Need Advice! Please help or ask a friend who might know.....

I NEED TO FIGURE OUT WHAT THE BEST WAY OF HAVING A CELL PHONE IN MEXICO WILL BE? 
So admittedly I'm probably a little lazy in that I could most likely find and purchase the phone and service right now on the internet.  But in terms of filtering through the scams, the misleading ads, and strong distrust I have developed for mexican tourism commerce, I am reaching out to others who have traveled to other countries for more than a week or two, and acquired a cell phone. 

I'll tell you what I have, what I want, and what i would settle for:

WHAT I HAVE-----So I have an IPhone4 with ATT service.  I will be staying with family that has a wi-fi connection I can use. (side note, in December I was in Mexico for a couple of weeks and took my phone off of airplane mode twice, for a total of ten minutes, didn't make any calls and sent four texts, unfortunately I received about 50 texts that were in queue and consequently i payed a 60 dollars in extra charges that month on my phone bill.)
    I also have an Iphone3 that is not connected to any phone service but can still use wifi, so its more or less an ipod touch.
   i also have 2 functioning non-smartphones that i was told could be used elsewhere if i buy a sim card from the country  i'm in....again, don't know much about it, and a little frustrated to do the research so i'm hoping for a lucky break that someone out there has the answer.

WHAT I WANT----- Ideally I would have a smartphone (my iphone4 would be just fine, mind you) that can make and  receive local (mexico) calls as well as receive international calls. And I could use data on the phone to send emails, look up maps, etc.   (like i  said, this is ideal, and if i could pay a hundred dollars and have this ability for even one month while there, I would.  unfortunately if I were to go to mexico, and use my iphone in the exact manner I use it here, my overage would be in the tens of thousands.  This might seem like a lazy exaggeration, but it is not.)

WHAT I WOULD SETTLE FOR- i'm bringing both of my iphones, and one of my non smart phones and i'lll settle for being able to get the most from Skype while connected to wifi and getting a sim card for the two months so that i can use the non smart phone for local(mexico city) calls.

Any input about getting sim cards in mexico (or other countries excluding u.s. and canada) and  or if they have 'burners' in other countries. And the jackpot would be if you or someone you know travelled to Mexico and did something in order to have a phone to use for local, international, and data services and the bill was in the tens of thousands of dollars (or pennies for that matter).

Any help, would be excellent.  Skype users, any tutorial on buying a number/plan before i leave would be great.  Their website and app does not provide clear information for me.  It might be clear, but i simply don't understand what it all means :)

thanks in advance.  You can email me at chrisjvazquez@gmail.com or leave a comment or send a smoke signal.  I hope somebody reads this :)