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)

Tens of thousands of Mexican teachers in several states went on strike or took to the streets March 14-16 in three days of "Action in Defense of Education." In addition to local demands, the actions were focused on opposition to a proposed "national evaluation" exam that the teachers consider a step towards privatizing public education, and rejection of the 23-year leadership of Elba Esther Gordillo Morales in the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), Latin America's largest teachers' union. The actions were called by the union's main rank-and-file caucus, the National Education Workers Coordinating Committee (CNTE), with the support of some state sections of the SNTE.

In the first student demonstration of Chile's new school year, some 5,000 youths marched in Santiago on March 15 in support of the student movement's demand last year: free, high-quality education. The Santiago authorities hadn't issued a permit for the action, and carabineros militarized police, including some on horseback, blocked the marchers at Bustamante Park. The police used tear gas and water cannons, and hooded protesters responded by hurling sticks, rocks and bottles. Traffic was blocked with barricades in some parts of the city, and a bus was set on fire. By evening, 105 people were detained and three agents were injured, according to the authorities.