On Jan. 23, the day after a massive La Paz rally in support of Bolivia's new constitution that goes to a popular vote on the 25th, President Evo Morales signed a decree nationalizing Chaco Petrolera Ltd. Oil Company. The president said employees at the company would keep their jobs, but the board of directors would be replaced. The company is managed by Anglo-Argentine Panamerican Energy, and is a subsidiary of the UK's BP. Morales flew to a natural gas field in central Bolivia to announce the nationalization, accompanied by soldiers who seized Chaco's installations.

Peru is seeking to double investments in energy and infrastructure this year, including a $1 billion natural-gas pipeline. The government is targeting $2.3 billion from foreign and domestic firms, up from $1.1 billion in 2008, said Luís Carlos Rodríguez, director of Proinversion, the state agency that seeks private investment. The investments would be earmarked for power lines, ports, railways, roads and irrigation projects.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Jan. 23 praised US President Barack Obama only days after accusing him of "throwing stones" at Venezuela. "He is a man with good intentions; he has immediately eliminated Guantanamo prison, and that should be applauded," Chávez said in a televised speech. "I am very happy and the world is happy that this young president has arrived... [We] welcome the new government and we are filled with hope."

The largest surge ever in legal and unauthorized Mexican migration to the US began after the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, according to sociologist James W. Russell, who studied migration patterns between 1910 and 2008 for his new book, Class and Race Formation in North America (University of Toronto Press, 2009).

On Jan. 22, followers of the Rural Reactivation Movement (Movimiento por la Reactivación del Campo) occupied the offices of Mexico's Agriculture Secretariat in five municipalities and blocked six roads in northern Chihuahua state, pledging to maintain the protest campaign until the government reduces the price of diesel fuel, raises the price of maize and wheat, addresses outstanding land claim disputes, and approves early release of pledged resources from the Procampo rural aid program.

A man arrested by Mexican federal police in Tijuana Jan. 22 says he disposed of 300 bodies for a narco gang over the past decade by dissolving them in chemicals. Santiago Meza López said he was paid $600 a week to dissolve victims' bodies in caustic soda. He went by the moniker "El Pozolero del Teo" (Teo's Stew-Maker), an evident reference to Teodoro García Simental, a former kingpin of the Tijuana Cartel who defected last year to the rival Sinaloa Cartel, sparking a bloody turf war. Over 700 were killed in Tijuana in 2008. "They brought me the bodies and I just got rid of them," Meza, named as 20 on the US FBI's "Most Wanted" list, told journalists at a construction site where he disposed of the bodies over a 10-year period. "I didn't feel anything."

Sudanese government planes bombed a key town in south Darfur Jan. 24, a week after its seizure by the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), peacekeepers and insurgents said. Bombs landed close to a base run by the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force, UNAMID, in the town of Muhajiriya and destroyed houses, a UN official said. A senior JEM commander told Reuters 16 civilians were killed in the raid, including a young child. Air attacks in Darfur are forbidden under a 2006 peace deal and UN Security Council resolutions.

President Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali vowed a harsh crackdown on the Tuareg guerillas Jan. 20. "All the means, I repeat, all the operational means will be mobilized because we cannot put a price on the securing our country," said Toure, in a speech broadcast to mark the army's 48th anniversary celebrations. Two days later, the Malian government said its forces had routed Tuareg rebels from a base in the north of the country. "Following an offensive by the Malian army, the base of Ibrahim Ag Bahanga located in Boureissa was destroyed. The toll on the side of the armed groups [Tuaregs] was 31 dead... [O]n the side of the national army, no losses," the statement said.