Mexico

Fernando Ocegueda hasn't seen his son since gunmen dragged the college student from the family's house three years ago. Alma Diaz wonders what happened to her son, Eric, a Mexicali police officer who left a party in 1995 and never returned. Arturo Davila still pounds on police doors looking for answers 11 years after his daughter and a girlfriend were kidnapped in downtown Ensenada.

A leading journalists association on Tuesday ranked Mexico among the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters, as news media workers increasingly become targets of organized crime groups. Five Mexican reporters were killed in 2008 and seven have disappeared in the last three years, according to a report released Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based organization.

The Mexican Supreme Court on Thursday cleared several top officials of responsibility for civil rights violations when riot police in 2006 used force to quash an uprising near Mexico City. Justices ruled 8 to 3 that it would be unfair to blame top decision-makers, including Enrique Pena Nieto, governor of the state of Mexico, and Eduardo Medina Mora, then the national public safety chief, even though they approved sending police to quell rioters in the town of San Salvador Atenco in May 2006.

The people of Villanueva said they'd had enough. Men in cowboy hats, women with hand-scrawled signs, children on bikes -- they gathered outside town and blocked the main interstate highway. "If you can't do it, quit!" they told their police force. They demanded that the army take over. The army rolled into this town in Zacatecas state last month and ordered the police to stand down and surrender their weapons. They did. Things only got worse.

The Juarez police lieutenant was recovering from three gunshot wounds, the result of an assault by hit men for a drug cartel. His name was on a death list brazenly posted at a monument for fallen peace officers. Lt. Salvador Hernandez Arvizu didn't like his odds of surviving in Mexico. So he fled his hospital bed, hoping to take refuge in the U.S. At a border post in El Paso, he filled out immigration paperwork, made a formal request for political asylum -- and was taken directly to jail.

Buried under two months of winter in Buffalo, N.Y., Kim Kramer could take no more. "I came home and said, 'I've got to get out of here,' " said Kramer, a 44-year-old teacher. Two weeks later, she was awash in sunshine here on Mexico's Caribbean coast, sipping a midday Hurricane and looking pleasantly thawed. Before Kramer got on the plane to Cancun, though, she made sure to check: Was it dangerous to go there?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will visit Mexico in two weeks as part of an Obama administration effort to bolster its neighbor in its bloody war with organized crime cartels and quell mounting U.S. anxiety over cross-border violence. The announcement Friday of Clinton's planned visit came just days after President Obama signed a spending bill that provides $300 million in additional aid for Mexican President Felipe Calderon's crackdown on drug gangs.

Halfway through the Mexican national team's morning workout Saturday, a man slowly wheeled a cart full of baseballs toward the middle of the infield. Not every team has the luxury of using a 17-year major league veteran and Cy Young Award winner to keep its batting practice pitcher supplied with balls. But in this case, Fernando Valenzuela was only too eager to oblige. "Whatever they need," Valenzuela said. "I'm real, real happy to be part of this."

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ventures south of the border this week at a moment when the tricky dynamics of the U.S.-Mexico relationship are on full display. It's too soon to call it a rough patch, but a flap over cross-border trucking and unwelcome words about the drug war have led Mexico to push back against its powerful neighbor recently. The trade dispute got tetchy last week when Mexico raised tariffs on scores of U.S.

Friday night, as rapper Nina Dioz was making her U.S. debut at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, she slammed her microphone down midsong and started yelling expletives at the sound engineer from the stage, telling the crowd, "This place doesn't want me to give you the show you deserve." She had been asking for the bass to be turned up, to no avail. Nina Dioz, 23, is Mexico's answer to Grammy-nominated powerhouse M.I.A.