Colombia is enjoying an oil boom, its output of crude having nearly doubled in the past six years, from 525,000 barrels a day in 2005 to a daily average of 914,000 last year. But as exploration expands in the country's eastern lowlands, oil companies continue to confront armed groups. In February, the ELN guerrillas kidnapped 11 workers in Casanare department who were building the Oleoducto Bicentenario, slated to be Colombia's largest oil pipeline. The 11 were released in early March. Simultaneously, Interior Minister Germán Vargas Lleras warned that he was "not going to tolerate" more road blockades in the region. Local peasants and residents have in recent weeks repeatedly blocked arteries through the region to protest the lack of benefit to their communities by the oil operations, facing down troops of the elite National Police riot squad, ESMAD. Leaders have denied government claims that the guerillas are behind the protest campaign.

On Feb. 28, Peru's government sent a protest note to Chile, claiming an unauthorized incursion by Chilean troops into its territory five days earlier. The Chilean soldiers reportedly entered the country while performing landmine-clearing work, after heavy rains shifted anti-personnel mines in the area. "The findings suggest the presence of Chilean troops in an area of Peruvian territory, between Milestone [Hito] No. 1 and the sea, carrying out signaling work of the land shift that reached the territory of Peru," a government press statement said. This set off a flurry of press accounts of further such incursions over the next month, prompting that Foreign Ministry to release a statement March 26 denying any new incursions. The dispute comes as the International Court of Justice at The Hague has scheduled oral arguments in Peru's case against Chile over their longtime maritime border dispute. (Peruvian Times, March 23; RPP, March 16; Peru This Week, Feb. 28)

The US State Department's 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy report contains harsh words for Peru, lamenting the country's "slow advance" in coca leaf eradication. The report says the country has 53,000 hectares under coca cultivation. Colombia has 100,000 hectares—but Peru's total has increased in recent years, while Colombia's has dropped. (Although Peru has challenged these claims.) The report calls out Peru's Customs Service, Coast Guard, Port Authority and Public Ministry as blocking progress in the anti-narcotics struggle. State Department analyst Pedro Yaranga told Lima's La Republica that "there does not exist a decision to attack the coca source areas [cuencas cocaleras]." He particularly named the Upper Huallaga Valley and Apurímac-Ene River Valley (VRAE).

The former head of Peru's National Water Authority (ANA) and current water consultant to the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), Abelardo de la Torre, warned March 19 that Peru faces at least 70 social conflicts related to control of water, and that these are likely to worsen if urgent action is not taken to address them. He said ANA's Hydraulic Resources Management Modernization program, launched under his leadership, was aimed at eliminating inefficiencies in the national irrigation networks, and pointed to the environmental impacts of informal mining as contributing to the degradation of watersheds. (Reports did not indicate that he mentioned the impacts of formal mining.)

Peru's President Ollanta Humala told TV program Panorama March 25 that his government is "one step away" from reaching a deal with the consortium developing Block 88, one of the main blocks in the Camisea field—following through on a campaign promise that gas from that block would be reserved for domestic use. "This has been a renegotiation with the Camisea consortium, without using any force or without kicking over the table in any way," Humala said. He said that under the deal, the gas will be "recovered" for the people of Peru.

On March 13 the Bolivian government declared three days of mourning for union and leftist leader Domitila Barrios de Chungara, who died of lung cancer at her home in Cochabamba earlier that day. Born into a mineworkers' family in 1937, Barrios de Chungara started her political work in a women's auxiliary for the mineworkers union in the Siglo XX mining district and eventually became a prominent union leader. In 1978 she initiated the mass hunger strike that resulted in the collapse of the 1971-1978 dictatorship of Col. Hugo Banzer Suárez and the restoration of formal democracy. (La Jornada, Mexico, March 14)

After an 18-day trial, a Guatemalan court has sentenced former general Pedro Pimentel to 6,030 years in prison for his participation in the Dec. 6, 1982 massacre of 201 civilians--most of them women and children--in the village of Dos Erres in the northern department of Petén. The sentence, 30 years for each of the victims plus 30 years for crimes against humanity, was made public the night of March 12.

LGBT groups in Mexico City were planning a march on March 18 from the Angel of Independence to Puebla state's office in the city to protest the March 10 murder of transgender activist Agnes Torres Sulca in Puebla city and to demand protection from homophobic hate crimes in the state. Puebla authorities claim the killers were a group of about five local youths; one of the youths, Luis Fernando Bueno, was arrested in Mérida in the eastern state of Yucután on March 16 and was said to have confessed. (Adital, Brazil, March 16; Milenio, Mexico, March 17)