Lots and lots of mayors—since August, five mayors of smallish Mexican towns have been executed (at least one of them tortured) and one survived his shooting and is in critical condition. Ten Mexican mayors have been executed in 2010.

Meanwhile, photojournalists who refuse to bow to narco-censorship are shot in Juarez, several border-town mayors have fled their own cities for Texas, gun battles rage here and there, and gun battles rage here and there:

Many longtime business executives have fled to the U.S. or Mexico City. Late last month, the U.S. State Department ordered the children of diplomatic personnel out of the Monterrey consulate, a policy typically reserved for postings like Sudan and Yemen.

Violence flared elsewhere in Mexico. Authorities said a shootout between suspected gunmen from rival gangs Thursday left seven dead in Acapulco, the resort city that has been increasingly marred by clashes between drug gangs. Five local police officers were arrested in connection to the shooting.

The decapitated bodies of two men were found nearby the previous day.

Frustrated small-town citizens begin to engage in vigilante justice:

Hundreds of angry residents beat two of the detainees, teenagers, and blocked police from rescuing the suspects, who were later pronounced dead..

In a stand-off that lasted throughout the day, residents prevented two federal police helicopters from landing and blockaded roads to prevent military reinforcements from arriving. Armed with picks, shovels and machetes, enraged residents shouted at corrupt soldiers and police to leave. Some locals accused government security forces of colluding with criminal organizations.

"La Chona Lights the Fuse,"” headlined Ciudad Juarez’s La polaka newsite, whose director was just granted political asylum in the United States. The news organization couched the report in historical and contemporary terms: “The new Mexican Revolution could have begun this Tuesday in Ascencion.”

And Diario de Juarez, one the few papers to ignore narco-censorship—and its employees have been murdered because of the policy—asks the narco gangs, in a blunt editorial, "What do you want from us?"

We'd like you to know that we're communicators, not psychics. As such, as information workers, we ask that you explain what it is you want from us, what you'd intend for us to publish or to not publish, so that we know what is expected of us.

You are at this time the de facto authorities in this city because the legal authorities have not been able to stop our colleagues from falling, despite the fact that we've repeatedly demanded it from them.

And all the while, American drug users continue to use, our treatment and outreach facilities are badly underfunded—addicts north of the border, extreme violence and government-destabilizing gangs south of the border...

Levamisole-tainted cocaine is the least of the world's worries.

Our "War on Drugs" couldn't have fucked up the Western hemisphere more thoroughly if it had tried.