Migrants riding a cargo train in Mexico (credit: Hermanos en el Camino shelter)

Armed men kidnapped what witness say were at least 60 migrants who were travelling on top if a cargo train through southern Mexico. The incident occurred Friday just before the train rolled into the station at Medias Aguas, Veracruz.

Migrants who escaped the kidnapping attempt told staff at the Brothers on the Road migrant shelter that the conductor stopped the train in an area where armed men were waiting with three Suburban style vehicles. The armed men ordered the migrants to get off of the train and get into the vehicles. Many ran into the surrounding countryside and hid. They eventually made their way back to the shelter in Oaxaca to report the incident.

A statement issued Sunday by the Brothers on the Road shelter said it was the first case of a mass kidnapping they’ve registered in months. The shelter also documented a mass kidnapping in December near the town of Chahuites, Oaxaca. Alejandro Solalinde, the priest who founded the shelter organized a caravan in January to call attention to the dangers migrants face on their trek through Mexico.

Organized crime groups who control the flow of drug through Mexico started kidnapping migrants for ransom a few years ago. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission estimates at least 20 thousand migrants are kidnapped within Mexico each year.

Two weeks after a cross-country caravan made public the stories of Mexico’s Drug War victims, many of its key participants  sat down with the Mexican President and key cabinet members in what was billed as a dialogue.

The meeting, which changed location to Chapultepec Castle on short notice, represented the first time a large group of victims told their stories directly to the Mexican officials driving and carrying out domestic Drug War policy.

The format of the “dialogue” resembled that of a city council meeting, with most victims facing time limits on their public comments and officials giving lengthy responses.

President Felipe Calderon says he would like to be “remembered for promoting education, hospitals and unprecedented road infrastructure”, but recognizes the Drug War will probably be his administration’s most lasting legacy. He defended his policy as a tough decision that had to be made and a necessary step to root out entrenched organized crime.

When questioned about widespread impunity in concrete cases, like that of the siege of San Juan Copala, Calderon blamed local and state level governments for not adequately prosecuting crimes within their jurisdictions.

Poet Javier Sicilia told the president it was a mistake to fight cartels with institutions that are themselves “rotten from the inside out”.

While the talks don’t appear likely to bring about any major policy shift, the president and the poet agreed to give continuity to the talks and meet again in three months.

An editor in the Mexican city of Veracruz has become the latest in a long list of journalists murdered in this hemisphere’s most dangerous country for media workers.

Armed men broke into the home of columnist and editor Miguel Angel Lopez Velasco early Monday morning and killed him along with his wife and 21 year old son, Misael, who had recently started performing photography work. Another son, named Miguel like his father, is a staff photographer at the same newspaper but lives in a separate residence.

While more reporters die violent deaths in Mexico than in any other country in the Americas, it’s not common that they are killed inside their homes with other family members. According to Notiver, the newspaper he co-edited, Miguel Angel Lopez Velsco lived two blocks from a police station.

Two other Mexican reporters have been murdered in recent weeks. Pablo Ruelas Barraza was shot dead June 13th while resisting an apparent kidnapping attempt in the state of Sonora. Some regional coverage of the crime indicated that Ruelas Barraza had spent some time in prison and stated he was  unemployed at the time of his murder.

Noel López Olguín was found in a shallow grave in the state of Veracruz. He had been kidnapped in March.

Another newspaper reporter, Marco Antonio López Ortíz, has been missing since unidentified men kidnapped him earlier this month in the state of Guerrero.

A massacre at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in the city of Torreón has become the latest crime targeting recovering addicts in Mexico. Eleven people died on the scene when gunmen burst into a drug rehab center Tuesday and opened fire. Another two victims died hours later from their wounds.

This is at least the fifth massacre targeting a rehabilitation center since 2008. Police suggest they are the result of score-settling between criminals, but murders here are rarely investigated with rigor.

Tuesday’s attack occurred as authorities had supposedly increased security measures in the city ahead of today’s visit by a cross-country caravan led by poet Javier Sicilia. The caravan, which is protesting the militarized drug war, is making stops in some of the northern areas hardest hit by related violence.

The massacre also comes amid multiple discoveries of mass graves in the north. Dozens of pits containing burnt bones where discovered just south of the Coahuila/Texas border over the weekend. At least seven bodies have been unearthed this week in the town of Juárez, Nuevo León.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s Attorney General’s office has updated the number of bodies found in the 2 largest mass grave sites. To date, 193 bodies have been discovered in San Fernando, Tamaulipas and another 236 pulled from sites around the city of Durango. Most of the bodies remain unidentified.