Late on the evening of Feb. 15, Venezuela's National Electoral Council announced that a proposal to end term limits had won with 54% of the vote in a referendum held that day. The government of President Hugo Chávez Frias, whose second six-year term ends in 2012, had pushed hard for the measure. "The doors of the future are wide open," Chávez, a former lieutenant colonel, shouted from the balcony of the Miraflores presidential palace after the results were announced. "In 2012 there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate."

On Feb. 14 a court in Temuco in the southern Chilean region of La Araucania formally charged indigenous Mapuche activist Miguel Angel Tapia Huenulef with six counts of possession of firearms and explosives under the Anti-terrorism Law. Police agents said they had found the weapons and explosives during raids the night of Feb. 11 at Tapia Huenulef's home in Lo Prado community in Santiago and in a house in the Huallalin sector of Padre las Casas in Novena region. The court ordered Tapia Huenulef held in prison during the investigation, which it said should be completed in four months. He also faces drug possession charges in Santiago and charges of arson and assault from a Jan. 12 attack on the San Leandro estate in Lautaro in La Araucania.

On Feb. 12 the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP) abruptly broke off negotiations aimed at ending a general strike that has paralyzed the French overseas department of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean since Jan. 20. The LKP, a coalition including political parties, grassroots organizations and 47 unions, insisted that the French government should sign on to a preliminary accord the strikers worked out with management on Feb. 8 giving the poorest workers a raise of 200 euros (about $259) a month. The government refused. "The state has done all it should," Raymond Soubie, an aide to French president Nicholas Sarkozy, told the media. "The rest, negotiations on wages, is a matter between management and the unions."

On Feb. 13 Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) granted a three-day extension for candidates to appeal its decision to bar them from running in an April 19 election for 12 of the 30 seats in the Senate. The 40 excluded candidates, including all 16 candidates on two rival slates from the Lavalas Family (FL) party, have until Feb. 16 to file their appeals.

Honduran teachers started an open-ended strike on Feb. 9, when students were to begin registering for a new semester. The strike continued a campaign that unions representing the nation's 48,000 teachers started in January before schools reopened; the earlier actions included "informational assemblies" and sit-ins to protest the government's delays in paying salaries for some 2,600 teachers and its failure to pay full year-end bonuses. On the morning of Feb. 12, after a meeting with Education Minister Marlon Breve Reyes and aides to President Manuel Zelaya, union leaders agreed to suspend the strike while the government sought a solution. The unions also dropped their demand for Breve's resignation.

A team of gunmen in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco opened fire on the home of a state police officer and his extended family Feb. 14, killing 12 people, including a 2-year-old and five other children. The killing of police officer Carlos Reyes López and his family came days after police in Tabasco captured four accused narco-gunmen and left one suspect dead. However, state authorities are saying a family feud may be behind the attack. The victims included Reyes López's mother, wife, two children, and nephews. Also killed was a fruit vendor who had stopped at the home in the Monte Largo community of Macuspana municipality, west of Villahermosa. No arrests were reported. (LAT, AFP, La Jornada, El Universal, Feb. 16)

Peru's President Alan García said Feb. 13 the government will launch an auction for rights to build a new pipeline to connect the massive Camisea gas field in the Amazon region to Chimbote on the country's north coast. Currently, the only pipeline from Camisea runs to the southern Pacific coast. The new pipeline would branch off to the north near the city of Cuzco. (Reuters, Feb. 13)

Bolivian President Evo Morales flew to Moscow Feb. 14 to discuss cooperation in energy and counter-narcotics efforts with the Russian leadership. The visit comes a week after Russia's Gazprom and the Bolivia's state hydrocarbons company YPFB signed a memorandum on drafting a plan for the joint development of the Bolivian gas industry up to 2030. Construction of hydropower stations in Bolivia by the Russian company Tekhnopromexport is said to be under consideration as well. Before his departure for Moscow, Morales also said that he would discuss with the purchase of Russian planes and helicopters for drug enforcement. (ITAR-TASS, Feb. 15)