr 30, US and Mexican law enforcement officials said Mexican druglords are taking over the business of smuggling migrants into the United States, using them as human decoys to divert authorities from billions of dollars in cocaine shipments across the same border.
    (AP, 4/30/07)

2007        Apr, Mexico’s CompartamosBanco went public as a lender to the poor. It was created in 1990 as a non-Governmental Organization (NGO). ACCION Int’l., a charity that has helped to spread microfinance since the 1970s, was an early investor and banked $140 million in the IPO, while retaining a 9% stake. ACCION had received funding from USAID.
    (Econ, 5/17/08, p.93)(http://tinyurl.com/46esnp)

2007        May 1, In Mexico 5 soldiers, including a colonel, and a suspected drug cartel enforcer were killed in a shootout in the western state of Michoacan, which has been plagued by drug violence and is the target of a military-led anti-drug offensive.
    (AP, 5/2/07)

2007        May 6, More than 18,000 people stripped down and bared it all in Mexico City's vast main square for US photographer Spencer Tunick's biggest nude shoot yet.
    (AP, 5/6/07)

2007        May 7, In western Mexico 4 purported drug smugglers were killed in a shootout with sol-diers in Apatzingan, Michoacan state, the second deadly clash in a week between traffickers and troops in the same remote, mountainous region.
    (AP, 5/7/07)

2007        May 9, In Mexico gunmen opened fire on a naval commander in the Pacific resort city of Ixtapa and killed his bodyguard. Suspected drug traffickers attacked a military checkpoint in the Pacific resort of Huatulco. One attacker was killed.
    (AP, 5/10/07)

2007        May 12, In Mexico a severed head accompanied by a note of defiance from organized crime gangs and two hand grenades was found outside a military barracks in Veracruz state.
    (AP, 5/12/07)

2007        May 14, In Mexico City gunmen fatally shot Jose Nemesio Lugo, Mexico’s new federal narcotics intelligence chief, as he was on his way to work at the Attorney General's Office.
    (AP, 5/14/07)(SFC, 5/25/07, p.A1)

2007        May 15, A top Mexican anti-drug official said the US must do more to stop weapons from being smuggled into the hands of drug traffickers who are using them to kill Mexican sol-diers and police.
    (AP, 5/15/07)

2007        May 16, In Mexico over 40 armed men abducted and killed 4 police officers south of the Arizona border.
    (SFC, 5/17/07, p.A3)
2007        May 16, Thomas Frank White, a US businessman, was convicted of raping a teenage boy and sentenced to more than 7 years in jail in Mexico. White, who founded the brokerage firm Thomas White & Co. in 1978, was arrested in Thailand in 2003 at the behest of Mexican officials and later extradited.
    (AP, 5/16/07)

2007        May 17, Mexican police chased the remnants of a criminal assault force through the mountains of Sonora near the Arizona border after kidnappings and gunbattles that left at least 22 people dead.
    (AP, 5/17/07)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.45)

2007        May 19, Assailants shot dead a police commander in a wealthy Monterrey suburb, the latest in a wave of killings of law enforcement officials across Mexico.
    (AP, 5/19/07)

2007        May 23, In western Mexico a tractor-trailer loaded with sand smashed into a toll booth and rebounded into other vehicles, setting off a blaze that killed 10 people.
    (AP, 5/24/07)

2007        May 25, In Mexico 2 members of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR), a Marxist guer-rilla group, disappeared. A week later the group blamed the government and called for their safe return and warned of dire consequences. In July the group began blowing up natural gas pipelines. Attacks took place on July 6,10 and Sep 10.
    (WSJ, 11/14/07, p.A1)

2007        May 27, In southern Mexico assailants armed with Kalashnikov rifles shot dead six fam-ily members, including three children, as they ambushed a minivan on a country road.
    (AP, 5/27/07)

2007        May 28, In Mexico City Riyo Mori, a 20-year-old dancer from Japan who hopes to some-day open an international dance school, was crowned Miss Universe 2007.
    (AP, 5/28/07)

2007        May 31, Mexico's Televisa network, known around the world for its soap operas, said it plans to expand in China, following the lead of taco chains and other Mexican businesses look-ing for a slice of the Asian nation's market.
    (AP, 5/31/07)

2007        Jun 1, Mexican soldiers fired on a family traveling to a funeral when they failed to stop after being ordered to do so at the checkpoint near the village of La Joya. 19 Mexican soldiers were sent to a military prison June 4 for the shooting that killed two women and three children.
    (AP, 6/5/07)

2007        Jun 3, In southern Mexico tons of bananas collapsed the false floor of a tractor-trailer smuggling migrants, killing 6 people hidden inside a secret compartment and wounding a dozen others.
    (AP, 6/4/07)

2007        Jun 11, Mexican police and soldiers arrested three men during an operation to fight ille-gal logging in a mountain region south of Mexico City where environmentalist Aldo Zamora (21) was killed on May 15.
    (AP, 6/11/07)

2007        Jun 14, Abel Diaz Lucas, also known as Jorge Guevara-Perez, was arrested in El Paso, Texas. The next day he was handed to Mexican authorities, who had been trying to find Diaz for five years. They accused him of running a central Mexico gang notorious for cutting off the fin-gers and ears of their victims and sending them to their families to demand ransom money.
    (AP, 6/15/07)

2007        Jun 15, In Mexico the government of Oaxaca apologized for the first time for a police raid on protesters last year that led to the country's worst political unrest in years.
    (AP, 6/15/07)

2007        Jun 19, Antonio Aguilar (88), Mexican mariachi singer and actor, died. He recorded more than 150 albums and began his acting career during Mexico's "Golden Era" of cinema. He appeared in 167 films, including "The Undefeated" starring John Wayne.
    (AP, 6/20/07)

2007        Jun 21, Mario Villanueva, the former Mexican governor of Quintana Roo, was freed after six years behind bars and immediately re-arrested on a US extradition request in which he is accused of helping smuggle 200 tons of cocaine into the United States.
    (AP, 6/21/07)

2007        Jun 25, Mexico temporarily removed all 284 of its top federal police officers from their jobs and is forcing them to undergo psychological reviews to prove they will not be corrupted in the fight against drug trafficking.
    (AP, 6/25/07)

2007        Jul 4, In Mexico heavy rains triggered the landslide on a remote winding road near the town of Eloxochitlan in the state of Puebla. As many as 60 passengers were thought to be bur-ied in a bus on the rural road. 32 bodies were recovered.
    (AP, 7/5/07)(AP, 7/6/07)
2007        Jul 4, Mexico’s financial website Sentido Comun reported that telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu (67) has overtaken Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the richest person on the planet.
    (AFP, 7/4/07)

2007        Jul 5, Mine workers across Mexico waged a 24-hour strike, hoping to achieve better safety standards and to improve collective labor's footing in the industry.
    (AP, 7/6/07)
2007        Jul 5, In Mexico a small cargo jet failed to take off in Culiacan and barreled onto an ad-jacent highway, killing at least 9 people, including two soldiers assigned to the Mexican presi-dent's security detail.
    (AP, 7/6/07)

2007        Jul 7, A global poll picked the Great Wall of China, Rome's Colosseum, India's Taj Ma-hal, Peru’s Macchu Picchu, Jordan’s Petra, Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid as the new seven wonders of the world. The campaign to name the new wonders was launched in 1999 by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber.
    (AP, 7/8/07)

2007        Jul 10, Mexico's government called a series of gas pipeline explosions a threat to the nation's democratic institutions and vowed to step up security after a guerrilla group claimed re-sponsibility for the blasts.
    (AP, 7/11/07)

2007        Jul 11, In western Mexico Honda, Hershey's and other multinational companies tempo-rarily shut down their factories after rebels attacked a key natural gas pipeline.
    (AP, 7/12/07)

2007        Jul 12, News reports said Mexico’s Pres. Felipe Calderon has dispatched a new 5,000- strong elite military unit to guard strategic sites, including oil refineries and dams in the wake of recent guerrilla attacks on pipelines operated by Pemex.
    (SFC, 7/13/07, p.A10)

2007        Jul 13, Roman Robles-Cota (32), a police chief in the northern Mexican town of Sonoyta pleaded guilty to charges that he bribed a US Border Patrol agent in 2005 in an effort to help a smuggling operation.
    (AP, 7/13/07)

2007        Jul 16, In Mexico police fired tear gas to prevent hundreds of leftist protesters from reaching the venue of an international folk festival in Oaxaca, in the worst outbreak of violence in the troubled Mexican city since November.
    (AP, 7/16/07)

2007        Jul 23, Zhenli Ye Gon was arrested in a Maryland restaurant, four months after police discovered $207 million at his Mexico City mansion in what US officials have called the world's biggest seizure of drug cash. Mexican officials had 60 days to file their legal arguments for Ye Gon's extradition. Ye Gon has claimed that $150 million of the money belonged to Mexico's rul-ing party, and that he was forced to store it for party officials in his mansion under threat of death during the 2006 presidential race. Ye Gon later told US prosecutors he had sold tons of a chemical used to make methamphetamine on the black market.
    (AP, 7/24/07)(AP, 10/23/09)

2007        Jul 30, The body of Luis Lazaro Lara Morejon, a Cuban-American who was under inves-tigation in a migrant smuggling case, was found riddled with bullets along a road outside Can-cun, Mexico.
    (AP, 7/31/07)

2007        Jul 31, In Mexico the bodies of Josue Hernandez (32) and Anibal Sanchez (30), both agents with Mexico's Federal Agency of Investigation, were found in Guerrero state, where they were gathering intelligence on drug traffickers. The agents had taken part in a raid that discov-ered $205 million in cash in a Mexico City mansion.
    (AP, 8/2/07)

2007        Aug 5, Jose Guadalupe Osuna (51) of Mexico’s National Action Party won the elections for governor in Baha California. He defeated PRI candidate Jorge Hank, a former mayor of Ti-juana and self-proclaimed billionaire with links to organized crime.
    (SFC, 8/7/07, p.A9)

2007        Aug 18, Hurricane Dean barreled across the eastern Caribbean and took aim at His-paniola, Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, with forecasters saying it could turn into a monster Category 5 storm within 72 hours. Dean claimed at least six lives as it began sweeping past the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
    (AP, 8/18/07)

2007        Aug 19, Elvira Arellano (32), an illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son, was deported from the US to Mexico, where she vowed to continue her campaign to change US immigration laws.
    (AP, 8/21/07)(AP, 8/19/08)

2007        Aug 20, Tens of thousands of tourists fled the beaches of the Mayan Riviera as Hurri-cane Dean roared toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
    (AP, 8/20/08)

2007        Aug 21, Hurricane Dean slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico as a roaring Category 5 hurricane, the most intense Atlantic storm to make landfall in two decades. Dean made landfall after killing 13 people in the Caribbean.
    (AP, 8/22/07)

2007        Aug 22, Hurricane Dean closed in on the Mexican mainland, battering oil platforms on the Bay of Campeche. Dean was downgraded to a tropical storm as it drenched central Mexico.
    (AP, 8/22/07)(WSJ, 8/23/07, p.A1)

2007        Aug 23, The remnants of Hurricane Dean dumped heavy rain across central Mexico, drenching mudslide-prone mountains as it pushed its way inland after slamming into the na-tion's Gulf Coast as a Category 2 storm. Thousands of Mayan Indians lost homes as Hurricane Dean blew through the Yucatan peninsula, but their real wealth was the trees, now scattered and broken in the storm's wake. Village after village is carpeted with fallen mangoes, oranges, guanabanas and mameys that will never be harvested. Across Mexico at least 10 people died from the storm.
    (AP, 8/23/07)(WSJ, 8/24/07, p.A1)

2007        Aug 31, The World Trade Organization opened a formal investigation into allegations by the US and Mexico that China is providing illegal subsidies for a range of industries.
    (AP, 8/31/07)

2007        Sep 1, In Mexico Tropical Storm Henriette dumped heavy rains on Acapulco, flooding streets and prompting officials to close more than 1,000 schools, while Tropical Storm Felix formed in the Caribbean.
    (AP, 9/1/07)

2007        Sep 5, Hurricane Henriette threatened Mexico's mainland after punishing the Los Cabos resorts.
    (AP, 9/5/07)

2007        Sep 6, Martin Villegas, Mexican boot maker to world leaders, including President Bush and Vicente Fox, was arrested in Colorado along with two other Mexican nationals and two US residents following a three-year undercover operation by US Fish and Wildlife Service agents. The five allegedly made 25 illegal shipments of banned skins into the US since 2005.
    (AP, 9/22/07)

2007        Sep 9, In northern Mexico a truck carrying 25 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up after colliding with another vehicle, killing at least 37 people, including three reporters who came to the scene near Sacramento.
    (AP, 9/10/07)(Econ, 9/15/07, p.40)

2007        Sep 10, Several explosions in Veracruz state, believed to be the work of saboteurs, ripped apart natural gas pipelines for Mexico's state oil monopoly. The explosions forced the evacuation of some 12,000 people. The so-called People's Revolutionary Army (EPR) claimed responsibility.
    (AP, 9/11/07)
2007        Sep 10, In central Mexico a bus carrying worshippers on a pilgrimage to a famous shrine plunged into a valley, killing nine passengers and leaving 38 injured.
    (AP, 9/11/07)

2007        Sep 11, Mexican President Felipe Calderon visited India's technology hub of Bangalore to get a feel for the success of its outsourcing companies, and to encourage them to invest more in Mexico.
    (AP, 9/11/07)

2007        Sep 15, In western Mexico a bus carrying tourists including passengers of a flight from Phoenix crashed, killing at least 17 people.
    (AP, 9/16/07)

2007        Sep 28, In Mexico City more than 30 federal agents arrested Avila Beltran (46), who al-legedly spent more than a decade working her way to the top echelons of Mexico's male-dominated drug trade.
    (AP, 10/4/07)
2007        Sep 28, Hurricane Lorenzo crashed into Mexico's Gulf coast before dawn, ripping apart shacks, uprooting trees and sending billboards flying through the air. At least 5 people died.
    (AP, 9/28/07)(AP, 9/29/07)

2007        Oct 8, Police in Mexico City arrested Jose Luis Calva, an aspiring horror novelist, after discovering his girlfriend's torso in his closet, a leg in the refrigerator and bones in a cereal box. Police had come to Calva's apartment to investigate the disappearance of his girlfriend, Alejan-dra Galeana, a 30-year-old pharmacy clerk and single mother.
    (AP, 10/11/07)

2007        Oct 12, In Mexico more than 1,000 police officers in riot gear blocked street vendors from setting up stands selling knockoff purses and pirated DVDs, clearing Mexico City's clogged historic center for the first time in more than a decade.
    (AP, 10/13/07)

2007        Oct 18, Teenage pop star Belinda (18), who starred in the Disney Channel's "Cheetah Girls 2," won the video of the year award at the MTV Video Music Awards Latin America in Mex-ico City. The native of Madrid, Spain, who grew up in Mexico, also won best solo artist.
    (AP, 10/19/07)

2007        Oct 16, A boat from Guatemala with over 20 migrants capsized. Mexican authorities by the end of the week recovered the bodies of 15 migrants. The vessel was believed to be carry-ing more than 20 people. There were 2 survivors.
    (AP, 10/21/07)

2007        Oct 22, The US announced the Merida Initiative. It was signed into law on June 30, 2008. It is a security cooperation between the United States and the government of Mexico and the countries of Central America, with the aim of combating the threats of drug trafficking, transnational crime and money laundering. The assistance includes training, equipment and in-telligence.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9rida_Initiative)
2007        Oct 22,     Pres. Bush asked Congress for $196.4 billion for the Iraq war. This included $500 million to help Mexico fight drug traffickers as Mexico and the US announced plans for a $1.4 billion aid package to fight drug trafficking and other organized crime south of the border.
    (SFC, 10/23/07, p.A7)(WSJ, 10/23/07, p.A1)

2007        Oct 23, At least 21 oil workers were killed when a drilling rig hit an oil platform in stormy weather, spilling gas and oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Pemex said the workers who died included four Pemex employees, seven employees of the subcontractor company that operated the rig, at least one rescue boat crew member, and six others who worked for other companies. On Dec 16 Pemex announced that the well was finally capped. Roughly 420 barrels of oil per day had spilled from the damaged platform since the accident.
    (AP, 10/25/07)(AP, 12/16/07)

2007        Oct, Mexican officials seized 23.5 tons of cocaine this month, the largest seizure ever reported in Mexico. A US report, commissioned by Sen. Lugar, later estimated that 530-710 tons of cocaine crossed annually into the US.
    (Econ, 2/2/08, p.45)
 
2007        Nov 2, Rescuers in boats and helicopters worked to evacuate people stranded by a flood the president called "one of the worst natural disasters" to hit Mexico. A week of heavy rains caused rivers to overflow, leaving 70 percent of the Gulf state of Tabasco underwater. Gov. Andres Granier estimated the damage at $5 billion. The death toll reached to about 25.
    (AP, 11/2/07)(Econ, 11/10/07, p.45)

2007        Nov 4, In Mexico a landslide hit a rain-swollen river, triggering what officials called a "mini-tsunami" that wiped San Juan Grijalva, in Chiapas near the Tabasco border, off the map. 15 bodies were later recovered with 9 left missing. The floods killed at least 8 others in Tabasco and elsewhere in Chiapas.
    (AP, 11/6/07)(AP, 11/13/07)(AP, 11/21/07)

2007        Nov 14, A broad electoral reform that infuriated Mexico's broadcast industry by barring political parties from buying radio and television advertisements took effect.
    (AP, 11/13/07)

2007        Dec 2, In Mexico Sergio Gomez, lead performer for the top-selling group K-Paz de la Sierra, was abducted, tortured and strangled to death. His body was found the next day. A day earlier Zayda Pena of the group Zayda and the Guilty Ones was killed execution-style at the hospital where she was recovering from neck surgery for a shooting on Nov 30, in which 2 other people were killed.  Fears rose that singers, whether they have any links to drug cartels or not, get routinely "adopted" by drug gangs, which post Internet videos showing their members tortur-ing and executing rivals to soundtracks of popular tunes.
    (AP, 12/5/07)(SFC, 12/5/07, p.E3)

2007        Dec 4, In Mexico gunmen shot and killed a deputy police chief inside his house in the border city of Tecate.
    (AP, 12/4/07)

2007        Dec 5, Mexican police conducted the biggest anti-logging raid in the nation's history at clandestine sawmills that cut timber on a threatened nature reserve where Monarch butterflies nest in the winter. Authorities in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said that they plan to exhume the remains of more than 4,000 unidentified people buried in common graves and take DNA samples in an attempt to identify them.
    (AP, 12/5/07)(AP, 12/7/07)

2007        Dec 6, In southern Mexico Jose Luis Aquino (33), a trumpet player, was found dead with his hands and feet bound and a nylon bag over his head, in what authorities said was appar-ently the country's third murder of a musician in less than a week.
    (AP, 12/7/07)

2007        Former Mexican Pres. Fox authored his ghost-written memoir “Revolution of Hope.” It was published in English prior to a Spanish version.
    (Econ, 10/6/07, p.42)
2007        Sam Quinines authored “Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream: True Tales of Mexican Mi-gration.”
    (SSFC, 4/22/07, p.M1)
2007        Gregory Rodriguez authored “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America.”
    (Econ, 11/10/07, p.102)

2008        Jan 1, In Mexico import tariffs on maize, beans, sugar and milk were eliminated.
    (Econ, 1/26/08, p.38)

2008        Jan 7, A shootout between Mexican authorities and suspected criminals just across the border from Texas left three people dead and eight injured.
    (AP, 1/8/08)

2008        Jan 8, In Mexico 3 US residents and seven others linked to the powerful Gulf drug cartel were arrested following a deadly shootout in Rio Bravo just across the border from Texas. In a second shootout, two federal agents were killed and three more injured when they clashed with a group of suspects in the nearby city of Reynosa.
    (AP, 1/9/08)

2008        Jan 10, In Mexico gunmen shot dead two federal agents and a civilian in the central state of Michoacan.
    (AP, 1/11/08)

2008        Jan 11, In central Mexico a helicopter carrying volunteers on a mission to distribute toys to needy children crashed, killing eight people, including a government official.
    (AP, 1/12/08)

2008        Jan 14, In Mexico Tijuana District Commander Jose de Jesus Arias Rico and his assis-tant Elbert Escobedo Marquez were riddled with bullets as they traveled in a private vehicle af-ter finishing their shift. A car chase and shootout between Tijuana municipal police and at least two people who allegedly tried to rob an armored car after it made a cash pickup at a bank. One suspect was killed and another was wounded.
    (AP, 1/15/08)

2008        Jan 15, In Mexico before dawn Margarito Saldana, Tijuana district commander, was shot dead while he slept in his home.
    (AP, 1/15/08)

2008        Jan 17, In Mexico officials found six bodies inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took refuge during a shootout with soldiers and police.
    (AP, 1/17/08)

2008        Jan 21, Mexico's army captured Alfredo Beltran Leyva, a top lieutenant of the Sinaloa cartel. He allegedly commanded squads of hit men and organized drug shipments north.
    (AP, 1/21/08)

2008        Jan 22, In Mexico 11 alleged hit men for a powerful drug cartel were captured at two Mexico City mansions stocked with grenades and automatic weapons, a day after Mexican au-thorities reported nabbing one of the cartel's reputed leaders.
    (AP, 1/22/08)

2008        Jan 29, In Mexico City Elvira Arellano, a deported Mexican migrant who holed up in a Chicago church to fight for immigrants' rights, rallied support for Flor Crisostomo (28), another woman now seeking refuge in the same building. Four Mexican military officers and one soldier, were turned over to prosecutors for alleged links to Alfredo Beltran Leyva, but their cases were-n't made public until Oct 31.
    (AP, 1/30/08)(AP, 10/31/08)

2008        Jan 31, In Mexico tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown Mex-ico City to protest recent trade openings that removed the last tariff protections for ancestral Mexican crops like corn and beans.
    (AP, 1/31/08)

2008        Feb 7, Mexican soldiers seized nearly 10 tons of marijuana, a machine gun, scores of assault rifles and three grenades in a raid just across the border from Texas.
    (AP, 2/8/08)

2008        Feb 15, In Mexico City a bomb exploded near the police headquarters killing one man. A singer and two members of his staff were tortured and killed just south of the California border, apparently the latest victims in a string of slayings of Mexican musicians. The border killings were not reported until Feb 20.
    (WSJ, 2/16/08, p.A1)(AP, 2/20/08)

2008        Feb 26, Mexican lawmakers approved judicial reform that would introduce public, oral trials and guarantee the presumption of innocence, even as lawmakers deleted a proposal to al-low police to search homes without a warrant. Mexico's Senate approved a law that would ban smoking in workplaces, public buildings and public transportation across the country, allowing it in private businesses only if special, ventilated smoking areas are set up. Investigators found parts from at least 8 bodies in a series of backyard pits at a house in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. In March the body count increased to 36.
    (AP, 2/27/08)(AP, 2/26/08)(AP, 3/3/08)(AP, 3/16/08)

2008        Mar 7, Mexican soldiers seized assault rifles, grenades, marijuana and bulletproof vests bearing police insignia after a brief shootout in the border city of Tijuana. Police commander Ri-cardo Rodriguez was shot dead in a city plaza by gunmen who opened fire with assault rifles from a moving car. Six gunmen were also killed in the shootout.
    (AP, 3/7/08)(SFC, 3/10/08, p.A3)

2008        Mar 10, In Mexico a researcher said satellite photographs show illegal loggers have clear-cut large swathes of trees in the heart of a monarch butterfly reserve, threatening the in-sects' habitat. The images show illegal loggers chopped 1,100 acres of trees since 2004 in the core of a wooded park in Michoacan state.
    (AP, 3/11/08)
2008        Mar 10, In central Mexico a sports utility vehicle fell into a canal, killing nine small chil-dren but leaving their teacher unharmed.
    (AP, 3/11/08)

2008        Mar 11, Mexico's federal attorney general's office announced an investigation into alle-gations of corruption against Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, a confidant of the presi-dent who holds the government's second highest profile job.
    (AP, 3/12/08)

2008        Mar 13, Cuba and Mexico declared their once-chilly relations fully restored, and Cuba's foreign minister said he will soon deliver a formal invitation for Mexico's president to visit the is-land.
    (AP, 3/14/08)
2008        Mar 13, In central Mexico 6 people were shot and killed inside a private law office in Guadalajara.
    (AP, 3/14/08)

2008        Mar 25, In eastern Guatemala at least nine people were killed and seven wounded in a shootout that is likely tied to drug traffickers. Guatemalan drug boss Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon was summoned by Mexican traffickers for what he was told was business. Instead, dozens of attackers ambushed his entourage with grenades and assault rifles, killing Leon and 10 others in a brazen demonstration of power.
    (AP, 3/25/08)(AP, 7/21/09)

2008        Mar 26, In Mexico a confrontation in Sinaloa state left four civilians and two soldiers dead. A military judge later issued an arrest warrant for 5 soldiers considered as suspects.
    (AP, 4/5/08)

2008        Mar 27, The Mexican government said it has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to curb soaring violence in a border state across from Texas and New Mexico.
    (AP, 3/28/08)

2008        Mar 31, In Mexico Juana Barraza (50), a former female wrestler who terrorized Mexico City as the "Little Old Lady Killer," was sentenced to 759 years in jail for killing 16 elderly women.
    (AP, 3/31/08)

2008        Apr 4, In Mexico two soldiers deserted and were later killed during a gunbattle with po-lice in the state of Nuevo Leon. 3 state police officers and a civilian also died in the violence. The Mexican army said soldiers looking for drug traffickers found $6 million in cash inside a truck near the US border and arrested five men at the scene. The daily El Universal reported that five soldiers had been arrested for passing information to the Sinaloa alliance of Pacific Coast smugglers.
    (AP, 4/5/08)(Reuters, 4/4/08)

2008        Apr 6, In southern Mexico a truck carrying Central American migrants in a hidden com-partment plunged into a reservoir, killing at least eight people. Most of the migrants were be-lieved to be from Guatemala.
    (AP, 4/7/08)

2008        Apr 8, In Mexico Pres. Calderon said he would ease some bureaucratic barriers, and allow Pemex to pay outside contractors a "bonus," not a percentage cut, for oil found in deep-water reserves.
    (AP, 4/9/08)

2008        Apr 10, Leftist lawmakers took over both chambers of Mexico's Congress to protest President Felipe Calderon's energy reform bill, which would make it easier for the state oil com-pany to seek outside help to develop oil fields.
    (AP, 4/11/08)
2008        Apr 10, In Mexico police, working with FBI agents in the small town of Tacambaro, ar-rested Cpl. Cesar Laurean (21). He is charged with first-degree murder in the December, 2007, death at Camp Lejeune, NC, of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who had accused him of rape.
    (AP, 4/11/08)

2008        Apr 13, The winners of this year’s Goldman Awards were reported to be: Feliciano dos Santos (43) of Mozambique, the director of Estamos, an environmental group promoting sanita-tion, sustainable development and reforestation; Marina Rikhvanova (46), founder of Baikal En-vironmental Wave, which forced the rerouting of an oil pipeline in the Baikal basin; Pablo Fa-jardo (35) and Luis Yanza (48) of Ecuador, co-founders of the Amazon Defense Front, which accused Texaco (now Chevron) of dumping oil and wastewater into local streams; Rosa Hilda Ramos (63) of Puerto Rico, head of a movement to protect the Las Cicharillas Marsh; Ignace Schops (43) of Belgium, head of a movement to establish Belgium’s 1st and only national park; Jesus Leon (42) of Mexico, co-founder of the Center for Integral Small Farmer Development of the Mixtec (CEDICAM).
    (SSFC, 4/13/08, p.A4)

2008        Apr 15, In Mexico gunmen held up a family of US tourists in Baha and made off with their small plane from a hotel airstrip in Mulege.
    (AP, 4/15/08)

2008        Apr 17, Chief Juan Muniz, the Mexican police chief of the border city of Reynosa, was arrested for allegedly protecting members of the Gulf drug cartel.
    (AP, 4/17/08)

2008        Apr 18, In western Mexico a military helicopter crashed, killing 11 soldiers and seriously injuring another.
    (AP, 4/19/08)

2008        Apr 22, In New Orleans Pres. Bush ended a 2-day meeting with PM Harper of Canada and Pres. Calderon of Mexico as all three defended NAFTA. Bush denied the US is in recession calling the current economic situation a slowdown.
    (SFC, 4/23/08, p.A3)(WSJ, 4/23/08, p.A1)

2008        Apr 23, Officials said the US is scrapping a $20 million virtual fence, developed by Boe-ing Corp., on the Arizona-Mexico border because the system failed to adequately alert border patrol agents to illegal crossings.
    (SFC, 4/24/08, p.A7)

2008        Apr 26, In Mexico running gunbattles between suspected drug traffickers broke out on the streets of the border city of Tijuana, killing 13 people and wounding nine.
    (AP, 4/26/08)

2008        Apr 29, Migrant rights activists applauded a vote by Mexico's Congress to remove long-standing criminal penalties for undocumented migrants found in the country. President Felipe Calderon's office declined to say whether he would sign the popular measure into law.
    (AP, 4/29/08)

2008        May 1, Roberto Velasco, head of Mexico’s federal police organized crime division, was murdered. Police later said the murder was likely ordered by Arturo Beltran Leyva, a capo in the Sinaloa drug cartel.
    (Econ, 5/17/08, p.45)

2008        May 5, In southern Mexico a prominent cattle rancher hid from gunmen who killed two of his sons and kidnapped his daughter in weekend attacks that left 17 people dead.
    (AP, 5/5/08)

2008        May 7, In Mexico a leftist rebel group (EPR) linked to a series of oil pipeline blasts on rejected an offer from Mexico's government to hold talks. The People's Revolutionary Army dismissed a proposal by President Felipe Calderon because it said the offer showed no willing-ness to solve crimes allegedly committed by current and past administrations against its mem-bers. 
    (AP, 5/7/08)

2008        May 8, Edgar Millan Gomez (42), Mexico's acting federal police chief, was shot dead outside his Mexico City apartment complex, as drug traffickers increasingly lashed back at a na-tionwide crackdown on organized crime. Bodyguards at the scene arrested Alejandro Ramirez (34). Edgar Guzman, the son of Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin Guzman, was shot dead in Culia-can, Sinaloa state. Also killed in the attack was Arturo Meza Cazares, the son of Blanca Marga-rita Cazares, whom the US has identified as a key money launderer for the cartel. Police later said Millan’s murder was likely ordered by Arturo Beltran Leyva, a capo in the Sinaloa drug car-tel.
    (AP, 5/9/08)(SFC, 5/9/08, p.A16)(http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/xarticle/ajc8708.htm)(Econ, 5/17/08, p.45)

2008        May 10, Juan Antonio Roman Garcia, the No. 2 police officer in a Mexican border city across from Texas, was shot dead, the latest high-ranking official killed in an onslaught of at-tacks blamed on gangs resisting a crackdown. Gunman sprayed Garcia's car with bullets out-side his home in Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 5/11/08)

2008        May 12, Mexican authorities said a police officer and four other people, with suspected ties to a powerful drug cartel, have been arrested in the May 8 assassination of Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting federal police chief.
    (AP, 5/13/08)

2008        May 13, In Mexico more than 2,700 soldiers and federal agents were sent to Sinaloa state as part of a crackdown on drug-related violence.
    (AP, 5/15/08)

2008        May 14, In Mexico 2 police officers were shot and killed in Torreon, Coahuila state, when they tried to stop gunmen from kidnapping a family. Assailants opened fire and threw grenades at a police station in Guamuchil in the northern state of Sinaloa.
    (AP, 5/14/08)

2008        May 15, In Mexico Pres. Calderon held a signing ceremony for an agreement with Elba Esther Gordillo, head of the national teacher’s union, to promote the “Alliance for Educational Quality, an effort to improve teacher quality.
    (Econ, 5/24/08, p.55)

2008        May 18, An American woman (28) was among four people found dead in the Mexican beach town of Playas de Rosarito, near border with California.
    (AP, 5/20/08)

2008        May 19, In Mexico the military took over the town of Zirandaro near Texas after all 20 of its police officers were either killed, run out of town or quit.
    (AP, 5/23/08)

2008        May 20, In Mexico’s Durango state two rival groups opened fire at each other with pis-tols and assault rifles on a highway, killing eight people. Officials said the Mexican military took over the police department of Villa Ahumada this week because all 20 officers on the force have either been killed, run out of town or quit. The body of Victor Enrique Payan, 2nd in command of police in Morelos, was found with a second, unidentified Morelos state police officer in the trunk of a car south of Mexico City.
    (AP, 5/20/08)(AP, 5/22/08)

2008        May 23, Mexico's attorney general said homicides related to organized crime jumped 47 percent in 2008, in a rare confirmation of how bad violence has become.
    (AP, 5/23/08)
2008        May 23, Mexican federal officials said they plan to clean up Acapulco's bay, where an estimated 400 gallons (1,700 liters) of sewage spews into the Pacific ocean every second.
    (AP, 5/23/08)

2008        May 27, In Mexico 7 federal police and a suspected hit man were killed in a shootout as authorities surrounded a suspected drug safe house in Culiacan, home to the Sinaloa drug car-tel.
    (AP, 5/27/08)

2008        May 31, Tropical Storm Arthur the first named storm of the 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Sea-son, kicked up surf when it made landfall at the Belize-Mexico border and headed west.
    (AP, 6/1/08)

2008        Jun 1, In western Mexico Marcelo Ibarra, the mayor of Villa Madero, was forced from his car and shot dead. Officials believed the killing was an attempted robbery, although they have-n't ruled out other motives.
    (AP, 6/3/08)

2008        Jun 3, In Mexico Claudio Conti (53) was reportedly kidnapped along Zicatela beach in Puerto Escondido, where he operated the Da Claudio restaurant and a hotel. On Feb 28, 2009, Mexican police said they had captured four men suspected of kidnapping the Italian business-man, and that one of the men told police the victim had been ordered killed, though it was not clear if the slaying was carried out.
    (AP, 3/1/09)

2008        Jun 4, A Mexican court sentenced Mario Villanueva, a former Quintana Roo state gov-ernor (1993-1996), to 36 years in prison for fomenting drug trafficking, overturning an earlier ruling that had imposed six years on lesser charges. A husband and wife, both state police offi-cers, were shot dead while leaving their home in Ciudad Juarez, the border city where drug gangs have stepped up attacks against security forces.
    (AP, 6/5/08)(AP, 6/4/08)

2008        Jun 9, A note threatening a Mexican journalist was found outside the office of a news-paper in southern Mexico, two days after someone left a severed head there. The letter was di-rected at Juan Padilla, editor of El Correo de Tabasco, which recently carried reports about mi-grant smuggling and kidnapping in the area.
    (AP, 6/10/08)

2008        Jun 11, In southern Mexico armed men hijacked a bus carrying 33 Cubans and four Central American migrants detained after forcing immigration agents away at gunpoint. The seized Cubans and Central Americans were being taken to an immigration processing center in the nearby city of Tapachula when the attack occurred. Mexican immigration agents are nor-mally unarmed on such assignments.
    (AP, 6/13/08)

2008        Jun 15, In Sonora, Mexico, one state police officer and two federal agents were killed in a running battle with dozens of gunmen that lasted several hours. One of the gunmen was wounded.
    (AP, 6/17/08)

2008        Jun 17, Mexico’s Pres. Felipe Calderon signed a constitutional amendment that threw open the doors to its judicial system, allowing US-style public trials and creating a presumption of innocence.
    (AP, 6/18/08)(WSJ, 6/18/08, p.A8)

2008        Jun 18, Food manufacturers promised Mexico's government that they would freeze prices on more than 150 food products to help families cope with rising costs.
    (AP, 6/19/08)

2008        Jun 20, Panicked youths rushed for the exits during a police raid on a Mexico City night-club, leaving 12 people dead in the crush of bodies. The dead included 3 underage teens and 3 police officers. Prosecutors later charged the police commander who led a botched raid with 12 counts of homicide.
    (AP, 6/21/08)(SSFC, 6/22/08, p.A11)(AP, 6/25/08)

2008        Jun 21, Mexican soldiers captured at least 10 suspected members of a Tijuana-based drug cartel in a raid on a child's baptism party in Tijuana. A total of 61 people were arrested in the sweep, including the band hired to play the party and three city police officers.
    (AP, 6/23/08)

2008        Jun 25, In Mexico state police spokesman Cesar Ramirez said 20 people have been killed in less than three days in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Guerrero state authorities agreed to pay 490,000 pesos (US$48,000) in compensation to 14 indigenous Mexican men co-erced into having vasectomies. The men said that state health workers showed up in the south-ern village of El Camalote in 1998 and demanded that men with more than four children must have vasectomies.
    (AP, 6/25/08)(AP, 6/27/08)

2008        Jun 26, In Mexico gunmen killed Igor Labastida, a top federal police official, and his bodyguard as they ate lunch in Mexico City.
    (AP, 6/27/08)

2008        Jun 27, In Piedras Negras, Mexico, Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, at-tended a tree planting ceremony for the first of 400,000 trees which will form a "green wall" in protest of the fence the US is building along the border with Mexico.
    (AP, 6/28/08)

2008        Jul 1, In Mexico videos showing Leon police practicing torture techniques on a fellow officer and dragging another through vomit at the instruction of a US adviser created an uproar, which has struggled to eliminate torture in law enforcement.
    (AP, 7/2/08)

2008        Jul 2, In Mexico 4 decapitated bodies were found on a street in Culiacan, blocks away from their severed heads. Four gunmen were killed hours later, after opening fire on federal po-lice patrolling Culiacan, a center for the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel. Under attack, police shot back at the home where the gunmen were holed up, killing the four assailants and capturing two others.
    (AP, 7/3/08)

2008        Jul 6, In northern Mexico a plane carrying a load of auto parts crashed s it was trying to land, killing the pilot and severely injuring the co-pilot.
    (AP, 7/6/08)

2008        Jul 7, Mexican police found six charred bodies on a Tijuana street following a bloody weekend that left 14 people dead.
    (AP, 7/7/08)

2008        Jul 8, The Mexican government said UNESCO has added a Monarch butterfly reserve in southern Mexico to its list of World Heritage sites.
    (AP, 7/8/08)

2008        Jul 10, In northern Mexico, 6 bullet-ridden bodies were found inside the auto body shop in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, and three more bodies were found on the street just outside the business. A police investigator was found shot to death in his truck near Culiacan's police headquarters.
    (AP, 7/10/08)

2008        Jul 13, In Mexico gunmen opened fire on four cars on a busy street in Guamuchil, killing eight people. Among the victims were a girl (11), two 17-year-old boys and two women aged 18 and 19. On July 16 Mexico's government offered a reward of nearly US$100,000 for information leading to the capture of the gunmen.
    (AP, 7/14/08)(AP, 7/17/08)

2008        Jul 14, In Mexico commander Gerardo Valdes, the head of kidnapping and organized crime investigations in the border state of Coahuila, was seized by at least six men when he was driving in Saltillo. An unidentified man called police and said that Valdes had been grabbed by the Juarez Cartel.
    (AP, 7/17/08)

2008        Jul 16, Mexico's navy seized a homemade submarine carrying a drug shipment off the Pacific coast and arrested its four-man crew.
    (AP, 7/17/08)

2008        Jul 18, Mexico's president replaced a 1791 time capsule discovered atop Mexico City's cathedral with a new one containing messages from golf star Lorena Ochoa, novelist Carlos Fuentes and a boy genius.
    (AP, 7/19/08)

2008        Jul 21, The US FDA issued an advisory for consumers to avoid eating uncooked jala-peno peppers after it found a jalapeno grown in Mexico in a Texas border town warehouse that tested positive with the same strain of salmonella that was earlier associated with tomatoes.
    (SFC, 7/22/08, p.A10)

2008        Jul 22, In Mexico a measure took effect eliminating jail times for illegal immigrants caught in Mexico.
    (AP, 7/22/08)
2008        Jul 22, Dolly was upgraded to hurricane status as it headed toward the US-Mexican border.
    (WSJ, 7/23/08, p.A1)

2008        Jul 23, Hurricane Dolly toppled trees and sent billboards flying in the Mexican city of Matamoros, and authorities south of the US border warned of possible flooding. Dolly also hit south Texas, but by evening it had weakened to a tropical storm.
    (AP, 7/24/08)(SFC, 7/24/08, p.A3)

2008        Jul 24, In Mexico state prison chief Salvador Barreno was shot and killed as he drove in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas. His bodyguard was also killed. 3 other men died in a separate shooting minutes later.
    (AP, 7/25/08)

2008        Jul 27, Mexico City residents voted against the president's proposal to give private com-panies a bigger role in the country's state-run oil industry in a nonbinding referendum.
    (AP, 7/28/08)

2008        Jul 29, In Mexico a family of six was found dead in their home in western Jalisco state, allegedly targeted by kidnappers aided by corrupt cops. Four victims, including two children, were shot in the head. A teenage boy's throat was slashed. His mother was asphyxiated with a plastic bag.
    (AP, 8/21/08)

2008        Jul 30, Mexican police captured Ever Villafane Martinez, a Colombian cartel operative who represented Colombia's Norte del Valle drug cartel in dealings with Mexico's Beltran Leyva gang. He had escaped from a Colombian prison in 2001 and was wanted on drug charges in the US.
    (AP, 8/1/08)
2008        Jul 30, US federal health officials said the salmonella strain linked to a nationwide out-break has been found in irrigation water and in a sample from a batch of serrano peppers at a Mexican farm in Nuevo Leon. Mexico's Agriculture Department rejected the FDA's conclusion saying "The farm unit in question ended its harvest more than a month ago, so the sample they say they have lacks scientific validity" because the sample "was taken recently from a tank holding rain water that was not used in production."
    (AP, 7/31/08)

2008        Aug 1, The body of Fernando Marti, the 14-year-old son of a prominent businessman, was found in the trunk of a car in Mexico City. He had been kidnapped in June. The kidnap and murder prompted a wave of anti-crime protests across the nation. In September police detained five suspects including Sergio Ortiz, a former agent of a now-disbanded city detective force, who led the "Flower Gang" responsible for kidnapping Marti in June. In July, 2009, Jose Montiel (34) and Noe Robles (31) were arrested for the kidnapping. They were believed to be members of a Mexico City gang responsible for at least 23 abductions.
    (AP, 9/8/08)(AP, 7/18/09)

2008        Aug 4, A shootout between Mexican police and smugglers driving a truck carrying illegal immigrants left 2 people dead near Agua Dulce.
    (AP, 8/4/08)

2008        Aug 5, Texas executed Jose Medellin (33) for the 1993 rape and killing of two teenage girls in Houston. Mexico protested the execution, which took place despite a world court ruling for a new hearing, and expressed concern for the rights of other Mexicans detained in the US. On Jan 19, 2009, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that the US defied its order when authorities in Texas last year executed a Mexican convicted of rape and murder.
    (AP, 8/6/08)(AP, 1/19/09)

2008        Aug 11, In Acapulco, Mexico, gunmen traveling in a sport utility vehicle fired at a hard-ware store killing a girl (14) and a man (35).
    (AP, 8/12/08)(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,402108,00.html)

2008        Aug 13, In Mexico a spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said 6 federal agents have been arrested on suspicion of passing information to a group of powerful drug lords.
    (AP, 8/14/08)

2008        Aug 16, In Mexico gunmen killed 13 people at a family party in the border state of Chi-huahua.
    (AP, 8/17/08)

2008        Aug 18, Mexican soldiers rescued 25 Central Americans kidnapped in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. One man was arrested in the raid in Tierra Blanca.
    (AP, 8/19/08)
2008        Aug 18, Mexico’s Cemex SAB rejected Venezuela’s $500 bid for the companies assets in Venezuela. At midnight oil workers and Venezuelan soldiers occupied Cemex facilities around the country.
    (WSJ, 8/19/08, p.A10)

2008        Aug 21, In Mexico Pres. Calderon, congressional leaders, all state governors and a bevy of others signed a “National Agreement for Security.”
    (Econ, 9/6/08, p.44)

2008        Aug 22, Mexican police captured a man believed to be Ruben Rios Estrada, a key gun-man for the Arellano-Felix cocaine cartel, at the Caliente racetrack casino in Tijuana after a chase through the city streets. Another suspected gang member also was arrested. The bullet-riddled body of Jesus Blanco Cano (40) was found at a ranch near Villa Ahumada in Chihuahua state. He had just been on the job for one day as police chief of Villa Ahumada.
    (AP, 8/23/08)(SFC, 8/23/08, p.A3)

2008        Aug 26, In Mexico 3 decapitated bodies were found in an empty lot on the eastern out-skirts of Tijuana. The bodies had messages written on their backs in permanent marker saying they worked for "the weakened 'engineer,'" a nickname for Francisco Sanchez Arellano, a top lieutenant in Tijuana's powerful Arellano Felix drug cartel. A day earlier 2 bodies were found in Tijuana, one with the head placed on the upper back.
    (AP, 8/27/08)(SFC, 8/27/08, p.A11)

2008        Aug 27, In Mexico a 38-year-old man from Oregon was arrested in San Jose del Cabo following a fight at an apartment complex. He died in jail hours later. On Aug 31 six Mexican of-ficers  placed under house arrest on suspicion of homicide.
    (AP, 9/2/08)

2008        Aug 28, Mexico's Supreme Court upheld the capital's abortion law, setting a precedent for the rest of the country that could inspire other Latin American cities. Twelve decapitated bodies bearing signs of torture were found in eastern Mexico and authorities were still looking for the heads. 11 of the bodies were found in a suburb of Merida, a 12th in Buctzotz, 70 km to the northeast.
    (AFP, 8/29/08)

2008        Aug 30, Hundreds of thousands of frustrated Mexicans, many carrying pictures of kid-napped loved ones, marched across the country to demand government action against a relent-less tide of killings, abductions and shootouts. Hours before the protests, the severed heads of two women were found near the attorney general's offices in the city of Durango.
    (AP, 8/31/08)(AP, 9/1/08)
2008        Aug 30, Gilberto Rincon Gallardo (69), a former socialist presidential candidate who gained respect in Mexico for defending the rights of the disabled, gays and other marginalized groups, died in Mexico City.
    (AP, 8/31/08)

2008        Aug 31, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon promised to adopt several proposals from civic groups who led more than 100,000 Mexicans in marches against daily kidnappings and killings.
    (AP, 9/1/08)

2008        Sep 10, A regulatory filing revealed that Carlos Slim, Mexican businessman, and his family had purchased a 6.4% stake in the New York Times.
    (Econ, 9/20/08, p.78)

2008        Sep 12, Mexican police found the bodies of 24 men with their hands bound and shot to death execution-style outside the capital. On Nov 27 prosecutors charged a municipal police commander and an alleged drug cartel member with homicide in the September massacre.
    (AP, 9/13/08)(AP, 11/28/08)

2008        Sep 14, Mexico's military seized US$26.2 million in cash believed to belong to members of the Sinaloa drug cartel. This was the 2nd biggest seizure since March 2007, when police seized US$207 million linked to a trafficking ring for pseudoephedrine.
    (AP, 9/18/08)

2008        Sep 15, Mexican police and soldiers quelled a riot at a Tijuana prison that left 4 inmates dead and at least 31 prisoners and officials injured.
    (AP, 9/16/08)(AP, 9/19/08)
2008        Sep 15, In Oaxaca, Mexico, Omar Yoguez Singu (32) allegedly had consensual sex with Marcella Grace Eiler (20) of Eugene, Oregon. He then killed her with a machete after an argu-ment. Her badly decomposed body was found Sep 24 in a shack 80 miles south of Oaxaca City. Friends of Singu beat him up after he confessed to the crime and on Sep 24 turned him over to police.
    (AP, 9/28/08)

2008        Sep 16, In Mexico explosions at an Independence Day celebration killed 7 people and injured 101 in the city of Morelia. Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy said organized crime was re-sponsible.
    (AP, 9/16/08)

2008        Sep 17, A second riot in three days at an infamous Tijuana prison left close to 2 dozen people dead and 12 injured. 2 American inmates were among the dead. Inmates at La Mesa prison rioted again because they have not been given food or water since Sep 14, when a separate riot led to the deaths of at least three inmates.
    (AP, 9/18/08)(AP, 9/19/08)

2008        Sep 20, It was reported that Mexican officers and prison guards in Michoacan state can now get special deals on houses and financing through a pilot program designed to keep them out of the pockets of organized crime.
    (AP, 9/20/08)

2008        Sep 23, Mexico said it plans to search 10 percent of all vehicles entering the country from the United States in an effort to curb arms smuggling.
    (AP, 9/24/08)

2008        Sep 25, Mexican federal prosecutors in Apatzingan, a drug stronghold in the western state of Michoacan, arrested three drug gang members accused of throwing grenades into crowds of Independence Day revelers. They belonged to a group of infamous Gulf Cartel hit men known as the Zetas.
    (AP, 9/27/08)
2008        Sep 25, In southeastern Mexico storms flooded hundreds of people out of their homes and caused the death of a woman and 4 children whose car plunged into a swollen irrigation ditch in Nanchital, Veracruz state.
    (AP, 9/26/08)

2008        Sep 29, In Mexico the bodies of 11 men and one woman, some with their tongues cut out, were found dumped in an empty lot next to a Tijuana elementary school, an hour before children were scheduled to arrive. A message nearby, written on a white piece of cardboard, read: "This is going to happen to all of those who are with 'The Engineer' for being blabber-mouths." Minutes later four other bodies were found in another empty lot in Tijuana. Two other bodies were discovered the day before in a lot next to a factory.
    (AP, 9/30/08)

2008        Sep 30, In Mexico 20 heavily armed men in Sinaloa state stole five small planes that the army had seized in anti-drug operations. Officials on Oct 3 said the planes were found on a ranch in the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, a hotbed of drug trafficking.
    (AP, 10/1/08)(AP, 10/4/08)
2008        Sep 30, In Mexico Ramiro Guillen Tapia (65), leader of a farmers' group seeking gov-ernment mediation in a dispute over 620 acres (250 hectares) of land in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, set himself on fire. Tapia died the next day with third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.
    (AP, 10/1/08)

2008        Oct 3, Mexican police clashed with hundreds of villagers who seized the entrance to a Mayan archaeological site and six protesters were killed. Hundreds of villagers had occupied the entrance to the Chinkultic ruins for nearly a month, saying they were protesting excessive entrance fees and a lack of investment in the area. 2 men were found shot to death in Tijuana in the same empty lot near the elementary school where the 12 bodies were found on sep 29.
    (AP, 10/4/08)

2008        Oct 4, In Mexico gunmen killed Salvador Vegara, the mayor of Ixtapan de la Sal, a re-sort town southwest of Mexico City. Vegara was in a car with two other people when the gun-men opened fire from another vehicle. The bodies of 5 men were found asphyxiated in a car in the eastern part of Tijuana. The men were beaten and had their hands bound. The bodies of two beheaded men were found wrapped in blankets on a road elsewhere in the city. The heads were in black plastic bags nearby.
    (AP, 10/4/08)

2008        Oct 5, In southern Mexico 5 state police officers were arrested in connection with a deadly raid to dislodge protesters from a Mayan archaeological site. Mexican authorities seized 7 million pills of pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient used to make methamphetamine, at the Guadalajara airport. More than 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of the pills were found packed in 24 boxes on a shipment from Calcutta, India. Three separate shipments of more than a ton each were confiscated last month at Mexico City's airport. Those also originated in Calcutta.
    (AP, 10/6/08)

2008        Oct 7, Mexico extradited former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) to face corruption charges, and the ex-leader told a judge there is no evidence to support the alle-gations against him.
    (AP, 10/7/08)
2008        Oct 7, In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas, gunmen killed police commander Rodolfo Barragan (38) in a hail of bullets at a hotel parking lot.
    (AP, 10/9/08)
2008        Oct 7, Tropical Storm Marco roared ashore on Mexico's Gulf coast with near-hurricane force winds, prompting a shutdown of some oil platforms and forcing the evacuation of some 3,000 people.
    (AP, 10/7/08)

2008        Oct 8, President Felipe Calderon unveiled plans for 53 billion pesos ($4.4 billion) in emergency spending on roads, schools, hospitals and an oil refinery next year to help Mexico combat the world financial crisis. Mexican authorities said that 16 people were killed over the last 24 hours in Baha California across the US border from California. State officials blamed warring cells of the Arellano-Felix drug cartel for the killings and other homicides plaguing the area in recent weeks. 5 state police officers were killed in the western state of Jalisco by gre-nade-lobbing gunmen who fired more than 800 bullets in the attack.
    (AP, 10/9/08)

2008        Oct 9, In northern Mexico gunmen opened fire in a bar in Chihuahua, killing 11 people. The body of Miguel Angel Villagomez, editor of La Noticia newspaper in the western state of Michoacan, was found shot dead on the side of a highway in neighboring Guerrero state.
    (AP, 10/11/08)

2008        Oct 10, Mexico's central bank auctioned foreign reserves in 3 auctions in an increasingly aggressive bid to push the peso stronger. In all, the bank sold off $6.4 billion.
    (AP, 10/11/08)
2008        Oct 10, In Mexico authorities in Tijuana reported that a total of 91 people had been killed in a wave of gangland homicides since Sept. 26.
    (AP, 10/11/08)

2008        Oct 11, In Mexico gunmen killed six young men at a family party in the gang-plagued border city of Ciudad Juarez. In Tijuana federal police arrested seven reputed members of a cell of the Arellano Felix drug cartel, including a city police officer.
    (AP, 10/12/08)
2008        Oct 11, Hurricane Norbert hit Mexico as a Category 1 storm and left 4 people dead in the Baha peninsula and Sonora state.
    (SFC, 10/18/08, p.B6)

2008        Oct 12, An angry crowd in central Mexico attacked police and helped nearly three dozen illegal Central American immigrants escape from custody after hearing that officers had alleg-edly sold the migrants to human smugglers in the farming town of Rafael Lara Grajales, Puebla state. Federal police managed to round up 21 migrants.
    (AP, 10/14/08)(SSFC, 10/26/08, p.A23)

2008        Oct 16, In Mexico six people were lined up and gunned down outside a business in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 10/17/08)

2008        Oct 17, In Mexico 334 police officers were ousted in ciudad Juarez after they failed psy-chological, background and other checks as part of a clean-up campaign meant to root out offi-cers who are corrupt or cooperating with drug traffickers. The border city sent police recruiters across the country as it tries to replace nearly half a police force gutted by firings and retire-ments.
    (AP, 10/18/08)
2008        Oct 17, The UN added Japan, Austria, Turkey, Mexico and Uganda as members to the 10 non-permanent seats of the Security Council, replacing Belgium, Indonesia, Italy, Panama and South Africa.
    (AP, 10/17/08)

2008        Oct 18, Mexican federal authorities raided a “narco-mansion” in Mexico City and ar-rested 15 alleged traffickers during the middle of a party. A mini menagerie was also found at the site that included 2 African lions, 2 white tigers and 2 black panthers.
    (www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/21/mexico-wildlife)

2008        Oct 20, Mexico agreed to deport Cubans who sneak illegally through Mexican territory to reach the US, a step toward cutting off an increasingly violent and heavily used human traffick-ing route. 21 prisoners died in a fight between inmates at a prison across the border from McAllen, Texas. Police said two soldiers and a security guard were found stabbed to death at a housing construction site in the village of Las Margaritas, northern Mexico. The body of a fed-eral policeman was found riddled with gunshot wounds in Tijuana.
    (AP, 10/20/08)

2008        Oct 21, Police in northern Mexico reported receiving an ice chest packed with four hu-man heads. The chest arrived at the Ascencion police station in Chihuahua state was marked "vaccines," but wasn't claimed for a week. Jesus Zambada was among 16 members of the Si-naloa drug cartel arrested after a shootout in Mexico City. Zambada is the brother of Ismael Zambada, who allegedly heads the Sinaloa cartel along with one of Mexico's most wanted men, Joaquin Guzman.
    (AP, 10/22/08)

2008        Oct 22, In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, four men were shot inside a go-cart rental at the Xtreme amusement park. Elsewhere in the city, a used car sales-man was shot to death while driving down a main boulevard hours after leading hundreds of other business owners in a protest against kidnappings and extortion. In Tijuana a 1-year-old boy was killed when the car he was riding in crashed as the driver tried to flee a gunbattle. In northern Mexico 10 gunmen were killed in running battles with state police in the city of No-gales. Outside the northeastern city of Monterrey, a soldier, the director of a security firm and third man were found stabbed to death alongside a highway.
    (AP, 10/23/08)

2008        Oct 23, In Mexico 2 people were found dead in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California, including a badly burned corpse left in a trash bin.
    (AP, 10/23/08)

2008        Oct 24, In central Mexico 2 human heads were found with threatening messages. 2 adults were killed when assailants riddled their pickup truck with bullets on a Tijuana street. A 1-year-old girl riding with them was hit by multiple rounds from an assault rifle and was hospital-ized in critical condition. Police also found nine people shot to death in Playas de Rosarito, just south of Tijuana.
    (AP, 10/24/08)

2008        Oct 25, In Mexico soldiers and federal police arrested Eduardo Arellano Felix (52), a re-puted leader of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, after a shootout in the border city across from San Diego.
    (AP, 10/26/08)

2008        Oct 26, In Mexico City kidnappers grabbed Javier Morena (5), the son of poor fruit sell-ers, with the intent to ask for a $23,000 ransom. The boy was killed with an injection of acid and buried outside the city. 5 suspects in the kidnapping were later arrested and confessed to the killing.
    (SFC, 11/4/08, p.11)

2008        Oct 27, Mexican prosecutors said a major drug cartel has infiltrated the Mexican attor-ney general's office and may have paid a spy inside the US Embassy for details of DEA opera-tions. 5 officials of the attorney general’s organized crime unit were arrested on allegations they served as informants for the Beltran-Leyva Cartel.
    (AP, 10/27/08)(SFC, 10/28/08, p.A11)
2008        Oct 27, A US officials announced that Francisco Celaya Carrilo, a Mexican immigration officer, had been caught in Arizona with 170 pounds of marijuana.
    (SFC, 10/28/08, p.A11)

2008        Oct 28, Mexico's Congress passed a watered-down energy industry reform that enables private contractors to participate in the state-owned oil business but won't likely draw enough investment to reverse declining production.
    (AP, 10/29/08)

2008        Oct 31, In Mexico police arrested Antonio Galarza, the reputed leader of the violent Gulf drug cartel for the border city of Reynosa, in the northern city of Monterrey on suspicion of weapons violations and organized crime.
    (AP, 11/2/08)

2008        Nov 1, The top officer of Mexico's federal police force quit amid allegations that drug gangs have infiltrated senior levels of crime-fighting agencies. Acting federal police Commis-sioner Gerardo Garay said he was stepping aside "to place myself at the orders of legal judicial authorities to clear up any accusation against me."
    (AP, 11/1/08)

2008        Nov 2, Mexican prosecutors said 11 policemen have been shot to death near Mexico City in a three-day string of drug-gang attacks. In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California, police found two decapitated bodies wrapped in blankets in a vacant lot.
    (AP, 11/2/08)

2008        Nov 4, One of Mexico's top pointmen in the war against drug trafficking died when a government jet crashed into a Mexico City street, setting fire to dozens of vehicles. The loss of Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, former anti-drug prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vas-concelos and six others thinned the ranks of Mexico's already embattled leadership. 9 people on the plane were killed as well as 5 people on the ground. A 15th victim died 2 weeks later. A 16th victim died in On Dec 11. Three alleged hitmen suspected in the killing of a top border-state police official died in a gunbattle with police in Nogales. They were suspected of having helped kill Sonora state police chief Juan Manuel Pavon on Nov 2. One Sonora state police officer died in the shootout. A suspect in Pavon's killing was taken into custody.
    (AP, 11/5/08)(AP, 11/6/08)(AP, 11/18/08)(AP, 12/11/08)

2008        Nov 6, Mexican authorities detained Rodolfo de la Guardia Garcia, the No. 2 official in the Federal Agency of Investigation from 2003-2005, suspected of aiding drug traffickers, and Jaime Gonzalez Duran, alleged founder of a vicious gang of drug-cartel hit men. A cache of 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of TNT were seized at a house in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. This was the largest sei-zure of drug-cartel weapons in Mexico's history. In the northeast, police mistakenly opened fire on a family of six, seriously wounding a teenage girl. In the west, inmates rioted, killing six. And police in Tijuana found three more bodies accompanied by messages that appeared to be from drug traffickers.
    (AP, 11/8/08)

2008        Nov 10, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon chose Fernando Gomez-Mont as the new Secretary of the Interior. 7 people were found dead in a string of gruesome attacks in the bor-der city of Juarez. Police there chased a truck that opened fire on a state vehicle, causing a car crash that killed a bystander and injured four others. In northwestern Mexico 27 farmworkers who were kidnapped by dozens of heavily armed men wearing military-style uniforms. Local news media reported that a drug gang may have kidnapped the men to make them work grow-ing marijuana.
    (AP, 11/11/08)

2008        Nov 11, In Mexico 21 police were arrested in the northern border city of Tijuana on sus-picion of working with criminal gangs. The body of a 28-year-old man was dumped in an empty lot in the beach resort of Rosarito, outside Tijuana.
    (AP, 11/11/08)

2008        Nov 13, In Mexico Armando Rodriguez, a crime reporter in the border city of Juarez, was killed, adding to dozens of journalist deaths in a country where newspapers are so fearful, many refuse to cover drug violence. With his death, 24 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2000, at least seven of them in direct reprisal for their reports on crime, and seven others have disappeared since 2005.
    (AP, 11/13/08)
2008        Nov 13, Mexico City Health Secretary Armando Ahued said that the government will start handing out doses of one or two Viagra, Levitra or Cialis pills on Dec. 1.
    (AP, 11/13/08)

2008        Nov 14, In Mexico 2 bullet-ridden bodies were found at the foot of a monument in Ciu-dad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, one of them partially stuffed into a large pot. Four scuba divers died while performing maintenance in an aqueduct that supplies Mexico City.
    (AP, 11/14/08)(AP, 11/16/08)

2008        Nov 15, In Mexico more than 1,500 demonstrators marched through the violence-plagued border city of Tijuana to protest the current of killings and kidnappings. Two people were shot to death at a Tijuana taco restaurant. 4 men and a woman were shot to death at a pool hall. A girl (14) and two men were shot down in a Tijuana street just before midnight.
    (AP, 11/15/08)(AP, 11/16/08)

2008        Nov 17, A Mexican newspaper's offices were damaged by two grenades in the violence-plagued city of Culiacan in northwestern Mexico.
    (AP, 11/18/08)

2008        Nov 21, In Mexico Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told reporters that Noe Rami-rez, Mexico’s former drug czar, accepted $450,000 from drug traffickers, and that cartel leaders offered to pay him monthly for alerting them to planned police operations. In Tijuana 3 gunmen burst into the Bar Utopia, a bar popular with university students and opened fire. 2 men and a woman died instantly and 3 others died the next day.
    (AP, 11/21/08)(AP, 11/22/08)

2008        Nov 25, In Mexico 7 bodies were dumped before dawn at a school soccer field in the border city of Juarez.
    (AP, 11/26/08)

2008        Nov 27, A sport utility vehicle carrying 8 people from Texas plunged off an unfinished bridge into a river in northern Mexico, causing the death of three adults and four children.
    (AP, 11/28/08)

2008        Nov 28, In Mexico at least 12 masked gunmen opened fire inside a restaurant in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing eight.
    (AP, 11/29/08)

2008        Nov 30, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon pledged to clean up corruption within his administration and vowed that his government would never negotiate with drug lords. The bod-ies of 9 decapitated men were found in a vacant lot in Tijuana, part of a wave of violence that claimed at least 23 lives over the weekend in this border city plagued by warring traffickers.
    (AP, 11/30/08)
2008        Nov 30, In Guatemala Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers, arguing about a horse race in the rural border town of Santa Ana Huista, began a series of gunbattles in which 17 people died.
    (AP, 12/1/08)

2008        Dec 1, In Mexico Tijuana's anti-corruption police chief was fired and replaced with an army officer, following three days of violence that left 37 people dead in this border city plagued by warring drug gangs. In southern Mexico Fabian Ramirez shot his 50-year-old mother in the back Monday, wounding her. He then allegedly killed three police officers who arrived at the scene, including Iguala's police chief. Police captured Ramirez, but four armed men broke into the jail and took him away by force. The next day Ramirez was found beheaded.
    (AP, 12/1/08)(AP, 12/2/08)

2008        Dec 3, The US government released the first part of a $400 million aid package to sup-port Mexico's police and soldiers in their fight against drug cartels. Jesus Martin Huerta, the No. 2 federal prosecutor in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, was shot dead.
    (AP, 12/4/08)

2008        Dec 5, Gerardo Garay, Mexico's former acting federal police chief, was accused of col-laborating with a notorious cartel and stealing money from a mansion during a raid to bust a drug trafficking ring. Victor Serrano (24), a hit team chief, was wounded and 3 alleged gang members died in a shootout in Mexicali. 14 others were arrested.
    (AP, 12/5/08)(AP, 12/8/08)

2008        Dec 6, Mexican soldiers found at least eight bodies buried in a shallow grave in Mi-choacan state.
    (AP, 12/8/08)

2008        Dec 7, In Mexico 10 suspected drug traffickers and a soldier were killed in gunbattles in southern Guerrero state. 6 people were killed when assailants opened fire inside a pool hall in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
    (AP, 12/8/08)
2008        Dec 7, A Mexican government Learjet plunged into Atlangatepec lake in central Mexico, killing two pilots in the second deadly crash in a month involving a federally owned plane.
    (AP, 12/8/08)

2008        Dec 8, Victor Hugo Moneda, a senior Mexico City police commander, was slain in a drive-by shooting outside his home. He had overseen raids in the capital's gang-filled Tepito neighborhood.
    (AP, 12/10/08)

2008        Dec 9, Mexico's Congress voted to broaden police powers, allowing law enforcement agencies to use undercover agents and taped conversations as evidence in a bid to help them fight increasingly bloody drug cartels. In the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, soldiers detained 11 police officers from four towns for questioning on suspicion of aiding the Gulf drug cartel. In the northern city of Tijuana four bodies were found.
    (AP, 12/9/08)

2008        Dec 10, In Mexico a shootout between rival gangs killed 10 people in Sinaloa state, home of the powerful cartel of the same name. US security consultant Felix Batista was kid-napped in Saltillo, Coahuila state, while there to offer advice on how to confront abductions for ransom. He claimed to have helped resolve nearly 100 kidnap and ransom cases.
    (AP, 12/11/08)(AP, 12/15/08)

2008        Dec 11, Esther Chavez, a women's rights activist, was named the winner of Mexico's National Human Rights Award. She first drew attention to the slayings of young women in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in the early 1990s.
    (AP, 12/12/08)
2008        Dec 11, Mexican soldiers shot to death Silvia Arzate (35), a pregnant woman, after she reportedly failed to stop at a highway checkpoint in the northern state of Chihuahua.
    (AP, 12/12/08)

2008        Dec 14, In Mexico gunmen staged four attacks on police within a half-hour period, killing four officers in Ciudad Juarez, the border city  overrun by drug violence.
    (AP, 12/15/08)

2008        Dec 19, In Mexico 3 gunmen were killed following a shootout with army troops in the southern state of Guerrero.
    (AP, 12/20/08)
2008        Dec 19, In northern Mexico a small plane carrying government officials and television reporters crashed in northern Mexico and all five people on board are in serious condition. The plane was carrying state water commission chief Rafael Reyes, his assistant and two TV Az-teca reporters. They were hospitalized along with the pilot.
    (AP, 12/20/08)

2008        Dec 21, Mexican Authorities found the decapitated bodies of 12 men in the southern state of Guerrero, and some of the victims have been identified as soldiers.
    (AP, 12/21/08)

2008        Dec 22, Laura Zuniga (23), a reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled guns and ammuni-tion. Soldiers found a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, .38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in US currency.
    (AP, 12/24/08)

2008        Dec 23, Mexican authorities in southern Chiapas state said 8 bodies were found stuffed in plastic garbage bags and dumped on a rural road near the Guatemalan border in an area plagued by drug violence.
    (AP, 12/24/08)

2008        Dec 24, Mexican soldiers arrested the deputy police chief in the resort town of Zihuata-nejo and six other officers who were allegedly protecting drug cartel members at a cock fight. Soldiers also seized 59 packets of cocaine, 40 bags of marijuana and 20 assault rifles.
    (AP, 12/25/08)
2008        Dec 24, Mexico began blocking imports of meat from at least 30 US meat processing plants due to a new US law that required food retailers to label or display the country of origin for meat, produce and certain kinds of nuts. The law, effective as of Sep 30, was part of the 2008 Farm Bill.
    (WSJ, 12/27/08, p.A7)

2008        Dec 25, In Mexico, at least four people were killed in a gun battle between suspected drug traffickers in a remote mountain area of Sinaloa.
    (AP, 12/27/08)

2008        Dec 26, In Mexico a gang of about 20 men armed with assault rifles robbed a train in the western state of Michoacan and carted off some of its freight. Dr. Laura Avila. Avila was found dead in the rural health clinic she was staffing in Jalisco state. Police soon arrested Ricardo Garcia Barajas (25), a farm worker, who allegedly hacked the doctor to death with a machete for refusing to treat his son.
    (AP, 12/27/08)(AP, 1/2/09)

2008        Dec 28, In Mexico 7 people were killed in a series of shootings in the border city of Ti-juana over the last 2 days.
    (AP, 12/28/08)

2008        Dec 31, Mexico sent 10 alleged drug smugglers to the United States, capping an al-ready record year for extraditions between the two countries. 2 Canadian tourists were hospital-ized with gunshot wounds after assailants opened fire at a nightclub in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas.
    (AP, 1/1/09)

2008        Gabriel Zaid, Mexican writer, authored “The Secret of Fame: The Literary Encounter in an Age of Distraction.”
    (SFC, 5/14/08, p.E5)
2008        In Mexico drug related violence this year left 6,268 people dead. The killings were con-centrated in just 3 states, and most of those in 3 cities: Ciudad Juarez in Chihuahua, Tijuana in Baja California, and Culiacan in Sinaloa.
    (Econ, 3/7/09, p.30, 31)       

2009        Jan 1, Mexico’s Pres. Calderon signed a law that set up a new national public security system. Federal police captured two alleged hit men after the suspects threw a hand grenade at police and soldiers who cornered them at a house. Eight officers were wounded in the confron-tation. In the western town of La Huerta, a shootout between rival families at a New Year's party left four dead, and a clash between soldiers and alleged drug traffickers in Chihuahua state re-portedly killed three smugglers.
    (Econ, 3/7/09, p.32)(AP, 1/2/09)

2009        Jan 1-2009 Jun 30, In Mexico there were some 3,247 drug related killing over this pe-riod, compared with 1,935 in the same period in 2008.
    (Econ, 7/11/09, p.38)

2009        Jan 2, Mexican Federal prosecutors said they placed three municipal policemen in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez under house arrest on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers. In the northern city of Monterrey, prosecutors accused former Nuevo Leon state policeman Aldo Perales (34) of leading a gang of bank robbers and participating in more than 30 robberies.
    (AP, 1/3/09)

2009        Jan 6, In Mexico masked gunmen opened fire and tossed a grenade at a television sta-tion in Monterrey as it aired its nightly newscast, leaving behind a message warning the station about its coverage of drug gangs. Gunmen in Tijuana opened fire from several cars, killing a 22-year-old standing with his family outside his house. Two bodies were found wrapped in blan-kets and dumped on the street near a cemetery.
    (AP, 1/7/09)

2009        Jan 7, The United States said it has released another $99 million as part of an aid pack-age to support Mexico's police and soldiers in their fight against drug cartels. The US released $197 million in December as part of the $1.3 billion US anti-drug package, known as the Merida Initiative.
    (AP, 1/7/09)
2009        Jan 7, In Mexico four decapitated bodies were found in the Otay Mesa neighborhood of Tijuana. The victims' heads were left inside a black bag at the scene.
    (AP, 1/7/09)

2009        Jan 16, Mexico’s central bank, the Bank of Mexico, cut its benchmark interest rate a half point to 7.75%.
    (Econ, 1/24/09, p.42)

2009        Jan 17, In Tijuana, Mexico, a prostitute (19) was smothered to death. 2 US sailors, petty officers Jarrett Monzingo and Joshua Dockery, were taken into custody and faced murder and attempted-murder charges while being held at La Mesa Prison.
    (AP, 2/12/09)

2009        Jan 19, President George W. Bush In his final acts of clemency granted early prison re-leases to Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, two former Texas-based US Border Pa-trol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer in 2005 fueled the national debate over illegal immigration.
    (AP, 1/20/09)(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A3)

2009        Jan 20, Mexican prosecutors said three heads were found in an ice box south of Ciudad Juarez, which lies across from El Paso, Texas. The heads belonged to three unidentified men and were found in a rural town about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Ciudad Juarez. A headless body was discovered in a canal a few miles (kilometers) away. Mexican federal police said they have found 3 suspected drug tunnels under construction in Nogales near the Arizona border.
    (AP, 1/20/09)

2009        Jan 22, Mexico inaugurated one of the world’s largest wind farms, a $550 million project built by Spain’s Acciona Energia.
    (SFC, 1/23/09, p.A4)
2009        Jan 22, In Mexico a man accused of helping a drug kingpin dispose of hundreds of vic-tims by dissolving their bodies in caustic soda was arrested in the border city of Tijuana. Au-thorities said Santiago Meza Lopez confessed to disposing of at least 300 bodies over a dec-ade. Army troops acting on a tip raided a chili-drying warehouse, belonging to the brother of Zacatecas state Sen. Ricardo Monreal, and found people loading marijuana onto trucks. More than 11.4 tons of the drug were seized at the plant, near the city of Fresnillo.
    (AP, 1/23/09)(AP, 1/29/09)

2009        Jan 25, In Mexico Chiapas state Attorney General Raciel Lopez said Mariano Herran has been charged with embezzling funds while working as Chiapas economy secretary last year. Herran was Mexico's drug czar from 1997 to 2000, replacing Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Re-bollo, who was convicted of aiding a top drug lord.
    (AP, 1/26/09)

2009        Jan 27, In Mexico thieves, apparently targeting people who exchange money at Mexico City's international airport, shot a French citizen in the head. Authorities warned that gangs have put lookouts at exchange windows in the terminal. Mexico City prosecutors soon detained two suspects in the shooting. French scientist Christopher Augur died at a Mexico City hospital four days after his assault.
    (AP, 1/27/09)(AP, 1/30/09)(AP, 1/31/09)

2009        Jan 29, Mexican police detained an Ecuadorean man for carrying about $2.5 million in cash in a suitcase at Mexico City's international airport.
    (AP, 1/31/09)

2009        Feb 1, Mexico City shut down a main water pipeline under a new conservation program, cutting service to more than 2 million residents after some reservoirs dropped to their lowest levels in 16 years.
    (AP, 2/1/09)

2009        Feb 3, In Mexico the bodies of retired Mexican General Mauro Enrique Tello and two other men were found in a sport utility vehicle abandoned on a highway outside of Cancun. All had been shot many times. Octavio Almanza, the suspected head of the Zetas in Cancun, was later arrested on suspicion of masterminding Tello's killing.
    (AP, 2/3/09)(SSFC, 2/8/09, p.A4)(AP, 2/11/09)

2009        Feb 10, In Mexico a drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the US-Mexican border region, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead. The violence started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and executed six of them along the PanAmerican Highway outside of the town.
    (AP, 2/11/09)

2009        Feb 12, Mexican federal police arrested 10 alleged members of a hit squad working for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, who had come to Mexico City to start a turf war with a rival cartel.
    (WSJ, 2/13/09, p.A10)

2009        Feb 13, In Mexico photographer Jean Paul Ibarra (33) and reporter Yenny Marchan were on their way to the morgue in the southern city of Iguala when gunmen on another motor-cycle came alongside and opened fire. Marchan received two bullet wounds but survived; Ibarra was killed.
    (AP, 2/17/09)

2009        Feb 14, Mexico City set a new record as nearly 40,000 people locked lips in the city cen-ter for the world's largest group kiss. Gunmen killed a state police officer  Carlos Reyes and 10 members of his family, including five children in the town of Monte Largo, Tabasco state. The shooting also killed a street vendor in front of the house of the officer. In Jalisco state gunmen burst into a restaurant, killing seven people and wounding five, including 3 children.
    (AP, 2/14/09)(AP, 2/15/09)(AP, 2/17/09)

2009        Feb 17, In Mexico hundreds of people blocked bridges to the US in three border cities, demanding the army leave in another challenge for the Mexican government as it struggles to quell escalating drug violence. 3 police officers, including the operations director of the Ciudad Juarez city police, were shot to death by unidentified assailants on a street near the US consu-late. Federal police fighting gunmen in the northern border city of Reynosa had to call the army for help. After the fighting, which left five gunmen dead and seven police injured, authorities seized several assault rifles and even a 60 mm mortar. Cardboard signs with handwritten mes-sages appeared taped to the doors and windows of businesses in ciudad Juarez, warning that one officer would be killed every two days police chief Roberto Orduna did not quit.
    (AP, 2/18/09)(AP, 2/18/09)

2009        Feb 18, Fifty-one Democrats and 2 Republicans, sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to enforce a ban on importing assault weapons, saying many such guns are later smuggled south to arm Mexico's ruthless drug cartels. The ban was implemented under the administrations of Pres. George H.W. Bush and Pres. Bill Clinton, and the US government can enforce it under provisions of the 1968 Gun Control Act. But the US Bureau of Alcohol, To-bacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has quietly abandoned the ban in recent years.
    (AP, 2/18/09)(AP, 2/24/09)

2009        Feb 20, In Mexico criminal gangs in Ciudad Juarez followed up on threats and killed po-lice officer Cesar Ivan Portillo and city jail guard Juan Pablo Ruiz as they left their homes before dawn to head to work. Public Safety Secretary Roberto Orduna, the police chief  of Ciudad Juarez, stepped down hours later.
    (AP, 2/20/09)

2009        Feb 21, In Mexico assailants in an SUV hurled two grenades at a police station in the Pacific resort town of Zihuatanejo, wounding one officer and four civilians. Teenagers stoned a 22-year-old man to death in Tuxtla Gutierrez because they believed he had stolen a cell phone and a bicycle from one of their friends.
    (AP, 2/21/09)

2009        Feb 22, In Mexico gunmen in Chihuahua city shot at a convoy carrying the governor of Chihuahua, a violence-wracked border state, killing one of his bodyguards and wounding two other agents. Police arrested two suspects March 31 in the northern city of Chihuahua, who then led them to 2 more suspects.
    (AP, 2/24/09)(AP, 4/5/09)

2009        Feb 24, In Michoacan state, Mexico, Vista Hermosa Mayor Octavio Carrillo was arriving at his home when four gunmen waiting for him opened fire. He became the 6th elected local of-ficial killed in Michoacan since June.
    (AP, 2/24/09)

2009        Feb 25, Mexico’s government said it will deploy extra troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez across the border from Texas, where the police chief recently bowed to crime gang de-mands that he resign.
    (AP, 2/26/09)
2009        Feb 25, Attorney General Eric Holder said US and Mexican authorities have arrested 750 people over 21 months in an anti-drug sweep that included 52 members of Mexico's Si-naloa drug cartel. The crackdown culminated 50 overnight raids. It investigated crimes in the United States, Mexico and Canada, netted some 59 million dollars in cash, 12,000 kilos (12 tons) of cocaine, 544 kilos (1,200 pounds) of methamphetamine and 1.3 million Ecstasy pills.
    (AFP, 2/25/09)(WSJ, 2/26/09, p.A6)

2009        Feb 28, Police in southern Mexico found the body of Rolando Landa, head of security in the township of La Union, near the Pacific beach town of Zihuatanejo. The body was accompa-nied by threatening messages apparently left by members of the Familia Michoacana drug gang. Two police officers in the town of Praxedis Guerrero, just south of the border town of Ciudad Juarez, were shot dead in their patrol vehicle.
    (AP, 2/28/09)(AP, 3/1/09)

2009        Feb, Scientists published a study showing that genetically modified material did con-taminate native corn in the crop's birthplace in southern Mexico. Elena Alvarez Buylla, author of the article published in the February edition of Molecular Ecology, said the difficult atmosphere surrounding the original debate persists.
    (AP, 3/5/09)

2009        Mar 1, Mexican federal police made two arrests and confiscated weapons and mari-juana in Tijuana, across the US border from San Diego, after coming under attack by men linked to a drug cartel.
    (AP, 3/1/09)

2009        Mar 3, In Mexico hundreds of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across Ciudad Juarez, trying to prevent a collapse in law and order just south of the US border. Joggers found the de-capitated bodies of 3 men near a bullfighting ring in the border city of Tijuana. The heads were found nearby with a message calling the men "snitches." One of the dead included Jorge Nor-man Harrison (38), an American who had been convicted for drug trafficking in the US. A fourth body, whose head was wrapped in masking tape, was found in a creek.
    (Reuters, 3/3/09)(AP, 3/3/09)(AP, 3/7/09)

2009        Mar 4, In Mexico a fight between gangs in a state prison in Ciudad Juarez left at least 20 prisoners dead.
    (SFC, 3/5/09, p.A5)

2009        Mar 6, Mexico published a new law allowing the planting of genetically modified corn for experimental reasons.
    (SFC, 3/7/09, p.A2)

2009        Mar 9, In Mexico gunmen killed six people, including a local police chief, in a series of attacks in mountain towns in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. Gunmen also shot and killed a Michoacan state police commander outside police headquarters in the city of Zamora.
    (AP, 3/9/09)

2009        Mar 10, In western Mexico 5 human heads were found inside coolers along a highway. Authorities were still searching for the bodies.
    (AP, 3/10/09)

2009        Mar 11, Forbes magazine released its list of 793 of the world’s richest people. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, a suspected drug lord and Mexico's most-wanted fugitive, made the list of billionaires with a fortune described as "self made." He was No. 701 on the list. The list included 5 Indonesians.
    (AP, 3/11/09)(SSFC, 3/15/09, p.A4)

2009        Mar 12, Mexico extradited two former US Border Patrol agents accused of taking bribes from migrant smugglers. The US Embassy said Raul Villarreal and Fidel Villarreal allegedly fled to Mexico after they learned US authorities were investigating them in 2006. Two suspected migrant smugglers were also extradited.
    (AP, 3/12/09)

2009        Mar 14, In Mexico police acting on a tip found nine bodies partially buried in the desert on the outskirts of the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. 1,500 more troops arrived, on top of 2,150 who arrived a day earlier. Authorities announced the arrest of Sergio Pena Mendoza (39), a suspected leader of the Zetas, a drug cartel hit squad. A male suspect threw a hand grenade at police officers in the western city of Guadalajara. No injuries were reported. Police detained the suspect and later found 14 more grenades and 10 assault rifles in his home.
    (AP, 3/15/09)

2009        Mar 16, Mexico said it will increase tariffs on about 90 US products in retaliation for last week's decision to end a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods in the United States.
    (AP, 3/16/09)
2009        Mar 16, In northern Mexico a tractor-trailer slammed into a bus carrying Canadian and US tourists, killing 11. The bus was carrying a group of Texas retirees from McAllen, Texas, to the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas when a drunken driver lost control of his tractor-trailer outside the city of Saltillo.
    (AP, 3/17/09)(WSJ, 3/18/09, p.A10)

2009        Mar 18, In Mexico Vicente "El Vicentillo" Zambada, top figure in the Sinaloa drug cartel, was arrested before dawn at a home in an elite Mexico City neighborhood.
    (AP, 3/20/09)
2009        Mar 18, The US government sued Union Pacific in San Diego and Houston saying the rail company had failed to prevent smuggling of illegal drugs by rail into the US from Mexico. The government cited at least 58 occasions of illegal drug transport, mostly marijuana, since 2001. At least one case involved cocaine.
    (WSJ, 3/19/09, p.A7)

2009        Mar 19, In Mexico new tariffs on 89 products took effect in retaliation for a US decision last week to cancel a cross-border program that gave Mexican truckers access to their northern neighbor's highways.
    (AP, 3/19/09)

2009        Mar 20, Mexico’s central bank lowered its overnight lending rate by .75 to 6.75%, in response to the deepening recession.
    (WSJ, 3/20/09, p.A5)
2009        Mar 20, The Mexican army in Saltillo, Coahuila, arrested Sigifrido Najera Talamantes, an alleged drug trafficker. He was suspected of organizing an attack on a US consulate as well as the killing of several soldiers in retaliation for a government crackdown.
    (AP, 3/20/09)

2009        Mar 21, In central Mexico toxic fumes killed at least 10 people who were trying to clean a sewage pump station in the town of Atotonilco de Tula.
    (AP, 3/22/09)

2009        Mar 22, In Mexico gunmen killed Edgar Garcia, a state police commander in charge of investigating kidnappings and extortion in the western state of Michoacan.
    (AP, 3/23/09)

2009        Mar 24, Mexican soldiers in a Monterrey suburb detained Hector Huerta Rios, one of the nation's 24 top drug traffickers included on a "most-wanted" list issued two days ago. Officials in Nuevo Laredo began destroying more than 35 statues dedicated to a "Death Saint" popular with drug traffickers.
    (AP, 3/25/09)

2009        Mar 25, In Mexico US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mexico in its violent struggle against drug cartels, and acknowl-edged the US shares blame because of its demand for drugs and supply of weapons.
    (AP, 3/26/09)

2009        Mar 31, Mexico’s Pres. Calderon revealed that his country had secured a $47 billion line of credit from the IMF. It was the 1st country to be approved for the new Flexible Credit Line, which does not require a country to make policy changes.
    (WSJ, 4/2/09, p.A6)(Econ, 4/4/09, p.76)
2009        Mar 31, Mexican authorities said police in northern Mexico caught a gang that allegedly stole oil from state-owned pipelines and smuggled it across the border to sell it to US refineries.
    (AP, 4/1/09)

2009        Mar, Mexico City passed legislation to ban free non-biodegradable plastic bags. It was signed in August gave retailers a year to comply.
    (AP, 9/9/09)

2009        Apr 1, Mexico detained Vicente Carrillo Leyva (32), one of its most wanted drug sus-pects. He allegedly was the second in command of the powerful Juarez cartel. Leyva is the son of drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was one of Mexico's most important drug traffick-ers before he died during plastic surgery to change his appearance in 1997.
    (AP, 4/2/09)

2009        Apr 2, Mexico's Senate unanimously approved legislation that would allow the govern-ment to seize property from suspected drug traffickers and other criminals before they are con-victed.
    (AP, 4/3/09)
2009        Apr 2, US and Mexico officials said they are creating a cross-border group to develop strategies for stopping the illegal flow of guns and drugs between the two countries.
    (AP, 4/3/09)

2009        Apr 3, In Mexico Alberto Rayas Rodriguez (37), the chief homicide detective in western Jalisco state, was killed while on his way to a government event when gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on his car.
    (AP, 4/5/09)

2009        Apr 4, In Mexico 11 people were found shot to death in 5 different places, some bearing signs of torture and left with threatening messages emblematic of drug violence.
    (AP, 4/5/09)
2009        Apr 4, In Texas Jorge Alberto Mendez (42) was arrested while trying to cross into Mex-ico from El Paso, where he lived. He was arrested for allegedly raping 19 women across the border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 4/7/09)

2009        Apr 9, Mexico City turned off the tap to millions of residents because water reserves have reached historic lows. The two-day shutdown of a main pipeline affected at least 5 million of the 20 million people in the Mexico City valley.
    (AP, 4/9/09)
2009        Apr 9, In Mexico a former Guatemalan soldier, who allegedly procured weapons for a drug cartel, was killed in a gunfight with federal police. Israel Nava and two other gunmen were killed in northern Zacatecas state. Eight police were wounded. Nava was a former member of the "kaibiles," Guatemalan soldiers trained in counterinsurgency. Mexico first warned in 2005 that the Zetas were recruiting kaibiles.
    (AP, 4/9/09)

2009        Apr 13, Mexico's Congress opened a three-day debate on the merits of legalizing mari-juana for personal use, a policy backed by three former Latin American presidents who warned that a crackdown on drug cartels is not working. Mexican authorities arrested a woman guard-ing an arsenal that included the first anti-aircraft machine gun seized in Mexico. The army cap-tured Ruben Granados Vargas, an alleged lieutenant for the Beltran-Leyva drug cartel in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero.
    (AP, 4/13/09)(AP, 4/14/09)

2009        Apr 15, Mexico’s troubled border city of Ciudad Juarez and the federal government signed an agreement to train, recruit and equip enough city police officers to take over from 5,000 army troops now performing security patrols there.
    (AP, 4/16/09)
2009        Apr 15, Pres. Obama directed the US Treasury Dept. to seize assets of 3 Mexican drug cartels including the Sinaloa cartel, the Los Zetas cartel and the La Familia Michoacan group.
    (SFC, 4/16/09, p.A2)

2009        Apr 17, In Mexico gunmen over the last 24 hours killed 12 people in different parts of Michoacan state, including three men who were beheaded. Authorities in Piedras Negras, in Coahuila state, bordering Texas, found the body of a man whose fingers had been cut off. As-sailants stuck one finger in the man's mouth and cut out his tongue. Two buses collided head-on in the southern state of Chiapas, killing at least 19 people.
    (AP, 4/17/09)
2009        Apr 17, A US federal judge sentenced John Philip Hernandez of Houston to 8 years in prison for buying military-style firearms and that ended up in the hands of Mexico’s drug cartels. Prosecutors said Hernandez led a group that purchased 339 weapons over 15 months.
    (SFC, 4/18/09, p.A4)

2009        Apr 18, Eight Mexican law enforcement officers were killed in an unsuccessful attack on a police convoy attempting to prevent the transfer of an important drug suspect to a prison in western Mexico. The attack appeared to have been an attempt to free  Jeronimo Gamez, a top lieutenant of the Beltran-Leyva cartel, was arrested on the outskirts of Mexico City in January. Officers managed to deliver Gamez and eight other detainees to the prison despite the attacks.
    (AP, 4/19/09)(AP, 4/20/09)
2009        Apr 18, In Mexico one train apparently ran into another on the recently inaugurated Suburban Railway bordering Mexico City. At least 70 people were injured.
    (AP, 4/19/09)

2009        Apr 20, In Mexico police found a body in flames dumped along a main thoroughfare on the outskirts the northern border city of Tijuana. The victim was found with his head wrapped in packing tape, a common practice used by drug smugglers against rivals.
    (AP, 4/22/09)

2009        Apr 21, In Mexico soldiers captured Isaac Manuel Godoy Castro, an alleged top member of the Arellano Felix cartel, along with six other alleged members of his cell.
    (AP, 4/23/09)

2009        Apr 22, In Mexico the bullet-riddled bodies of the two army officers were found in the Durango township of Tepehuanes, about 30 miles (50 kms) south of Guanacevi. The discovery happened days after Roman Catholic Archbishop Hector Gonzalez Martinez created a stir by saying that Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman lives near the town of Guanacevi.
    (AP, 4/23/09)

2009        Apr 24, Mexico’s Health Secretary Jose Cordova said private and public schools in Mex-ico city have been ordered to remain closed due to a flue epidemic. At least 20 people have died nationwide from the flu in the last three weeks.
    (AP, 4/24/09)
2009        Apr 24, In Mexico the bullet-riddled bodies of nine men were found in and around the resort of Acapulco. 2 federal police agents were shot to death in Ciudad Juarez, as they walked in the downtown area after leaving a bar. Mexican authorities captured German Torres (29), an alleged cartel hit man suspected in the abduction of American anti-kidnapping expert Felix Ba-tista. Batista was kidnapped in Coahuila state Dec. 10 and has not been heard from since.
    (AP, 4/24/09)(AP, 4/26/09)

2009        Apr 25, In Mexico gunmen killed the police chief of Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, less than three weeks after he took over the local force with the aim of purging alleged corruption. Six police officers were being questioned in the attack.
    (AP, 4/26/09)
2009        Apr 25, Mexico City suspended all public events for 10 days as officials tried to contain an outbreak of a deadly new swine flu. Tests showed 20 people have died of the swine flu, and 48 other deaths were probably due to the same strain.
    (AP, 4/25/09)
2009        Apr 25, The World Health Organization called an emergency meeting of experts to con-sider declaring an international public health emergency over the swine flu outbreak believed to have killed dozens of people in Mexico and sickened at least seven in the US.
    (AP, 4/25/09)

2009        Apr 27, US cases of the deadly new flu strain rose to 40. Governments around the world acted to stem a possible flu pandemic, as a virus that has killed 149 people in Mexico and spread to North America was confirmed to have reached Europe. Spain's Health Ministry con-firmed the country's first case of swine flu and said another 20 people are suspected of having the disease.
    (Reuters, 4/27/09)(AP, 4/27/09)(WSJ, 4/28/09, p.A1)
2009        Apr 27, In Mexico an earthquake of magnitude 5.6 was centered near Chilpancingo, about 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Mexico City. 2 women aged 67 and 75 died of heart at-tacks during or shortly after the earthquake, and four homes and a perimeter wall collapsed in and around the resort of Acapulco.
    (AP, 4/28/09)
2009        Apr 27, In Tijuana, Mexico, 7 police officers were assassinated in about an hour's time in what authorities said was a coordinated effort. 4 of the officers, three men and a woman, were found amid more than 200 bullet shells.
    (AP, 4/29/09)

2009        Apr 28, World health officials raised a global alert to an unprecedented level as swine flu was blamed for more deaths in Mexico and the epidemic crossed new borders, with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific regions.
    (AP, 4/28/09)

2009        Apr 29, Mexican police arrested suspected Zeta gang leader Gregorio Sauceda Gam-boa, one of Mexico's 24 most-wanted drug traffickers.
    (AP, 4/29/09)
2009        Apr 29, In Cuba a statement published in state newspapers said that effective midnight, flights from Cuba to Mexico would be grounded due to swine flu. After that, airlines can fly pre-sumably empty planes to the island and pickup Mexico travels. This amended a blanket 48-hour ban on flights between Mexico and Cuba announced a day earlier.
    (AP, 4/29/09)

2009        Apr 30, Mexican health authorities said they confirmed 300 swine flu cases and 12 deaths due to the virus among a total of 679 people tested so far.
    (AP, 5/1/09)
2009        Apr 30, Mexican authorities detained 12 federal police investigators accused of leaking information to hit men who ambushed and killed 8 officers on April 18 in a failed attempt to free a high level drug cartel member.
    (SFC, 5/1/09, p.A2)

2009        May 1, US cases of the H1N1 flu rose to 155, based on federal and state tallies. State laboratory operators believe the number is higher because they are not testing all suspected cases. Mexico raised its confirmed swine flu death toll from 15 to 16, adding that the total num-ber of confirmed cases of the virus had risen to 397. Worldwide, the total confirmed cases were 653, with the real number also believed to be much larger.
    (AP, 5/2/09)

2009        May 2, Mexico said it had no confirmed deaths from HINI swine flu overnight, even as its confirmed caseload grew to 443.
    (AP, 5/2/09)

2009        May 3, Mexican police found 11 bodies dumped around a southern Guerrero state, in-cluding seven wrapped in plastic bags and thrown off a bridge. The bodies of five men and two women were found in a river between the Pacific resort town of Acapulco and the city of Cuer-navaca. The other four bodies were found in a 600-yard ravine in the town of Pilcaya.
    (AP, 5/4/09)
2009        May 3, In Mexico at least four gunmen confronted journalist Carlos Ortega (52) when he got out of his car in front of his home in the small town of Santa Maria del Oro. Ortega was shot in the head after struggling with the attackers. Ortega recently argued with the town's mayor, Martin Silvestre Herrera, over an article on sanitation at a local slaughterhouse, and then wrote a column saying he would hold the mayor responsible if anything happened to him.
    (AP, 5/5/09)

2009        May 4, Mexico's health secretary said most businesses will reopen May 6 nationwide, citing ebb in the swine flu outbreak. The World Health Organization chief warned that swine flu could return with a vengeance despite Pres. Felipe Calderon insisting his country has contained the epidemic.
    (AP, 5/4/09)(AFP, 5/4/09)

2009        May 6, New H1N1 flu cases across Europe and a second US death kept health officials on alert despite signs Mexico's epidemic had passed its peak. Mexican health officials said that testing of backlogged cases has increased the confirmed swine flu death toll from 31 to 42, in-cluding three new deaths in the past two days.
    (Reuters, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/6/09)

2009        May 7, In Mexico high schools and universities closed by the swine flu epidemic re-opened as teachers and parents carefully checked returning students for flu symptoms. The death toll due to the HINI flu was raised to 44. Mexico City says all businesses can reopen in-cluding sports arenas, museums, bars.
    (AP, 5/7/09)
2009        May 7, Mexican police said 3 women who disappeared in the border city of Tijuana were killed by drug traffickers who dissolved their bodies in a caustic substance. 2 drug traffickers were arrested this week and confessed to the killings. A 3rd suspect was being sought.
    (AP, 5/7/09)

2009        May 8, Mexico’s federal attorney general's office said authorities have arrested 25 Ti-juana police officers and two civilians on organized crime charges for alleged drug gang ties. In the border state of Chihuahua, prosecutors said police acting on an anonymous tip found two clandestine graves with 7 bodies in the town of Palomas, across from Columbus, New Mexico.
    (AP, 5/8/09)

2009        May 9, In Mexico gunmen killed 9 people in three separate attacks in the western state of Michoacan. 4 horses and a bull were also killed in one of the attacks. The bodies of 4 US citizens (19-23) were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in Tijuana, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs.
    (AP, 5/11/09)(AP, 5/15/09)
2009        May 9, Costa Rica reported the first swine flu death outside North America and the US announced its third death from the virus, while Mexico delayed the reopening of primary schools in some states.
    (AP, 5/9/09)

2009        May 10, Mexican prosecutors announced that police had arrested four alleged members of a drug cartel in the border city of Tijuana after police found over $542,000 in their vehicles. Federal prosecutors in Cuernavaca detained 11 men and 3 women on suspicion of smuggling weapons for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel. The 14 caught in the raid on a house were ordered held under house arrest for 40 days pending possible charges.
    (AP, 5/10/09)

2009        May 11, Most of Mexico's primary schools and kindergartens welcomed back millions of students after a nationwide shutdown ordered to help put a brake on the spread of swine flu.
    (AP, 5/11/09)
2009        May 11, Confirmed cases of H1N1 swine flu in the US climbed to more than 2,500, sur-passing Mexico as the country most affected by the outbreak.
    (http://tinyurl.com/prszux)

2009        May 15, Mexico received eight armored vehicles as part of a US aid package to help the government with its nationwide fight against drug cartels. Mexican federal police announced the capture of an alleged lieutenant of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Mario Gonzalez Martinez was de-scribed as one of the most trusted aides of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. Martinez was cap-tured along with four alleged accomplices in the western state of Jalisco.
    (AP, 5/16/09)

2009        May 16, In central Mexico an armed gang freed 53 inmates from the Cieneguillas prison in Zacatecas state, including two dozen with ties to a powerful drug cartel, in a daring raid that took just five minutes. Gov. Amalia Garcia Medina said footage from the security cameras in-side and outside the prison indicates that guards helped the armed gang. The bodies of two men were found shot to death in central Michoacan state. Federal police came under fire as they raided a Cuernavaca building where four of suspects were arrested, including 3 police offi-cers. A fifth suspect was also arrested as an alleged hit man.
    (AP, 5/16/09)(AP, 5/17/09)

2009        May 18, Mexican soldiers arrested Rodolfo Lopez and several others after they landed at Monterrey's international airport to take over trafficking operations in Monterrey. Several armed men were arrested in the parking lot, where they were waiting to pick Lopez up.
    (AP, 5/19/09)

2009        May 18, Mexican soldiers arrested Rodolfo Lopez and several others after they landed at Monterrey's international airport to take over trafficking operations in Monterrey. Several armed men were arrested in the parking lot, where they were waiting to pick Lopez up. Police in the southern state of Guerrero found the severed heads of three men in an ice chest left on the side of a highway near the resort of Zihuatanejo.
    (AP, 5/19/09)

2009        May 19, Inmates at a Mexico City prison rioted over restrictions on visits due to swine flu, as the country reported two more confirmed deaths, raising the toll to 74 nationwide.
    (AP, 5/19/09)

2009        May 25, In Mexico Eliseo Barron, a veteran crime reporter for the La Opinion Milenio newspaper, was kidnapped from his home in Torreon. His body was found hours later found in an irrigation ditch in the drug-plagued northern Mexican state of Durango. Mexico's army ar-rested two US citizens for allegedly kidnapping a hardware store clerk in the northern border city of Tijuana. 20-year-old Teddy Toledo and his sister, both of California, and two others were arrested for abducting the clerk a week ago. Five suspects were arrested on June 11, including one man who told authorities the journalist was slain as a warning against meddling with a powerful drug cartel.
    (AP, 5/26/09)(AP, 5/27/09)(SSFC, 5/31/09, p.A4)(AP, 6/12/09)

2009        May 26, Mexican federal forces detained 10 mayors and 18 other officials for allegedly protecting one of Mexico's most violent drug cartels in an unprecedented anti-corruption sweep in the Pacific coast state of Michoacan.
    (AP, 5/27/09)

2009        May 30, In Mexico two gunmen died in a clash with soldiers in Michaocan. The gunmen opened fire on soldiers on patrol in the village of Moreno de Valencia. Soldiers found a Kalash-nikov rifle, a shotgun, a handgun and a grenade inside the gunmen's sport utility vehicle.
    (AP, 6/1/09)

2009        May 31, In Mexico gunmen in Ciudad Juarez, opened fire in the lobby of a drug and al-cohol rehabilitation center, killing five people. Gunmen killed four men sitting in a car in the bor-der city of Tijuana.
    (AP, 6/1/09)

2009        Jun 1, Mexican soldiers and federal agents detained 29 police officers in northern Nuevo Leon state for alleged ties to drug traffickers. Retired Gen. Javier Aguayo took over as police chief of Chihuahua, where drug-fueled violence has claimed hundreds of lives. Mexican soldiers in Reynosa captured Sergio Garcia Trevino, a drug cartel suspect accused of helping procure the largest illegal weapons cache found in the country.
    (AP, 6/1/09)(AP, 6/2/09)

2009        Jun 2, Mexico moved forward in its campaign to root out corruption, rounding up 21 more police officers in several northern cities for questioning on suspicions they had ties to drug trafficking. A total of 58 officers have been detained since the operation began a day earlier.
    (AP, 6/2/09)
2009        Jun 2, Mexican truckers filed a lawsuit against the United States seeking $6 billion in compensation for losses they claim to have suffered since Washington banned them from crossing the border in violation of a trade pact. Mexico's National Cargo Transportation Asso-ciation, or Canacar, filed the lawsuit representing 4,500 trucking companies. Canacar had filed an arbitration notice with the US State Department under the NAFTA in April.
    (AP, 6/3/09)

2009        Jun 3, Mexican federal investigators questioned 48 Veracruz city traffic officers about the disappearance of the top customs official for one of Mexico's most important ports. Cus-toms administrator Francisco Serrano has not been seen since his smashed government vehi-cle was found abandoned at an accident scene three days ago. Serrano recently launched a new system to check shipping containers at the Gulf coast port.
    (AP, 6/4/09)

2009        Jun 4, Mexican police found 11 bodies, most with their hands and feet cut off, inside an abandoned car in the border state of Sonora in violence attributed to drug traffickers battling for control of the region.
    (AP, 6/5/09)

2009        Jun 5, In Mexico a fast-moving fire killed 30 babies and toddlers at the ABC day care in the city of Hermosillo, Sonora state, despite desperate attempts of firefighters, who punched through the walls and fought their way through flames to rescue babies, toddlers and others trapped inside. No fire alarm or sprinkler system had gone off, according to witnesses. One mother said a second door to the day care was bolted shut and nobody could find the key. The final death toll reached 47.
    (AP, 6/6/09)(AP, 6/7/09)(AP, 6/8/09)(AP, 6/23/09)
2009        Jun 6, In Mexico 13 gunmen, 2 soldiers and 2 bystanders were killed in a 4-hour shoot-out in Acapulco's hotel zone in a gunbattle that went passed midnight. The soldiers found four Guerrero state police officers inside the house who said they were being held captive.
    (AP, 6/7/09)(AP, 6/8/09)

2009        Jun 7, Mexican police announced the arrest of Olga Lerma in western Jalisco state. She was wanted in the US for allegedly smuggling $2 million in cocaine-trafficking profits for a pow-erful drug cartel.
    (AP, 6/7/09)

2009        Jun 8, In Mexico gunmen launched grenades and opened fire in near simultaneous at-tacks on two police stations in Acapulco, killing three officers in violence that broke out less than 48 hours after a gunbattle in the resort left 17 dead.
    (AP, 6/8/09)
2009        Jun 8, The US border patrol said a Mexican truck driver was arrested over the weekend at a checkpoint in San Diego County after 73 illegal Mexican immigrants were found in the back of his rig.
    (SFC, 6/9/09, p.A5)

2009        Jun 9, In Mexico 2 Sonora state government officials, whose wives are owners of the ABC day care center where 44 children died in a fire, resigned saying they wanted to clear the way for an investigation into the June 5 blaze.
    (AP, 6/10/09)

2009        Jun 10, Mexican soldiers captured Jose Filiberto Parra Ramos, a suspected cartel member accused of killing two federal agents and leading bloody battles for smuggling routes in the northern city of Tijuana.
    (AP, 6/12/09)

2009        Jun 11, The Mexican army captured 25 gunmen in northern Nicolas Bravo, Chihuahua state, who witnesses say disguised themselves as soldiers. Soldiers also seized 29 automatic rifles during the raid. Gunmen tossed grenades and fired on a crowded taco stand in the city of Uruapan, Michoacan state, killing a police officer and a 15-year-old boy. Armed men barged into a motel room and killed five people in their beds in Ciudad Juarez. Two other people were killed during a car chase and shootout between armed men in downtown Juarez. The Mexican Navy in Sinaloa discovered one of the largest methamphetamine labs ever found in the country, with enough ephedrine to produce more than 40 tons of methamphetamine.
    (AP, 6/11/09)(AP, 6/12/09)(AP, 6/14/09)(AP, 6/16/09)
2009        Jun 11, Human Rights Watch in a report to the UN said abuses by the Mexican military have surged since the government deployed troops to fight drug cartels more than two years ago, and too little is done to investigate allegations of rapes, killing and torture. Mexico's gov-ernment disputed the charges.
    (AP, 6/11/09)

2009        Jun 12, In Mexico Mauricio Fernandez, a ruling party mayoral candidate in Monterey suburb San Pedro Garza, suggested that as mayor he would avoid confronting the Beltran Levya cartel to maintain peace. Police found the bodies of five men dumped beside on a high-way in the northern state of Durango, all with signs of torture. Four more bodies were found in different parts of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. Soldiers arrested Juan Manuel Jurado Zarzoza, the local leader of the Gulf drug cartel in Cancun in charge of drug sales, extortion and kidnappings.
    (AP, 6/13/09)(AP, 6/14/09)

2009        Jun 13, In Mexico 3 federal agents were killed in two separate attacks along a highway in the western state of Michoacan. In western Guerrero state gunmen ordered a priest and two seminarians out of their vehicle and shot them dead in the town of Arcelia.
    (AP, 6/14/09)(AP, 6/15/09)

2009        Jun 15, Mexico's attorney general's office said it charged 51 guards and prison officials, including the director, for their complicity in the escape of 53 inmates from a jail in Zacatecas state. A survey by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said an estimated 9,758 mi-grants were kidnapped in Mexico between September and February, mainly by drug gangs but some migrants reported that authorities were involved.
    (AP, 6/15/09)

2009        Jun 16, In northern Mexico police found the bodies of seven young men who were beaten or shot to death in the state of Durango. In western Michoacan state, three suspected kidnappers were killed in a shootout with local police in the city of Uruapan. The Navy reported that it had detected a shipment of cocaine hidden inside the carcasses of frozen sharks aboard a freight ship at the Gulf coast port of Progreso.
    (AP, 6/17/09)

2009        Jun 17, In Mexico four teenagers were shot to death on a Ciudad Juarez street by gun-men wielding assault rifles. The four were between the ages of 16 and 18.
    (AP, 6/20/09)

2009        Jun 18, Mexico levied organized crime and drug charges against seven mayors, the former state attorney general and 19 other officials in the western state of Michoacan for alleg-edly aiding a drug cartel.
    (AP, 6/18/09)

2009        Jun 19, Mexico authorities in the border city of Ciudad Juarez said they would step up patrols after killings there rebounded to levels near those that led the government to send in 5,000 army troops in March. In Michoacan state gunmen tossed a grenade at an ambulance and then opened its doors to kill a patient inside who had narrowly survived an earlier shooting in Uruapan. Paramedics ran for their lives during the attack. The man (23) died and his wife (20) was listed in serious condition.
    (AP, 6/20/09)

2009        Jun 22, Mexican customs officials made 3 major drug seizures. Nearly 1,000 pounds (450 kilos) of cocaine was found hidden in a shipment of tires from Colombia, found at the Pa-cific port of Manzan. More than 1,200 pounds (545 kilos) of marijuana was discovered in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. 330 pounds (150 kilos) of pseudophedrine pills, used to make methamphetamine, was found in a shipment of medical supplies from Bangladesh, stopped at Mexico City International Airport.
    (AP, 6/30/09)

2009        Jun 25, In Mexico’s northern state of Sonora, assailants opened fire on a car carrying a congressional candidate for Calderon's National Action Party, or PAN, killing two people who were with the candidate.
    (AP, 6/27/09)

2009        Jun 26, In Mexico a shootout between police and suspected cartel hit men left at least 12 people dead and a police officer wounded in the town of Apaseo el Alto, Guanajuato state.
    (AP, 6/27/09)

2009        Jun 26, In Mexico a shootout between police and suspected cartel hit men left at least 12 people dead and a police officer wounded in the town of Apaseo el Alto, Guanajuato state. Suspected cartel operator Omar Ibarra was caught on a street in the northern city of Monterrey. He reportedly possessed the names of 33 policemen in the wealthy suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia who had presumably received money from Ibarra. Gunmen in the border state of Sonora opened fire on a car carrying congressional hopeful Ernesto Cornejo, killing two people who were riding with him.
    (AP, 6/27/09)(AP, 6/30/09)

2009        Jun 27, In Mexico’s western state of Michoacan, gunmen opened fire on a car carrying two forensic investigators in Zamora, killing  a chemist and wounding a doctor. In the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, a women and her 3-year-old son were shot to death by unidentified assail-ants on a highway. Police uncovered a mass grave in central Mexico with the remains of 14 or 15 people believed to have been executed by the Zetas drug gang.
    (AP, 6/27/09)(AP, 7/2/09)

2009        Jun 28, Mexican prosecutors announced they have put 93 police officers and investiga-tors under house arrest on suspicion of aiding the Zetas, a feared gang of hit men tied to the Gulf drug cartel.
    (AP, 6/28/09)

2009        Jun 29, In Mexico federal prosecutors released three of the 10 Mexican mayors arrested last month in an unprecedented sweep of elected officials accused of protecting a drug cartel. Assailants set ablaze a pickup truck belonging to a congressional candidate for PAN, and left two threatening notes demanding he drop out of the race. At least five people died in several drug-related slayings in the Gulf coast port of Veracruz.
    (AP, 6/30/09)(AP, 7/1/09)

2009        Jun 30, Mexican police found the remains of six people tortured and shot to death in western Michoacan state, a focus of the government's war against drug cartels. In the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, police found the body of a 19-year-old woman, an American citizen from across the border in El Paso, dumped at an intersection with her throat slit.
    (AP, 6/30/09)

2009        Jul 3, In Mexico City kidnappers opened fire with AK-47 assault rifles during an at-tempted rescue of the victim. The rescue failed with catastrophic errors. When police fired back, two commanders, including the chief of the city's elite rapid response force, were shot from behind by their own officers. Meanwhile, one of the kidnappers inside the home fatally shot Yolanda Ceballos (50) before killing himself. Seven other kidnappers were captured. Anti-kidnapping chief Juan Maya Aviles was later suspended.
    (AP, 8/21/09)
2009        Jul 3, In Washington state federal agents said they have arrested 31 people and busted a drug trafficking ring that was directed by a cartel in Jalisco, Mexico. The 2-week Operation Arctic Chill seized 23 guns including a .50 Desert Eagle pistol and an AK-47-type assault rifle.
    (SFC, 7/4/09, p.A5)

2009        Jul 5, Mexicans voted in midterm congressional elections. The old Institutional Revolu-tionary Party made a big comeback in defiance of those who had written off what is still the country's biggest and most representative party. The PAN will lose some of its 206 seats in the lower house, and the PRI stands to more than double its 106 seats.
    (AP, 7/5/09)(AP, 7/6/09)

2009        Jul 7, In northern Mexico an anti-crime activist and a neighbor were killed by gunmen believed linked to a drug cartel. Anti-crime activists said the slaying of Benjamin LeBaron, a US citizen, in Chihuahua state was the first time one of their own had been killed for denouncing crime and called it a chilling warning. Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, a lieutenant and one of the main operators of the Juarez cartel, was later presumed responsible for the killing of LeBaron and a neighbor near Nuevo Casas Grandes.
    (AP, 7/8/09)(AP, 9/6/09)

2009        Jul 8, In Mexico investigators found a severed head and two arms inside a plastic bag in the of Ario de Rosales, Michoacan state.
    (AP, 7/9/09)

2009        Jul 9, Mexican police found four mutilated bodies in plastic bags on the side of a high-way in La Huacana, Michoacan state.
    (AP, 7/9/09)

2009        Jul 11, In Mexico gunmen boldly attacked federal forces across the western state of Mi-choacan following the capture of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, an alleged member of La Familia drug cartel. In Zitacuaro, a mountain town famous for its Monarch butterfly nesting grounds, 3 federal agents were killed, and two soldiers were fatally shot in the town of Zamora. Two federal agents were killed and three others were wounded along a highway between Morelia and the port City of Lazaro Cardenas when dozens of gunmen ambushed their patrol cars.
    (AP, 7/12/09)

2009        Jul 12, Mexican federal agents captured 2 suspects in connection with a series of at-tacks on federal forces across Michoacan state that left 5 officers and 2 soldiers dead.
    (AP, 7/13/09)

2009        Jul 13, Mexican prosecutors said they found the bound, blindfolded and tortured bodies of a dozen people on a roadside near La Huacana in the western state of Michoacan. The 12 bodies were soon identified as federal agents investigating organized crime.
    (AP, 7/14/09)(AP, 7/15/09)(SFC, 7/15/09, p.A2)
2009        Jul 13, Mexico and the US announced that they were working on a protocol for sharing information in arms trafficking cases.
    (AP, 7/14/09)(AP, 8/6/09)

2009        Jul 16, Mexico’s Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont said the government was pouring 1,500 federal police officers, 2,500 soldiers and 1,500 navy personnel into Michoacan state, the home base for the violent La Familia cartel led by Servando "La Tuta" Gomez.
    (AP, 7/16/09)

2009        Jul 17, Mexico's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point, dropping the interbank rate to 4.5% to stimulate a recession-dogged economy.
    (AP, 7/18/09)

2009        Jul 18, Mexican soldiers arrested Luis Ibarra, a suspected drug trafficker in the border city of Tijuana. He was carrying jewelry, narcotics and $3.6 million in cash. Ibarra belonged to a cell in charge of making and trafficking methamphetamine for alleged drug kingpin Teodoro Garcia Simental.
    (AP, 7/20/09)

2009        Jul 20, In Mexico 3 men were killed outside a bar before dawn in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
    (AP, 7/20/09)

2009        Jul 21, Mexican police detained a woman (65) in the deaths of two professional wres-tlers who were found drugged in a low-rent hotel in Mexico City on June 29. One of the diminu-tive wrestlers went by the name "La Parkita" (Little Death") and wore a skeleton costume in the ring. The other was known as "Espectrito Jr." An autopsy on the two wrestlers, who were broth-ers, detected a substance found in eye drops that can damage the nervous system when mixed with alcohol. Three bodies, one of them headless, were found floating in an irrigation ditch in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where drug violence has spiked despite the presence of thousands of soldiers. Police captured four men, members of the La Familia drug cartel, ac-cused of slaying 12 federal agents on the weekend of July 12 and dumping their bloodied bod-ies along a highway in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan.
    (AP, 7/21/09)(http://alibi.com/index.php?story=28392&scn=news)(AP, 7/23/09)

2009        Jul 23, US Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas was killed near Campo, Ca. On July 25 Mexican federal police detained four men suspected of involvement in the killing of Rosas. In-cluded was Ernesto Parra Valenzuela, identified as the suspected killer of Rosas.
    (AP, 7/26/09)(http://texasfred.net/archives/4628)(SFC, 7/27/09, p.A4)

2009        Jul 24, It was reported that federal and state agents have arrested 82 people for grow-ing over $1.2 billion worth of marijuana in California’s Sierra Nevada. Over the last 10 days more than 314,000 plants at 70 different sites were destroyed. Several Mexican drug cartels were said to involved and all but one of those arrested were from Mexico.
    (SFC, 7/24/09, p.D7)

2009        Jul 25, Mexican police captured 11 suspected members of the La Familia cartel and seized a methamphetamine lab in the western state of Michoacan.
    (AP, 7/25/09)

2009        Jul 27, Mexico announced a pilot program to have special courts handle cases involving addicted offenders who commit crimes while under the influence of drugs.
    (AP, 7/27/09)

2009        Jul 28, President Felipe Calderon said Mexico will start issuing nationwide identity cards for its citizens starting this year, and by 2012 everyone will have one. The body of Juan Daniel Martinez (48), a Mexican radio journalist, was found beaten, gagged and partially buried the re-sort city of Acapulco. Jose Ibarra, a federal agent who had been investigating the Nov 13, 2008, killing of  Mexican journalist Armando Rodriguez, was shot dead at his home in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 7/28/09)(AP, 7/29/09)(AP, 7/30/09)

2009        Jul 29, In Mexico gunmen shot up and torched the home of Jesus Antonio Romero (39), a police commander in Veracruz, killing the officer, his wife and his four children, including a 6-year-old boy. He had been promoted a month ago to deputy operations coordinator for the Ve-racruz-Boca del Rio area, a hotbed of drug violence and a stronghold of the Zetas. In a remote mountain town south of Ciudad Juarez, gunmen killed a government welfare official and three police officers during a robbery. Police announced the capture of six more suspected La Familia members, including a man accused of being a chief financial operator.
    (AP, 7/30/09)

2009        Jul 31, In Mexico assailants gunned down five men and a woman in a pool hall in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 7/31/09)

2009        Aug 2, Mexican police raided a church service in Apatzingan, Michoacan state, and ar-rested Miguel Angel Beraza, a man known as "The Truck," and another suspect. Beraza was suspected of moving a half ton of crystal methamphetamine into the US each month and was said to be a high-ranking lieutenant in the drug cartel known as La Familia.
    (AP, 8/3/09)

2009        Aug 4, In Mexico 4 bodies were found in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. In the nearby town of Llano Blanco, police chief Gerardo Silva (40) was found dead in a pickup truck, shot five times.
    (AP, 8/5/09)

2009        Aug 5, In Mexico 5 bodies, one of them headless, were found in a van in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. US Sen. Patrick Leahy a Democrat from Vermont, delayed the release of $100 million of a $1.4 billion, three-year package meant to help Mexico combat drug traffickers. Leahy said Mexico needs effective police forces and a justice system that works.
    (AP, 8/5/09)

2009        Aug 6, In Mexico 11 people, including two police officers and nine gunmen, died follow-ing a running battle between police and gunmen in the central city of Pachuca.
    (AP, 8/7/09)

2009        Aug 7, In Mexico Zambrano Flores, a top lieutenant of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix cartel, was arrested in Tijuana. Police seized 10 rifles, 7 pistols, almost 4,000 rounds of ammu-nition during his arrest.
    (AP, 8/8/09)

2009        Aug 8, In Mexico assailants in the state of Guerrero opened fire on a car carrying a cou-ple and their 3-year-old son, killing all three. In Chihuahua gunmen killed four people in an at-tack in a bar.
    (AP, 8/10/09)

2009        Aug 9, In Mexico some 400 people marched in Guadalajara to protest the negative af-fects of free trade and to demand benefits for retired Mexican laborers who worked in the US as Pres. Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian PM Stephen Harper arrived for a two-day summit.
    (AP, 8/9/09)
2009        Aug 9, Mexican lawyer Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, known for defending high-profile drug trafficking suspects, was shot to death at a street market in the northern city of Monterrey. Army soldiers killed two suspects in a shootout with gunmen in the western state of Michoacan. federal police arrested Dimas Diaz, a drug cartel suspect they believe was behind a plot to kill President Felipe Calderon in retaliation for his crackdown on organized crime. Dia was the al-leged financial operator of the Pacific cartel.
    (AP, 8/10/09)

2009        Aug 10, In Mexico Pres. Obama huddled with the leaders of Mexico and Canada for a swift North American summit, where the swine flu epidemic and knotty disputes over cross-border trade dominated a lengthy agenda.
    (AP, 8/10/09)
2009        Aug 10, Mexican soldiers arrested Juan Daniel Carranco Salazar, the alleged leader of the Gulf cartel's operations in the Caribbean resort of Cancun. State prosecutors in Baja Cali-fornia announced their arrest of state detective Sergio Alvarado Chong in the border city of Mexicali with 8 kilograms (17.64 pounds) of cocaine.
    (AP, 8/11/09)

2009        Aug 11, The US Homeland Security department was scheduled to return $2.4 million to Mexico's tax administration, the first batch of money seized during a binational investigation into smuggled oil that authorities expect to lead to more arrests and seizures. So far this year, oil theft was up 10 percent, and confirmed in 19 states, up from 13 in 2008.
    (AP, 8/11/09)
2009        Aug 11, In northern Mexico Monterrey city police were told not to sit in parked patrol cars observing traffic, because officials suspect they could be spying for criminal gangs or drug cartels. Gunmen attacked a vehicle carrying a prison director in Chihuahua, killing three body-guards and wounding two more seriously.
    (AP, 8/12/09)

2009        Aug 12, In Mexico’s border city of Nuevo Laredo, city police found a bullet-ridden sport utility vehicle belonging to the federal Communications and Transportation Department crashed into a post on a street. There was blood on the seats, and four department employees identified as cargo inspectors were reported missing.
    (AP, 8/12/09)

2009        Aug 13, In Mexico state security officials banned police from setting up sobriety check-points in the northern city of Monterrey because they say the officers routinely use them to ex-tort motorists. Bishop Eduardo Patino Leal was detained in the town of Huatusco, Veracruz state, lost control of his vehicle and ran over 6 Indian street vendors, killing one.
    (AP, 8/14/09)

2009        Aug 14, In northern Mexico a fight among prisoners killed 19 inmates and left more than 20 injured at the prison in the city of Gomez Palacio, Durango state. The battle apparently in-volved inmates jailed on drug or organized crime charges. Assailants in pickup trucks opened fire on Monclova police chief Juan Carlos Pacheco as he headed home. Pacheco was not hurt but three of the police officers guarding him died. Federal police announced the capture of Hec-tor Oyarzabal, an alleged La Familia leader, who was described as director of the gang's drug operations in several towns of the state of Mexico, which surrounds most of Mexico City. In Ciudad Juarez two women and a man were found shot to death in their car.
    (AP, 8/15/09)

2009        Aug 15, In Mexico the dismembered body of Jesus Arroyo, a legal adviser for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, was found in an ice box in Ciudad Altamirano, in Guerrero state. In Guadalajara singer Carlos Vicente Ocaranza, who specialized in drug ballads, was shot to death outside a bar. His manager died of wounds 2 days later. Ocaranza was better known as "El Loco Elizalde," or The Crazy Elizalde, a reference to his distant relation by marriage to Valentin Elizalde, a much more famous musician, also killed by gunshots in 2006.
    (AP, 8/15/09)(www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1646540)

2009        Aug 17, In Mexico at least 8 people were killed early in the day when gunmen opened fire in a bar in drug-plagued Ciudad Juarez on the Texas border. Gunmen killed a father and his 4-year-old son and wounded the mother as the family drove on a highway near Ciudad Juarez. 2 girls, ages 12 and 14, died after being struck by lightning on a soccer field during a religious service in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas state. In Monterrey four gunmen died in a shootout with soldiers and three other suspects were detained. Three soldiers suffered light in-juries in the clash.
    (AP, 8/17/09)(www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1646540)(AP, 8/18/09)

2009        Aug 18, In Mexico gunmen shot up the offices of the Siglo de Torreon newspaper in Torreon, Coahuila state.
    (SFC, 8/19/09, p.A2)

2009        Aug 20, In Mexico the body of leftist congressman Armando Chavarria was found in the passenger seat of a vehicle in Guerrero’s state capital of Chilpancingo. State police said three human heads were found in ice boxes in the municipality of Coyuca de Catalan. The mutilated bodies were in bags nearby. A message from alleged drug traffickers was also found.
    (AP, 8/21/09)

2009        Aug 21, Mexico decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, a move that prosecutors say makes sense even in the midst of the government's grueling battle against drug traffickers. Gunmen killed an army officer Capt. Alejandro Aranda and another man in a bowling alley in Ciudad Juarez, a border city that has seen Mexico's highest levels of drug-related violence in recent years.
    (AP, 8/21/09)(AP, 8/22/09)

2009        Aug 22, In Tijuana, Mexico, at least three police officers were in critical condition after gunmen opened fire on their patrol cars.
    (AP, 8/22/09)

2009        Aug 23, Mexican army soldiers captured Luis Ricardo Magana. Prosecutors described him as a leading member of the violent La Familia drug cartel. A team of top US law enforce-ment officials began a three-day visit to Mexico to explore ways to improve efforts against arms smuggling into Mexico as part of joint efforts to combat drug gangs.
    (AP, 8/24/09)

2009        Aug 24, Mexican police in the northern state of Sinaloa found four severed human heads in a cooler by the side of a rural roadway.
    (AP, 8/24/09)

2009        Aug 26, In Mexico gunmen in Ciudad Juarez killed Pablo Pasillas (33), the aide of a Mexican federal agent investigating the death of a crime reporter, a month after the first agent assigned to the case was shot dead.
    (AP, 8/27/09)

2009        Aug 27, In Mexico the bodies of four farm workers were found dumped in a stable for bulls in the western state of Michoacan. The bodies bore signs of torture and had the letter "Z" carved into their foreheads, a possible reference to the Zetas, hit men tied to the Gulf cartel. In the northern state of Nuevo Leon, state Public Safety Secretary Aldo Fasci said about 2,000 po-lice officers across the state had been fired over the last two years for suspected links to organ-ized crime and drug cartels. Speaking at a meeting of private security firms, he said 500 others were dismissed for other causes.
    (AP, 8/28/09)
2009        Aug 27, In Oaxaca, Mexico, supporters of a teacher’s union tried to retake a school con-trolled by Section 59 when gunfire erupted and teacher Antonio Norberto Camacho was shot to death. Section 59 was created in the midst of the protests led by Section 22 and anti-government groups in 2006.
    (AP, 8/29/09)

2009        Aug 28, In Mexico a convoy of gunmen engaged state police in a running shootout that killed five officers and possibly one of the attackers in the western Mexico state of Jalisco. Americo Delgado (80), a lawyer for convicted Mexican drug kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix, was found stabbed to death in his home. Felix was in prison serving a 22-year-sentence on drug trafficking and organized crime charges and was fighting extradition to the United States.
    (AP, 8/28/09)(AP, 8/29/09)

2009        Aug 29, In northwestern Mexico a shooting killed eight people partying on a seaside boulevard in Navolato, Sinaloa state. Among the dead were two brothers in their 30s who had a record of car theft, Investigators were considering the possibility that the gunmen belonged to a criminal gang known as the "Death Squad," which has been killing car thieves in the region.
    (AP, 8/31/09)

2009        Aug 31, Mexican authorities said they have arrested four men accused of killing at least 211 people for the Juarez cartel. The men allegedly belong to La Linea, a gang of hit men for the Juarez cartel. One of the men alone was accused of killing 97 people and another 87.
    (AP, 8/31/09)

2009        Aug, In Mexico the director of immigrant affairs in the southern border city of Tapachula was found in a tub of cement, months after he was kidnapped.
    (Econ, 9/26/09, p.48)

2009        Sep 1, A top State Department official said the US has released $214 million of an aid package to help Mexico fight drug trafficking, including funds for five helicopters for the military to be delivered by year's end.
    (AP, 9/2/09)

2009        Sep 2, In Mexico gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez, lined people against a wall and shot 18 dead. The brazen attack followed the killing of Jose Manuel Revuelta, the No. 2 security official in Michoacan, President Felipe Calderon's home state. 2 bodyguards and a truck driver were also killed in the crossfire. The federal Attorney General's Office announced the arrest of its two top officials in Quintana Roo, a state on the Yucatan Peninsula, for allegedly protecting the Gulf and the Beltran Levya drug cartels. Chihuahua state authorities said they were investigating reports that rehabilitation centers have turned into hide-outs for drug smugglers being sought by police and hit men from rival gangs.
    (AP, 9/3/09)(AP, 9/4/09)

2009        Sep 4, Mexican federal police detained Armando Medina (49), a small-town mayor of Mugica, Michoacan state, on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers. This is the same state where eight other city chiefs have been arrested since May on similar charges. In the northern state of Durango, two gunmen were killed in a shootout with federal police in the city of Gomez Palacio. The federal government auctioned off property seized from drug traffickers, smugglers, money launderers and tax evaders, including a DC-9 jet that was used to transport 5.5 metric tons of cocaine in 2006. The agency did not disclose the identity of winning bidders. Mexican soldiers, acting on a tip about armed men, detained Jose Rodolfo Escajeda in Nuevo Casas Grandes, in northern Chihuahua state. The suspected drug gang leader was linked to a 2006 border incur-sion by armed traffickers into Texas and the killing of an anti-crime activist in July. Five gunmen and a bystander were killed in a shootout at a lake that began when assailants opened fire on an army patrol on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey. A Ciudad Juarez police officer was shot to death outside his home..
    (AP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/6/09)

2009        Sep 5, In southern Mexico gunmen killed Jose Francisco Fuentes Esperon (43), a state congressional candidate, his wife (38) and two sons (9&13) in their home in Villahermosa in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. Police later arrested a boy (16) and two young men for allegedly killing Fuentes and his family. Chihuahua state prosecutors reported that a severed human head was found placed on a car hood in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, along with a mes-sage relating to drug cartels.
    (AP, 9/5/09)(AP, 9/7/09)

2009        Sep 6, In Mexico attackers shot four men to death in a motel parking lot in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 9/8/09)

2009        Sep 7, Mexican President Felipe Calderon accepted the resignation of Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora, who was leading the battle against drug cartels, making the biggest shake-up yet in his offensive against organized crime. Calderon said he will send the Senate the nomination of Arturo Chavez, a little known lawyer who has worked as both a state and fed-eral prosecutor, to replace Medina-Mora. In the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, about 150 fed-eral police officers assigned to fight cartels went on strike, saying they have not been paid in two months or received hazard bonuses.
    (AP, 9/7/09)(AP, 9/8/09)

2009        Sep 8, In Mexico Police a body with both arms cut off was found dumped on a street in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. The court system in southern Tabasco state said rural journal-ists Roberto Juarez and Lazaro Abreu Tejero Sanchez have been arrested for allegedly work-ing as informants for the Zetas, a gang aligned with the Gulf drug cartel.
    (AP, 9/9/09)

2009        Sep 9, In Mexico a Bolivian-born man, clutching a Bible and claiming a divine mission, hijacked a plane with more than 100 people aboard after takeoff from Cancun. The incident ended quickly and without bloodshed when police arrested Jose Flores (44) in Mexico City. Po-lice in Morelia said that they had seized eight counterfeit police and rescue vehicles including an intensive care ambulance with official-looking logos and paint jobs. The vehicles belonged to gang members who planned to use them to conduct illegal activities.
    (Reuters, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/10/09)

2009        Sep 10, Mexican defense dept. said soldiers have arrested Michael Escalante (29) of El Paso, suspected of killing 18 people in a series of attacks this year in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
    (AP, 9/10/09)

2009        Sep 11, Mexican authorities found at least $5 million hidden in a shipment of ammonium sulfate at a Pacific coast port.
    (AP, 9/12/09)

2009        Sep 12, Mexican police said they have found the bodies of five men dumped in a landfill near the resort city of Acapulco. The men had been shot to death and officers found a note with the bodies signed "The boss of bosses."
    (AP, 9/12/09)

2009        Sep 14, In Mexico 31 police officers were arrested in Hidalgo state on suspicion of col-laborating with the Zetas, a gang of drug cartel hit men. 92 police were arrested there in June. Gunmen opened fire inside a Ciudad Juarez hardware store, killing the woman who owned the store and four other people, including a 19-year-old man. Minutes later an armed gang killed five men riding in a pickup truck.
    (AP, 9/14/09)(AP, 9/16/09)

2009        Sep 15, In Mexico firefighters found six bodies inside a burning car in Tijuana. In Ciudad Juarez gunmen killed five people at a car wash. Gunmen burst into a drug treatment center in Ciudad Juarez and shot to death 10 people, the second such mass killing this month.
    (AP, 9/16/09)(AP, 9/16/09)

2009        Sep 16, Mexican navy personnel arrested of a suspect in the June 1 kidnapping of Francisco Serrano, the customs administrator for the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, who remains missing. Jose Osiris was captured in the port of Veracruz along with 10 other people who may have been accomplices. Guerrero state police reported they had found the decomposed bodies of four men by the side of a highway. Because of their poor condition, the cause of death and identity of the bodies has not yet been established.
    (AP, 9/17/09)

2009        Sep 18, In Mexico City Luis Felipe Hernandez Castillo (38), while scrawling graffiti inside the downtown at the Balderas subway station, pulled out a gun and began shooting when con-fronted by police, killing at least two people and wounding five before being shot and subdued by officers.
    (AP, 9/19/09)

2009        Sep 19, In southern Mexico gunmen attacked a group of illegal immigrants, killing one and wounding five as well as an alleged people smuggler in Chiapas state.
    (AP, 9/19/09)

2009        Sep 21, Mexican soldiers raiding a drug gang safehouse in Monterrey found money-stuffed envelopes earmarked for various police forces and one marked for "press." Four people were arrested and $5 million in US and Mexican currency was seized during the raid.
    (AP, 9/23/09)

2009        Sep 22, Mexican authorities said there would be no compensation for Jacinta Francisco Marcial, an Indian market vendor who was wrongfully convicted of kidnapping and spent three years in prison, in a case that provoked an international protest.
    (AP, 9/22/09)

2009        Sep 24, In Mexico Chihuahua state prosecutor Arturo Chavez, criticized for failing to solve dozens of rapes and murders of women in his northern border state, was confirmed as Mexico's attorney general and leader of the nation's war on vicious drug cartels.
    (AP, 9/24/09)

2009        Sep 25, Mexican police arrested five men accused of dozens of murders, including two mass killings at drug treatment centers in this northern Mexico border city.
    (AP, 9/26/09)

2009        Sep 28, In Mexico 2 Canadian men were shot to death in execution-style slayings out-side an apartment building in the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta. Gordon Douglas Kendall and Jeffrey Ronald Ivans were believed to be involved in the drug trade. In Michoacan state po-lice arrested three federal agents for allegedly passing information to organized crime.
    (AP, 9/28/09)(SFC, 9/29/09, p.A2)

2009        Oct 1, In Mexico gunmen in Ciudad Juarez opened fire on a pickup truck, killing a 22-year-old woman as well as a 10-year-old girl playing in a city park. Hours earlier, a city police of-ficer was killed as she rode on a bus.
    (AP, 10/2/09)

2009        Oct 2, In Mexico gunmen killed eight people in five separate attacks, including a state policewoman who was shot in the head in broad daylight in a residential area. In Ciudad Juarez at least 11 people, including two police officers and a child, were killed over the last 24 hours. A Mexican Air force plane crashed in President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan, killing three soldiers. Federal officials announced 2 raids by security forces that netted the largest sei-zures of methamphetamine precursor chemicals in the country's history. Agents seized 20 tons of chemicals at Manzanillo port in the Pacific coast state of Colima and 17 tons in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas.
    (AP, 10/2/09)

2009        Oct 5, In Mexico gunmen burst into a bar in the northern border city Ciudad Juarez and shot 5 men to death. Soldiers arrested Eduar Vera (30), a suspect linked to at least 27 killings. In the southern state of Guerrero, gunmen killed two state police officers in the city of Iguala.
    (AP, 10/6/09)
2009        Oct 5, In Mexico efforts to film Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez's lat-est novel, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" (2004), met resistance as an anti-prostitution group sought to block production, charging the movie will promote child prostitution. The Re-gional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's Attorney General's Office.
    (AP, 10/6/09)

2009        Oct 8, In Mexico unidentified assailants kidnapped and killed the top official of the bor-der town of Palomas, across from New Mexico. Town Mayor Estanislao Garcia Santelis had long complained about the drug traffickers and migrant smugglers active around Palomas. Federal police detained Jorge Alberto Lopez Orozco (33) on a highway in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. He was transported to the neighboring state of Michoacan and held on a US extradition request. Orozco was wanted for the 2002 killings of his girlfriend and her two young sons in Idaho. Gunmen in northern Chihuahua state killed a soldier in an attack on army vehi-cles near the hamlet of Colonia LeBaron. Five men and seven women were detained.
    (AP, 10/9/09)(AP, 10/10/09)

2009        Oct 9, In Mexico the mutilated body of state official Rogelio Sanchez, who authorities said was suspected of giving fake driver's licenses to drug gang members, was found hanging from a bridge in the border city of Tijuana. Sanchez was kidnapped Oct 7 as he left his home in Tijuana. Police in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero found the bodies of 10 men, all apparently shot to death. Signs left next to the bodies read: "This is what is going to happen to all thieves and extortionists.” In rural western Jalisco state four suspects were killed and 17 arrested in an hours-long gun battle between members of a criminal gang and soldiers and police.
    (AP, 10/9/09)
2009        Oct 9, Stephen Pechenik (78), the president of a San Antonio company, pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to receive and sell petroleum stolen from Mexico's oil giant, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. He was the 4th Texas oil executive to plead guilty to felony charges of conspiring to receive and sell stolen petroleum condensate. Much of the Mexican oil rustling was traced to the Zetas, a criminal group founded by former military commandos.
    (SFC, 12/15/09, p.A26)(http://tinyurl.com/yjs42ms)

2009        Oct 10, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon dispatched over 1,000 federal policemen to occupy the offices of Luz y Fuerza del Centro, the state-owned electricity distributor for Mexico City and its surroundings. The Federal Electricity Commission, which provides service to the rest of the country, took over for Luz y Fuerza, which had been established in 1994 by presi-dential decree. The company’s fat salaries and pensions cost the government some $3 billion a year and lost 30% of its power thru illicit connections and technical failures. 
    (Econ, 10/17/09, p.50)

2009        Oct 14, Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that the governor of southern Oaxaca state is responsible for rights abuses during 2006 protests that paralyzed Oaxaca and left least a dozen people dead.
    (AP, 10/14/09)

2009        Oct 15, In Mexico some 33,000 people marched to protest President Felipe Calderon's weekend decision to disband Luz y Fuerza, a public electricity company that provided electricity to Mexico City and the surrounding area. Police officers found the decapitated bodies of 9 men in an abandoned pickup truck on a highway in the drug-plagued Mexican state of Guerrero.
    (AP, 10/16/09)

2009        Oct 16, A Mexican government report said the use of cocaine doubled in Mexico over the last six years, partly because the drug became more available in the country. The Mexican navy enacted new rules prohibiting sailors from shooting at vehicles that try to evade land checkpoints unless they are fired on or feel that their lives or others' are in danger.
    (AP, 10/17/09)

2009        Oct 17, Mexican police in Tijuana found a man's nude, mutilated body hung by the neck from an expressway overpass, the 2nd such grisly discovery in 9 days. Police reported finding the mutilated body of a woman in a reservoir in another part of Tijuana. The woman's hands and head were missing. A shootout between gunmen and police killed one officer and a gun-man and wounded two policemen. Tijuana investigators found five assault rifles and vests with federal prosecutors' insignia in three vehicles thought used by the attackers.
    (AP, 10/17/09)

2009        Oct 19, It was reported that Mexican biologists and park workers were racing to fell as many as 9,000 fir trees, infected with deadly bark beetles, and bury or extract infested wood be-fore the orange-and-black monarchs start arriving in late October to spend the winter bunched together on branches, carpeting the trees.
    (AP, 10/19/09)

2009        Oct 20, In Hidalgo, Mexico, police found the body of a young man, about 16 years old, who was found dead with two bullets in his head, his genitals cut off and a warning note stabbed into his chest.
    (AP, 10/22/09)

2009        Oct 22, Mexican police detained five suspected associates of the Gulf drug cartel for alleged involvement in violent clashes that killed four people in the central Mexican state of Hi-dalgo. The suspects were said to be affiliated with the Zetas, the drug ring's hit men.
    (AP, 10/28/09)
2009        Oct 22, US authorities arrested over 300 people in 38 cities in a sting against Mexico’s La Familia drug operations in the US. At least 84 were arrested in Dallas as part of Operation Coronado.
    (SFC, 10/23/09, p.A12)(SFC, 12/12/09, p.A4)

2009        Oct 23, In Colorado Miguel Angel Caro Quintero (46), a Mexican drug kingpin, pleaded guilty in Denver to federal drug and racketeering charges. He had led the Sonora Cartel in the 1980s and faced up to 20 years in prison.
    (SFC, 10/24/09, p.A5)

2009        Oct 26, In Mexico a band of thieves swarmed into a railroad facility and held security guards at gunpoint while making off with three dozen new automobiles and trucks from a stor-age lot west of the capital.
    (AP, 10/28/09)

2009        Oct 27, Mexican police arrested Abel Valadez Oribe (32), who they say headed the op-erations of the "La Familia" drug cartel in the western state of Michoacan. Police found dis-membered remains of a man in plastic bags by the side of a road in Uruapan, another city in Michoacan. In Tijuana a teenage girl (15) was killed by a stray bullet during a shootout between police and gunmen. Reporters in Tijuana were invited by military officials to a private, industrial property about 100 feet south of San Diego's Otay Mesa border crossing where Mexican sol-diers discovered a secret tunnel complete with electricity and an air supply that may have been planned for smuggling migrants or drugs under the US border into San Diego. 4 police officers were killed by assailants who opened fired on them during a traffic stop in the central Mexico city of Puebla.
    (AP, 10/27/09)(AP, 10/28/09)

2009        Oct 29, Mexican authorities said a woman's body was found buried headfirst in a plastic container of cement in drug-plagued Tijuana.
    (AP, 10/29/09)

2009        Oct 30, Mexican authorities said they have detained a large-scale drug trafficker and also broken up a ring in Cuernavaca that allegedly laundered around $37 million for a drug car-tel. The army says it detained Oscar Orlando Nava Valencia, the alleged leader of the "Valen-cia" drug gang, and nine alleged associates in the western state of Jalisco. Rights activists in the border city of Tijuana have hung 5,100 small white crosses on the fence straddling the US frontier to commemorate migrants who have died trying to cross. Margarito Montes Parra, the leader of a farmworkers' organization, and 14 other people were killed in a mass shooting in the northern state of Sonora. Local news media reported that Montes had led peasant and squat-ters' movements involved in land seizures and that his group has sometimes had violent clashes with rival claimants to land.
    (AP, 10/31/09)(SSFC, 11/1/09, p.A6)

2009        Oct 31, In Mexico Mayor Mauricio Fernandez told cheering supporters in San Pedro Garza Garcia, near Monterrey, that "Black Saldana, who apparently is the one who was asking for my head, was found dead today in Mexico City." Hours later Mexican officials found four bound bodies in a sport utility vehicle with hand-lettered messages identifying the dead men as kidnappers. Hector “Black” Soldana was not identified for another 2 days. Fernandez later said US authorities had tipped him off that somebody intercepted cartel communications and learned Saldana was planning to kill him, and he said unspecified intelligence sources told him Saldana was dead hours before the bodies were found.
    (AP, 11/2/09)(AP, 11/3/09)

2009        Nov 1, Mexican soldiers in the border city of Tijuana detained a group of 13 suspects after a shootout that wounded a soldier and a gunman. Soldiers raided and destroyed three methamphetamine labs in the western state of Michoacan. The raids netted five suspects and more than two metric tons of apparent methamphetamine.
    (AP, 11/2/09)

2009        Nov 2, In Mexico El Tiempo de Durango journalist Jose Bladimir Antuna was kidnapped in the morning. Authorities found his body the same night in a vacant lot in the Durango state capital, about 400 miles southwest of Laredo, Texas. The bodies of three men with bullet and knife wounds were found by relatives in the southern state of Guerrero.
    (AP, 11/4/09)

2009        Nov 3, Mexican police and soldiers killed Miguel Angel Meneses, a federal agent driving one of three cars that ignored orders to stop in Chihuahua, triggering a chase and gunbattle. Federal police and navy personnel shot to death a top Zetas cartel suspect in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz. The navy said suspect Braulio Arellano Dominguez was the reputed leader of the Zetas, a gang of hit men tied to the Gulf Cartel.
     (AP, 11/4/09)(AP, 11/7/09)

2009        Nov 4, Mexican authorities said 3 doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling mothers their babies had died at a private hospital in Mexico City.
    (AP, 11/4/09)
2009        Nov 4, In Mexico floods killed at least three people in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco where authorities struggled to persuade thousands of people to leave their inundated homes. Heavy rains have caused several rivers to overflow their banks flooding the homes of more than 50,000 people.
    (AP, 11/4/09)
2009        Nov 4, In Mexico a gang of gunmen killed Sgt. David Booher, an off-duty US airman, and five other people at a strip club in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. A group of gunmen, be-lieved to belong to the Gulf cartel, arrived at the home of Garcia Mayor Jaime Rodriguez to give him a "scare." As the group was leaving, they crossed paths with Brig. Gen. Juan Arturo Ez-parza, who was driving to the mayor's home after hearing about the threat. The gunmen sprayed Ezparza's car with bullets, killing him along two former soldiers and two municipal po-lice officers escorting the general. Kidnappers snatched an American woman (21) from her car in Tijuana and threatened to kill her unless they were paid $200,000. She was released on Nov 7 and 3 kidnappers were arrested.
    (Reuters, 11/5/09)(SFC, 11/5/09, p.A2)(AP, 11/6/09)(AP, 11/9/09)

2009        Nov 5, Five Mexican police officers and five other suspects were arrested in the investi-gation into the assassination of Brig. Gen. Juan Arturo Ezparza, who had been appointed police chief of the northern Mexican town of Garcia over the weekend. 3 bullet-ridden bodies were found in different towns around the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. The bodies all had their hands and feet tied and were found next to threatening messages. One was found along the highway connecting the resort towns of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo. The Mexican army seized a shipment of almost a quarter-ton of opium in the country's northern mountains, one of the larg-est such seizures made in Mexico. A policeman was killed and four other were wounded in an attack by gunmen in Guerrero state. Another body was found in the Gulf coast state of Ve-racruz with its arms and legs mutilated and its head hacked off.
    (AP, 11/6/09)(AP, 11/7/09)

2009        Nov 6, Mexican police caught Marco Antonio Ibarra in the northern city of Culiacan. The former prison official had spent a year on the run from charges of killing a 19-year-old inmate, whose beating death in Sep, 2008, sparked riots that left nearly two dozen dead, including two American prisoners. Noel Martinez, a district supervisor for the police in Ciudad Juarez, was shot and killed inside his car.
    (AP, 11/7/09)(SFC, 11/7/09, p.A2)

2009        Nov 9, In Mexico gunmen burst into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and opened fire in a violence-plagued Chihuahua City, killing one person and wounding four others. In the Pa-cific coast state of Colima state police captured Aaron Lopez Garcia (31), a violent gang mem-ber who was one of America's 15 most wanted fugitives by US Marshals.
    (AP, 11/11/09)

2009        Nov 10, In Mexico Tabasco authorities announced that police had detained 7 suspected members of the Zetas drug gang, including two teenagers. In the northern city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, a man's tortured body was found hanging from a highway overpass. The unidentified man had his hands tied behind his back and was hung by the neck. Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal said that 276 traffic police officers and administrative officials were fired for failing tests designed to detect corruption and ineptitude. 526 officers who performed poorly were ordered to undergo more training, and 340 were determined fit for the job.
    (AP, 11/11/09)

2009        Nov 11, In Mexico reporter Maria Esther Aguilar, who wrote about organized crime, dis-appeared in western Michoacan state.
    (AP, 11/20/09)
2009        Nov 11, Forbes Magazine named drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, a fugitive reputed to be hiding in the mountains of northern Mexico, to its list of the 67 "World's Most Powerful People." Business groups in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez said they are calling for UN peacekeepers to quell the drug-related violence that has given their city one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
    (AP, 11/12/09)

2009        Nov 13, In Mexico a 7-year-old boy, three women and a university professor were among 15 people killed in 6 separate incidents in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 11/14/09)

2009        Nov 20, In Mexico Jesus Zambada Reyes, identified as the nephew of drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, was found dead in an apparent suicide in Guerrero state. A body found in Guerrero state was identified as Omar Guerrero Solis, a rebel leader who had accused the state governor of drug ties. Solis told local media in May that he believed Gov. Zeferino Torre-blanca had ties to the Sinaloa cartel. He accused the army of not detaining Sinaloa gunmen, while cracking down on members of the rival Beltran Leyva cartel. US citizen Lizbeth Marin was shot in Matamoros and later died of the wound. A Mexican army soldier was said to have acci-dentally fired a round that hit Marin.
    (AP, 11/21/09)(AP, 11/24/09)

2009        Nov 27, Bison returned to Mexico for the first time since the 1800s, with Mexican au-thorities releasing 23 donated US animals in northern Chihuahua state. The donated bison came from the Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.
    (AP, 11/27/09)

2009        Nov 29, In Mexico weekend violence left 17 people dead. 7 women were murdered, in-cluding one (19) who was beheaded in the southern beach resort of Cancun. 4 of the women were killed in Ciudad Juarez, where two were shot to death, another beaten with a baseball bat and a fourth, a school teacher, also was beaten to death. 2 women were found shot to death in Mexicali. Jesus Alfredo Portillo (27), a university student and rights activist, was killed in Ciudad Juarez. Her mother-in-law and women's group founder Marisela Ortiz had recently complained of death threats against her. Elsewhere, 8 men were found murdered in northern Chihuahua state, 5 of them in Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 11/29/09)(AFP, 12/1/09)

2009        Dec 1, In Mexico City gunmen burst in to a Starbucks coffee shop and killed a former policeman who was a protected witness in a drug corruption case, the second death of a high-profile witness in Mexico in less than two weeks. Edgar Bayardo was gunned down in the upper middle-class Del Valle neighborhood, and a man with him was severely wounded.
    (AP, 12/1/09)

2009        Dec 2, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said that cartels are seeking to control terri-tory by sinking drug money into political campaigns and buying off officials before they are even elected. Gunmen shot and killed Lawyer Eleuterio Cachu Ortiz, a former police commander and opposition politician, in his office in the Mexican border town of Tijuana.
    (AP, 12/2/09)(AFP, 12/3/09)

2009        Dec 3, Mexico City police freed 107 people who were forced to work under slave-like conditions in a clandestine factory making shopping bags and clothing clasps.
    (AP, 12/4/09)

2009        Dec 4, In northern Mexico a pair of shootouts between troops and gunmen killed 13 people in a suburb of Monterrey, including a bystander and a drug trafficker linked to the killing of a retired army officer. Almanza Morales, killed in the attack, was accused of working for the Zetas, drug traffickers who also serve as enforcers for the Mexican Gulf cartel, and of killing army Brig. Gen. Juan Arturo Esparza and his four bodyguards in a November attack.
    (AP, 12/5/09)

2009        Dec 6, In Mexico thousands of people dressed in white demanded soldiers leave Ciudad Juarez, the country's most violent city, accusing troops of provoking a surge in drug-war killings and running protection rackets.
    (Reuters, 12/6/09)

2009        Dec 8, Amnesty International released a report that said Mexican soldiers have carried out torture and forced disappearances while fighting drug cartels. A student's body was found in a truck at an intersection in Ciudad Juarez. He was the second student from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua to be killed since Dec 5.
    (AP, 12/9/09)(AP, 12/10/09)

2009        Dec 9, In Mexico the bound, bullet-riddled bodies of seven men were found along a highway in Chihuahua state. 2 federal agents were killed in separate attacks in the cities of Uruapan and Lazaro Cardenas, Michoacan state. Police found four mutilated bodies near a middle school in Chilpancingo, state capital of drug-plagued Guerrero state.
    (AP, 12/10/09)(AP, 12/11/09)

2009        Dec 10, In Mexico 2 federal agents were killed in a shootout with gunmen in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. Earlier in the day, a passer-by was killed in the same city when he drove into a shootout between agents and gunmen outside a hotel where the federal police officers were staying. Three more officers who had been wounded last evening in an attack in the town of Apatzingan died at a hospital.
    (AP, 12/11/09)

2009        Dec 11, Mexico's foreign minister met with Cuban President Raul Castro for three hours, the latest sign her country and the island have repaired recently chilly relations.
    (AP, 12/11/09)
2009        Dec 11, In Mexico police found the bodies of three women and two men inside a home in the town of Almoloya de Juarez. A third man died on the way to a hospital. Soldiers raided a drug cartel's Christmas party south of Mexico City, outside the mountain town of Tepoztlan. They found 16 automatic rifles, $280,000 in cash, and  Latin Grammy winner Ramon Ayala and his norteno band, Los Bravos del Norte. 3 gunmen were killed and 11 others suspected of working for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel were detained.
    (AP, 12/11/09)(AP, 12/15/09)

2009        Dec 15, Mexican authorities found the decapitated bodies of four men in the border city of Tijuana. A grenade attack on a police station in western Mexico wounded a pregnant woman and her 3-year-old daughter. US officials delivered five helicopters to Mexico to help the country in its fight against drug cartels. 7 vehicles were burned in Mexico City. Investigators found evi-dence linking an animal rights group to homemade bombs that burned the cars.
    (AP, 12/15/09)(AP, 12/16/09)

2009        Dec 16, In Mexico 200 sailors raided an upscale apartment complex and killed a reputed Mexican drug cartel chief in a two-hour gunbattle. Arturo Beltran Leyva, the "boss of bosses," and three members of his cartel were slain in the shootout in Cuernavaca. Beltran Levya was one of five brothers who split from the Sinaloa Cartel several years ago and aligned themselves with Los Zetas, a group of former soldiers hired by the rival Gulf Cartel as hit men. The severed heads of 6 state police investigators were found at a public plaza in Cuencame, Durango state.
    (AP, 12/17/09)(SFC, 12/17/09, p.A2)

2009        Dec 17, In Mexico four suspected drug traffickers and two local policemen were killed in a shootout with soldiers in General Zuazua. Soldiers found a list with names of local policemen who may have been on the payroll of the drug gang. They also found more than 1,320 pounds (600 kg) of marijuana and several guns at the scene.
    (AP, 12/18/09)

2009        Dec 18, Mexican police found six bullet-ridden, decomposing bodies near a highway leading to a Mexican resort on the Gulf of California. The six men were found half-buried on a dirt road off the highway frequently used by tourists from Arizona to reach the Puerto Penasco resort, widely known as Rocky Point. Gunmen killed Pedro Picasso (34), assistant football coach of Mexico first-division team Indios, in the border city Ciudad Juarez. A 2nd, unidentified person also died in the shooting at a cell phone shop. The bound and burned bodies of 8 men were found in the central Mexico state of Queretaro. Gunmen killed four police officers in a se-ries of attacks on patrol cars in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Police captured Jesus Basilio Araujo, also known by the nickname "The Chicken," a suspected lieutenant of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel linked to more than 109 execution-style killings.
    (AP, 12/18/09)(AP, 12/19/09)

2009        Dec 19, Mexican authorities announced that Salomon Tagle, a suspect in the high-profile 2005 kidnapping of businessman Hugo Alberto Wallace, has been taken into custody in Mexico. Tagle was expelled from the Dominican Republic flown to Mexico, where he was taken into custody on kidnapping charges. Wallace’s mother, Maria Isabel Miranda, frustrated with in-vestigators' lack of progress in her son's case, had launched her own probe and a public cam-paign to press for justice.
    (AP, 12/20/09)

2009        Dec 21, Mexico City lawmakers made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.
    (AP, 12/21/09)
2009        Dec 21, In Mexico construction began on the Palace of the Maya Civilization Museum in Yucatan state.
    (SSFC, 12/27/09, p.A22)

2009        Dec 22, In Mexico assailants gunned down the mother, aunt and siblings of Melquisedet Angulo (30), a marine killed in the Dec 16 raid that took out Arturo Beltran Leyva, one of Mex-ico's most powerful cartel leaders. This sent a chilling message to troops battling the drug war: You go after us, we wipe out your families. Gunmen sprayed bullets at a restaurant in Piedras Negras where the mayor of a Texas border town was eating with a Mexican state attorney gen-eral and other officials. A woman leaving the building was killed. Journalist Alberto Velazquez of the newspaper Expresiones de Tulum was gunned down this week as he left a holiday party in the Mexican Caribbean resort town of Tulum, bringing to 12 the number of reporters killed this year in the country.
    (AP, 12/22/09)(AP, 12/25/09)

2009        Dec 23, A Mexican military Bell 212 helicopter crashed in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero, killing an air force sergeant and seriously injuring two soldiers. US officials recently delivered five Bell helicopters of a different model to Mexico as part of the "Merida Initiative" for aiding the Mexican campaign to curb drug trafficking.
    (AP, 12/23/09)

2009        Dec 25, Mexican authorities in the state of Chihuahua found the bullet-riddled bodies of six members of the same family in a mountainous area. Esther Chavez (73), a women's rights activist who first drew attention to the brutal slayings of women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, died. She was the founder of Casa Amiga, a shelter for female victims of violence in Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 12/26/09)(AP, 12/27/09)

2009        Dec 29, Mexico City enacted Latin America's first law recognizing gay marriage and said it hopes to attract same-sex couples from around the world to wed.
    (AP, 12/29/09)
2009        Dec 29, In Mexico Luis "El Gil" Sanchez (29) was arrested in Ensenada, about 50 miles (80km) south of Tijuana. Sanchez was the alleged leader of at least 10 criminal cells working for Teodoro Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who broke away from the Arellano Felix cartel. Gunmen attacked a car dealership and an adjacent hospital in the border city of Tijuana, forcing the evacuation of some patients. The attackers doused about 10 cars at the dealership with gasoline and set them alight. Cartels commonly extort "protection" fees from businesses, which are sometimes firebombed if their owners refuse to pay.
    (AP, 12/30/09)

2009        Dec 30, Mexican police captured alleged drug lord Carlos Beltran Leyva, just two weeks after his even more powerful brother was killed in a shootout with troops. The bound, beaten bodies of two men were found hanging by their necks from a highway overpass in Los Mochis, northern Sinaloa state, along with a handwritten message from a drug cartel. The message written on a piece of cardboard said in part that "this territory already has an owner." In Ciudad Juarez 12 people, including a 3-year-old child, were slain in shootings. Linea Directa radio sta-tion reporter Jose Luis Romero was forced at gunpoint out of a Los Mochis restaurant. Ro-mero’s body was found on Jan 16, 2010.
    (AP, 12/30/09)(AP, 1/3/10)(AP, 1/16/10)

2009        Dec 31, In Mexico Roberto Salcedo (33), an assistant principal and Southern California school board member, was killed while he and his wife were visiting relatives in Gomez Palacio.
    (AP, 1/31/10)

2010        Jan 1, In Mexico gunmen killed Jesus Escalante, the chief police investigator in the northern state of Sinaloa, hours after he started investigating the kidnapping of Jose Luis Ro-mero (40), a local radio journalist. Mexico opened the New Year with 69 murders in one day, including 26 in the border city of Ciudad Juarez. Mexico’s drug related killings for 2009 totaled over 6,500.
    (AP, 1/2/10)(SFC, 1/12/10, p.A2)

2010        Jan 2, In northern Mexico a bus carrying farm workers and their families home plunged off a cliff, killing 14 people and injuring 21. Hugo Hernandez (36) was kidnapped in Sonora state and taken to neighboring Sinaloa state where assailants skinned his face and stitched it onto a soccer ball. His body was later left on the streets of Los Mochis in seven pieces.
    (AP, 1/3/10)(AP, 1/8/10)

2010        Jan 3, In Mexico Josefina Reyes, a human rights activist, was been killed in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.
    (AP, 1/8/10)

2010        Jan 4, Solis Palma, a Mexican migrant, was shot and killed after he reportedly attacked a US Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona with rocks.
    (AP, 1/6/10)

2010        Jan 6, In Tijuana, Mexico, three 16-year-old students, two boys and a girl, were killed.  At least one of the victims was a known drug dealer who frequently missed classes and some-times peddled narcotics at or near the school.
    (AP, 1/8/10)

2010        Jan 7, In Mexico gunmen attacked an army patrol in the western state of Michoacan with assault rifles and grenades, touching off a gunbattle that killed a soldier and four suspects.
    (AP, 1/8/10)

2010        Jan 8, In Mexico a major regional newspaper in the northern city of Saltillo  announced it would stop covering drug violence altogether after the body of a reporter was found outside a motel with a threatening message. Valentin Valdes (28) had written about the Dec. 29 arrests at the Marbella Motel of five alleged members of the Gulf drug cartel. He also covered the arrests on Jan 6 of five others who barged into the same hotel and stole the surveillance tapes. All 60 policemen in the embattled town of Tancitaro were fired because they had failed to stop a se-ries of killings and other crimes. Michoacan state police and soldiers planned to take over secu-rity duties in the town. In Ciudad Juarez a man's body was found on a street with its hands and head cut off. Another man's body, with its head cut off and eyes gouged out, was found else-where in the city and two women's bodies were found in a vacant lot. The body of a man whose legs had been surgically amputated some time ago was also found on a dirt road on the out-skirts of Ciudad Juarez. A man riding a bicycle was shot to death in the city. 5 people were killed in drive-by shootings and a group of 3 men were shot to death at a fast-food restaurant near a school.
    (AP, 1/8/10)(AP, 1/9/10)

2010        Jan 11, Dutch brewer Heineken said it will buy the beer-making operations of Mexico’s Femsa, the maker of Dos Equis and Sol beers, in an all-share deal valued at $5.5 billion, ex-cluding debt.
    (SFC, 1/12/10, p.D3)

2010        Jan 12, In Mexico druglord Teodoro Garcia Simental, known as "El Teo," was seized by federal troops when they stormed a seaside vacation home near the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. He was accused of ordering massacres, beheadings and the dissolving of bodies in caustic soda.
    (AP, 1/13/10)

2010        Jan 13, In Mexico hundreds of troops in combat gear fanned out in Ciudad Juarez, where 2,650 people died in narco violence last. Public Security Minister Genaro Garcia Luna said 2,000 federal police reinforcements would arrive over the next few days.
    (Reuters, 1/14/10)

2010        Jan 15, Manuel Acosta (42), the lead investigator in the Dec 31 slaying in Mexico of Roberto Salcedo, a Southern California school board member, was shot several times in the chest and torso, but survived in critical condition. He succumbed to his wounds on Jan 26.
    (AP, 1/31/10)

2010        Jan 16, Mexican authorities seized over 3 1/2 tons of pseudoephedrine, a chemical used in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine, found hidden in a shipment of fire extinguishers at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo.
    (AP, 1/18/10)

2010        Jan 17, In Mexico a severed human head and a flower were found in front of the tomb of deceased Mexican drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva. Police found the bodies of five men scat-tered around the Michoacan state capital of Morelia, each bearing a handwritten note suggest-ing they were killed by vigilantes.
    (AP, 1/18/10)(AP, 1/17/10)
2010        Jan 17, A small boat packed with illegal immigrants overturned before dawn off the San Diego coast at Torrey Pines State Park. One person died and 5 were injured. 16 people, all Mexican citizens, were accounted for.
    (SSFC, 1/17/10, p.A14)(SFC, 1/18/10, p.A6)

2010        Jan 19, In Mexico "El Teo" Teodoro Garcia Simental, an alleged drug kingpin blamed for much of Tijuana's gang violence, was ordered to face trial. The military said it caught three pur-ported members of his gang about to dissolve a body in chemicals. State police found the bod-ies of four young men in an abandoned car near a hotel in Guerrero's capital, Chilpancingo. A police report said the men appeared to have been asphyxiated by plastic tape covering their faces.
    (AP, 1/20/10)(AP, 1/20/10)
2010        Jan 19, Mexico’s telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim pledged $65 million for genetic research on cancer, type 2 diabetes and kidney disease.
    (AP, 1/20/10)

2010        Jan 20, Mexican authorities found seven corpses in two abandoned cars between the resort communities of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo along with written messages referring to drug cartels. 24 inmates were killed and several others injured during a prison brawl at a penitentiary in northern Durango city. 4 days of rain unleashed heavy flooding in parts of the border city of Tijuana, killing a 5-year-old girl and leaving at least 10 other people missing.
    (AP, 1/20/10)(AP, 1/20/10)(AP, 1/22/10)

2010        Jan 22, Police in Mexico City rescued 150 ferrets from armed robbers after a high speed chase. 14 boxes of ferrets imported from the US were taken by force by 3 robbers from a truck after it left the Mexico City airport. Two suspects were under arrest and another escaped.
    (AP, 1/22/10)

2010        Jan 23, In southern Mexico about 150 migrants were pulled off a train by unidentified assailants in the state of Oaxaca. On Jan 26 a Salvadoran official  filed a complaint with Mexi-can officials saying 3 men were slain and 4 women were raped in the attack.
    (AP, 1/26/10)

2010        Jan 27, Mexican authorities found a man's head and a threatening message referring to the La Familia drug cartel in the town square of Quiroga, Michoacan state. A headless body was found 60 miles (100km) away.
    (AP, 1/27/10)

2010        Jan 29, Mexican authorities found the decapitated bodies of six men in Acahuato, Mi-choacan state. A group of at least a dozen armed men attacked a federal police convoy, open-ing fire on the vehicles from a highway overpass near the city of Maravatio, also in Michoacan, killing 5 officers and wounding 7. Four severely beaten men were seen walking along a busy street in the Michoacan town of Zamora carrying messages signed by La Familia. In Ciudad Juarez a group of rifle-bearing attackers opened fire on a family in a truck, killing a man, a woman and injuring a 5-month-old baby. A woman was later killed inside an ice cream parlor, a chase through the Galeana neighborhood left two dead, and a man was killed and a pregnant woman was injured in a spray of bullets in another part of town. Six more people were killed later in the day in four different locations, and when dawn broke the two decapitated bodies were found. Journalist Ochoa Martinez, director of El Sol de la Costa, was shot in the face as he left a food stand in the town of Ayutla. His small newspaper covered mostly local politics and community issues southeast of Acapulco.
    (AP, 1/29/10)(AP, 1/31/10)(AP, 2/2/10)

2010        Jan 30, In Mexico armed men stormed a party, killing 15 high school and college stu-dents in Ciudad Juarez in what witnesses thought was an attack prompted by false information. Ten people were found dead at the scene and six died at hospitals. An official later said gun-men were directed to the neighborhood by a resident who said members of a rival gang were planning a party.
    (AP, 2/2/10)(AP, 2/4/10)

2010        Jan 31, Mexican President Felipe Calderon arrived in Japan for a three-day visit, as the countries mark 400 years of official ties.
    (AFP, 1/31/10)

2010        Feb 1, In Mexico armed men burst into a bar Ciudad Juarez around dawn and killed four men and a woman. Gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 15 in a bar in Torreon, a city in the northern state of Coahuila. A shootout that began in a shopping center and spilled onto a high-way in Torreon caused the death of 7 suspected Zetas gunmen and one federal police officer while freeing two kidnap victims. The La Familia gang, strung up about a dozen banners in the western state of Michoacan urging the public at large and other gangs to form a common "re-sistance" front against the Zetas.
    (AP, 2/2/10)(AP, 2/3/10)
2010        Feb 1, US Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly a ton of marijuana hid-den in a banana shipment at a cargo facility near the US-Mexico border. Officers opened boxes in a truck and found 235 packages of pot worth an estimated $1.1 million.
    (AP, 2/2/10)

2010        Feb 4, In Denver Miguel Angel Caro Quintero (46) was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for racketeering in Colorado and conspiracy to distribute marijuana in Arizona. His Sonora cartel was tied to the 1985 torture and killing of an undercover Drug Enforcement Ad-ministration agent, Enrique "Kiki" Camarena Salazar.
    (AP, 2/5/10)

2010        Feb 5, Mexican authorities said they have found the decapitated bodies of six men in the western state of Michoacan. In central Mexico a landslide killed at least 11 people, adding to 18 deaths this week from severe and unseasonable winter storms that closed schools and free-ways and flooded thousands of homes.
    (AP, 2/5/10)(AP, 2/6/10)

2010        Feb 6, In Mexico gunmen killed six people at a bar in Mazatlan, Sinaloa state. In Ciudad Juarez authorities announced the arrest of In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities on Saturday announced the arrest of a second suspect in last week's massacre of 15 people, many of them teenagers with no known criminal ties, the second suspect in last week's massa-cre of 15 people, many of them teenagers with no known criminal ties.
    (AP, 2/6/10)

2010        Feb 8, Mexican federal police arrested Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simen-tal, suspected leaders of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured in La Paz on Jan. 12. The drug cartel had terrorized Tijuana for several years. The military an-nounced that soldiers had seized more than 12 tons of marijuana found beneath a false floor of a tractor trailer. The drugs were found during a routine search at a checkpoint near San Felipe, a town in the central part of the Baja California peninsula. Federal police arrested five Tijuana police officers along with six cartel members who were holding two rival gangsters captive. The arrests were based on information obtained following the capture of Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental. Two of the officers, Francisco Ortega and Juan Carlos Espinoza, had been recently lauded as part of a new breed of honest cop.
    (AP, 2/8/10)(AP, 2/10/10)

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Subject = Mexico

Baja California Language College
Avenida Riveroll 1287
Ensenada, Baja California
www.bajacal.com

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