Remember that we posted this at the beginning of the week about an amateur bullfighting festival in Huamantla, Mexico, in which 23 people were injured?

Many of the men who challenged the bulls, matador-style, knew what they were doing and approached the animals with caution and capes. But many didn't. The combination of alcohol, a screaming crowd and poor judgment was too much: 23 people ended up being carried away on stretchers by the Red Cross.

But all of those men who survived the wrath of the bulls — scathed or unscathed — were treated like homecoming heroes.

"Give me another beer! It didn't hurt!" shouted Armando Ortiz, a 25-year-old student who earned a standing ovation from the crowd after one of the bulls rushed at him and knocked him down.

Well, now here's the video to give you at home an idea of the event:

Reed Johnson reports from Taxco, Mexico, on master silversmith Antonio Pineda, whose work has inspired a large retrospective, “Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda,” running through March 15 at UCLA's Fowler Museum.

"Metallurgically speaking, it sounds paradoxical to talk about a 'Golden Age' of silversmithing. But the phrase comes naturally to Antonio Pineda as he recollects the era when his lustrous creations adorned heiresses' throats, commanded praise from heads of state and draped the creamy skin of Hollywood stars," writes Johnson.

Watch Pineda in the video above, and read the written report here.

Click here for more posts on the arts and here for more on Mexico.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The recent violence in Mexico, much of it drug-related, is showing no signs of letting up.

A grisly discovery Thursday on the Yucatan peninsula -- one of the country's most popular tourist destinations -- saw the violence spread to a state that, until now, largely has been spared the problems seen in other parts of Mexico. Although the Yucatan has seen scattered violence, it had not been a scene of severe fighting between drug-trafficking groups.

Ken Ellingwood reports: "In a sign of the spreading violence in Mexico, 11 decapitated bodies were found late Thursday near the colonial city of Merida on the Yucatan peninsula, officials said."

"The bodies bore signs of torture and some were unclothed. Yucatan state officials said a 12th decapitated body was found later about 120 miles south of Merida, a city that is often used as a tourist gateway to the famed Maya ruins at Chichen Itza."

Warring drug gangs have routinely decapitated rivals during the last two years as they battle for coveted routes for smuggling drugs into the United States.

Four decapitated bodies were found in Tijuana earlier this week in a incident likely linked to drug trafficking.

Drug-related violence in Mexico has grown more savage amid a crackdown on traffickers by the government of President Felipe Calderon, says Ellingwood, and more than 2,500 people have died in drug violence, according to unofficial tallies by Mexican news organizations.

Go here for our special report on the drug-related violence in Mexico, Mexico Under Siege.

Click here for more on Mexico and here for more on the drug trade across Latin America.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Mexican soldiers march in last year's Independence Day parade in Mexico City. President Felipe Calderon has deployed 40,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police officers to try to secure large swaths of the country against entrenched drug traffickers. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

In a lopsided ruling, Mexico's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a year-old law in Mexico City legalizing abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, reports The Times' Ken Ellingwood.

The court rejected arguments by abortion opponents that the law violated the Mexican Constitution, whose protections they said covered embryos. A majority of justices said overturning the law would block the right of women to end pregnancies in the early weeks. The vote was 8 to 3 to uphold the measure, approved in April 2007 by Mexico City's leftist-dominated government. Opponents needed support from at least eight of the 11 justices to overturn the law.

As we reported last year, legislators decriminalized abortion in Mexico City's Federal District in April 2007.

Read more on Ellingwood's report on the Supreme Court decision on abortion in Mexico here, and click here for more news on Mexico.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Mario Guzman / EPA

With no sign of a thaw in their frozen diplomatic relations, Ecuador this week called on Colombia to increase its military presence along their shared border to check the spillover of rebel groups, drug trafficking and war refugees.

The demand was one of several laid out by officials as they argued that their nation had paid too high a price for its neighbor's decades-long civil conflict and that Colombia must take more responsibility for the encroaching violence.

The two nations seem far from repairing the rift triggered six months ago, when Colombian troops crossed the border to kill a rebel leader holed up in Ecuador. Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa deployed troops along the border and two days later cut diplomatic ties.

Read more of Chris Kraul's report on Ecuador and Colombia here.

Click here for more on Colombia and here for more on Ecuador.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

A pair of octogenarian ex-generals who served during Argentina's "dirty war" against internal dissent were sentenced to life in prison Thursday after defiantly declaring they were innocent of the murder charges on which they were convicted, reports The Times' Patrick J. McDonnell.

"I am being pursued politically by those defeated in yesterday's war," white-haired ex-Gen. Antonio Domingo Bussi, 82, testified before being sentenced in the northern province of Tucuman.

Also sentenced by the same three-judge panel was Bussi's former boss, former Gen. Luciano Benjamin Menendez, 81, who testified that he had done what was necessary to confront "international communism."

Human rights advocates called for the pair to be sent to prison, but Bussi was immediately returned to house arrest at his residence in an exclusive gated community. Menendez was dispatched to military custody.

The pair were convicted of murder and related charges in connection with the disappearance of provincial Sen. Guillermo Vargas Aignasse. He vanished after being arrested March 24, 1976, the day of Argentina's last military coup.

The military takeover kicked off Argentina's 1976-83 dirty war against suspected leftists, which resulted in as many as 30,000 killings, according to human rights activists. Many bodies have never been found.

Read more about the post-war trial in Argentina here.

For more on Argentina, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photos: At top, Argentine former Gen. Antonio Bussi, right, reads his speech next to his lawyer and his military chief, Gen. Luciano Benjamin Menendez, left, during the last hearing of their trial. Above at right, relatives of people who disappeared during Argentina's 1976-83 military dictatorship hold placards with images of their missing kin in court in San Miguel de Tucuman, in the northern province of Tucuman. Credit: Jorge Olmos Sgrosso / AFP/Getty Images

With the help of Mexico President Felipe Calderon, San Diego-based Sempra Energy on Thursday inaugurated its $1-billion Energia Costa Azul gas import terminal to serve fast-growing energy demands in the southwestern U.S. and Baja California, Mexico.

The first such facility on North America's West Coast, the Sempra plant receives natural gas that was cooled to a liquid for overseas shipment by tanker. The fuel is then processed back into a gas for pipeline transport to users, including power plants, industry and homes.

As we reported yesterday, Calderon traveled to northern Baja California to open bidding on a $4-billion seaport that his adminstration hopes will one day rival those of Los Angeles and Long Beach and catapult Mexico into being a major player in North American logistics.

To read on about the new Sempra Energy gas import terminal here.

For more business click here and more about Mexico click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Tropical storm Gustav, which we reported Thursday was heading toward the Gulf Coast, swamped eastern Jamaica Thursday on a path to hit the Cayman Islands with winds near hurricane force. Louisiana called a state of emergency and put the National Guard on standby, hoping to avoid the chaos of Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Gustav swirled away from the island of Hispaniola, reports the Associated Press, where it killed 23 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and closed in on Jamaica's low-lying capital, about 40 miles to the west. Forecasters said Gustav could hit Jamaica as a hurricane and perhaps hit Grand Cayman tonight.

Read more about tropical storm Gustav here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: A worker sweeps Havana's seafront, known as the Malecon, after rains today. Tropical storm Gustav built toward renewed hurricane force today as it drove toward Jamaica, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Credit: Javier Galeano / Associated Press

After three weeks of negotiations, Oscar De La Hoya and Manny Pacquiao made it official this morning, agreeing to fight in a 12-round nontitle bout on Dec. 6 in what's expected to be a blockbuster pay-per-view event at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, reports Dan Arritt.

As we mentioned here on La Plaza, the official announcement was expected in a conference call Thursday morning.

The biggest haggling point, the share of the purse, was not announced during the call with both fighters and their promoters, De La Hoya's Richard Schaefer of Golden Boy Promotions and Bob Arum of Top Rank.

Pacquiao, the WBC lightweight champion, was seeking 40% of the purse, while De La Hoya was offering 30%, although they apparently came to a compromise somewhere in between. The fighters will meet at the welterweight limit of 147 pounds. De La Hoya has not fought at that weight since 2001, and WBC lightweight champion Pacquaio has never fought above 135 pounds.

Read on about the upcoming match here.

Click here for more sports stories.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Manny Pacquiao of the Philippines has confirmed his plan to fight Oscar De La Hoya on Dec. 6 in Las Vegas. Credit: Chris Cozzone / AFP/Getty Images

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who during his tenure was nicknamed "Red Ken" for his socialist political leanings, is to work as a consultant for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the BBC reports.

Livingstone, a longtime Chavez supporter, "will advise pro-government mayors in the capital Caracas on urban planning." He said he was proud and honored to be part of the Venezuelan city's transformation, the BBC notes:

As mayor, Mr. Livingstone struck a deal to swap cheap Venezuelan oil for city planning advice, but it was cancelled by his successor Boris Johnson.

After a meeting with Mr Chavez in Caracas on Wednesday, the former mayor said he was pleased that Venezuela would now get the "advice that we promised."

The BBC's James Ingham said the two men, who share left-wing political views, hugged each other like old friends.

Read the rest of the BBC dispatch on Hugo Chavez and former London mayor Ken Livingstone here.

Click here for more on Venezuela.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Remember a bunch of stories we did this year about taco trucks in Los Angeles, which local restaurant owners were complaining had an unfair competitive advantage?

Well, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Wednesday overturned a controversial ordinance passed in April by county supervisors that made it a misdemeanor in unincorporated parts of the county to park a taco truck in one spot for more than an hour, Garrett Therolf reports.

Which means that East L.A's taco trucks are back in full force -- at least for now. Therolf writes:

The language of the ordinance, Judge Dennis A. Aichroth said, was "vague" and therefore "unconstitutional" in its description of how quickly a vendor could return to an area where the truck was previously parked. Aichroth said it also violated the vehicle code because county supervisors had not properly established that it was written in the interest of public safety.

The attorney who won the case on behalf of Margarita Garcia, a ticketed taco vendor whose violation was dismissed by Aichroth, said he expected that the county would try to rewrite the law. "It'll probably be just as miserable as the one they just wrote," said Philip C. Greenwald, who represents a newly formed association of catering truck operators. "They won't win."

Click here to visit the SaveOurTacoTrucks.org website, maintained by two Highland Park taco lovers.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Alex Yoo enjoys some chow at a taco truck on Olympic Boulevard in East Los Angeles, the epicenter of the battle between mobile food vendors and brick-and-mortar restaurants, whose owners say the trucks enjoy an unfair competitive advantage. Credit: Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times

Mexico's government is setting sail with the largest infrastructure project in the nation's history, a $4-billion seaport that it hopes will one day rival those of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

President Felipe Calderon is scheduled to travel to northern Baja California today to open bidding on a development that his administration hopes will catapult Mexico into a major player in North American logistics, the L.A. Times' Marla Dickerson writes from Mexico City.

Plans call for the construction of a massive port in the tiny coastal village of Punta Colonet, about 150 miles south of Tijuana, along with new rail lines to whisk Asian-made goods north to the United States. Mexico's aim is to snatch some Pacific cargo traffic from Southern California's ports, whose growth is constrained by urban development and environmental concerns.

To read on about the seaport project in Baja, click here.

Go here for more business stories and here for more on Mexico.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The biggest boxing match in years will, indeed, take place. Oscar De La Hoya has agreed to a Dec. 6 match with rising superstar Manny Pacquiao, writes Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times.

The official announcement, barring last-minute reversals, will be made in a conference call Thursday morning.

The match, Dwyre writes, is "the grand finale of 35-year-old De La Hoya's unprecedented career as the box-office king in a sport that has survived on his back for more than 10 years without a dominant heavyweight." The bout will be held at the MGM Grand Hotel Garden in Las Vegas. HBO will present the pay-per-view showing.

Click here to read more about the biggest boxing bout in years.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo, from the May 2006 series "Simers: Diary Day 3 With Oscar De La Hoya": A smiling De La Hoya prepares to work out at the MGM Grand. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

The Associated Press is reporting that workers were being moved off oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday and that New Orleans was planning for a possible evacuation as Tropical Storm Gustav poured more rain onto Hispaniola island, where 23 people have already died.

Forecasters warned that the storm could plow into the Gulf Coast as a major hurricane by Labor Day, anywhere from South Texas to the Florida Panhandle.

To read more about Gustav's progress, click here.

The New York Times lifts the veil on the AIDS epidemic in a Mexican prison in this report by Marc Lacey.

"We are a population of men, and it’s normal for men to have sex with whoever is around,” said Guillermo, 32, a prisoner and peer educator who has HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “There are some who don’t want to see it.”

Even though scientific surveys of AIDS rates in Mexican prisons do not exist, the myths associated with the epidemic are pronounced among prisoners, and the sex that takes place is frequently unsafe, advocates say. The risk is significant enough that an American organization, Population Services International, has set up an AIDS awareness program inside this and four other Mexican lockups.

To read the full dispatch on AIDS in a Mexican prison, click here.

For a La Plaza report on orphans living with HIV in Mexico, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Western anti-terrorism officials are increasingly concerned that Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite Muslim militia that Washington has labeled a terrorist group, is using Venezuela as a base for operations, report Chris Kraul and Sebastian Rotella.

Linked to deadly attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina in the early 1990s, Hezbollah may be taking advantage of Venezuela's ties with Iran, the militia's longtime sponsor, to move "people and things" into the Americas, as one Western government terrorism expert put it.

As part of his anti-American foreign policy, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has established warm diplomatic relations with Iran and has traveled there several times. The Bush administration, Israel and other governments worry that Venezuela is emerging as a base for anti-U.S. militant groups and spy services, including Hezbollah and its Iranian allies.

Read the full report on Venezuela and Hezbollah here.

For more on Venezuela, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, left, greets his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, last year. Marcelo Garcia / AFP/Getty Images

President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia is possibly the most popular elected leader in the world, says this Los Angeles Times editorial.

"The military's dazzling rescue of hostages held for years by leftist rebels, including Franco-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three American military contractors, coupled with his successful attacks on the guerrillas' drug trafficking, have led to approval ratings of which most politicians only dream: On a bad day, support for the president dips below 90%. Kidnappings and murders, although still astronomically high by U.S. standards, are at their lowest levels in 30 years, and Colombians finally are optimistic about an end to their decades-long civil war."

But it goes on to warn readers that progress against the country's rebels should not be the only measure of Uribe's success.

Read the full editorial here.

For more on Colombia, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The gruesome discoveries this week of five bodies in Tijuana, four of them decapitated, have shattered a period of relative calm and revived concerns that organized crime groups are escalating their battle for control of this border city.

Two bodies were found Monday morning on a hillside, one with its head placed on its upper back, reports Richard Marosi.

Three more bodies were discovered Tuesday morning in an illegal dump.

Their heads, charred from gasoline burns, were placed at their feet, according to the Baja California state attorney general's office.

Authorities have not identified the victims.

To read the full report on the bodies found in Tijuana, click here.

For more on the drug trade across Latin America, click here.

For our special report on Mexico Under Siege, see here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Despite Mexico's large Roman Catholic population, the nation's capital, Mexico City, recently adopted one of the most liberal abortion laws in the hemisphere. But officials here are finding that making the new policy stand up in court, and in a society riven by deep class divisions, may be harder than they imagined.

"When Mexico City’s government made abortion legal last year, it also set out to make it available to any woman who asked for one. That includes the city’s poorest, who for years resorted to illegal clinics and midwives as wealthy women visited private doctors willing to quietly end unwanted pregnancies," the New York Times reports.

"But helping poor women gain equal access to the procedure has turned out to be almost as complicated as passing the law, a watershed event in this Catholic country and in a region where almost all countries severely restrict abortions."

"Now, even as the city’s left-wing government revamps its abortion services, the law is coming up against its biggest challenge — in the courts."

Read here for background on Mexico City's abortion laws.

-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City

Photo: Alejandra, 24, took pills to induce an abortion after staff members at a public hospital in Mexico City scared her out of undergoing the procedure there. Credit: Jennifer Szymaszek / For the New York Times

It was among the most brutal of drug-related crimes ever recorded in Baja California.

According to police, on Sept. 17, 1998, a group of gunmen clad in military gear stormed a ranch in El Sauzal, near Ensenada, and went on a killing spree. They pulled victims from their beds, herded them together and shot them to death, reportedly over a marijuana trafficking dispute. Among the 19 dead were men, women and children ages 2 and 1.

Now U.S. officials have announced the arrest of an East L.A. man in connection with the massacre, write Stuart Pfeifer and Francisco Vara-Orta of the Los Angeles Times.

"Authorities with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service arrested Jesus Ruben Mancada on Thursday evening as he walked barefoot from his home to take out the trash."

Mancada is an alleged drug cartel member, the story reports:

"Mexican authorities arrested three suspects within a couple of months and obtained arrest warrants for several others, including Mancada."

"Mancada, 33, told U.S. immigration officials that he crossed into San Ysidro in December 1998 and spent the last decade living in California and Oregon, said Brian M. DeMore, Los Angeles field office director of ICE's Office of Detention and Removal."

-- Reed Johnson in Mexico City