On March 27 Mexico's governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) issued recommendations strongly condemning state and federal officials and police agents for their actions in a Dec. 12 confrontation between the police and student protesters in the southwestern state of Guerrero that left three people dead. The recommendations called for compensation to be paid to the people injured and for officials to apologize to the victims and their relatives in a public ceremony in Guerrero. CNDH president Raúl Plascencia Villanueva said the commission was also planning to file a criminal complaint with the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) against 184 officials and police agents.

According to figures released by the Mexican government March 28, drug-related violence claimed 12,903 lives in the country in 2011—down from the record-breaking 15,273 claimed for 2010. In releasing the new figures, the administration of President Felipe Calderón attempted to down-play the number, asserting that drug-related violence throughout the hemisphere last year claimed 150,000 lives. This caused some confusion in the Mexican press, as two days earlier, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had used the 150,000 figure to refer to the total number killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2006, when Calderón took office and began using the armed forces aggressively against the cartels. Panetta's comment itself caused controversy, since the more common estimate for drug-related deaths in Mexico since 2006 is 50,000. Panetta presumably misspoke—or intentionally exaggerated the scope of the crisis.

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.

Mexican governance secretary Alejandro Poiré formally apologized to indigenous campesina Inés Fernández Ortega at a ceremony in Ayutla de los Libres in the southwestern state of Guerrero on March 6 for her rape by three Mexican soldiers in 2002. Along with Valentina Rosendo, who was raped by soldiers in a separate incident, Fernández filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), which ruled in October 2010 that the Mexican government was responsible and must apologize to the two women. Federal attorney general Marisela Morales and Guerrero governor Angel Aguirre were also present for the apology.

About 1,000 indigenous people and campesinos held a march in Huixtán in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas on Feb. 25 to protest the high rates the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) charges, to oppose the construction of more dams in the region, and to demand that electric power generation not be privatized. The march was organized by the Feb. 29 Popular Struggle Front, which was also marking the eighth anniversary of its founding.

Mexican federal police on Feb. 14 announced the arrest in Culiacán, Sinaloa, of Jaime Herrera Herrera AKA "El Viejito" (Little Old Man), said to be a major manufacturer and distributor of methamphetamine for the Sinaloa Cartel. (NYT, Feb. 14) The bust came ten days after the arrest in León, Guanajuato, of José Antonio Torres Marrufo AKA "El Marrufo"—said to be leader of the Gente Nueva gang, armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel. Prosecutors suspect Marrufo of ordering the 2009 attack on a drug treatment clinic in Ciudad Juárez in which 18 people were killed. The cartel's maximum boss, Joaquín Guzmán AKA "El Chapo" (Shorty), still remains at large. (BBC News, Crónica de Hoy, RTT, Feb. 14; El Diario, Ciudad Juárez, Feb. 6; BBC News, Feb. 4)

Officials from the United States and Mexico on Feb. 20 signed an agreement that opens the way for exploration and development of oil and natural gas reservoirs along the two countries' maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mexico. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Mexican Minister of Foreign Relations Patricia Espinosa, and Mexican Minister of Energy Jordy Herrera joined Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, for the signing ceremony. The signing took place on the sidelines of at a ministerial meeting of Group of 20 nations. As a result of the agreement, nearly 1.5 million acres of the US Outer Continental Shelf will now be made more accessible for exploration and production activities. Estimates by the US Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) indicate this area contains as much as 172 million barrels of oil and 304 billion cubic feet of natural gas. The agreement establishes a framework for US companies and Mexico's Pemex to enter into agreements to jointly develop transboundary reservoirs.