Just three months before presidential elections, Colombia's constitutional court voted 7 to 2 against allowing a referendum that would have permitted President Álvaro Uribe to seek a third consecutive term.

President-elect José Mujica takes office March 1 amid expectations that he will continue moving forward with the policies of his predecessor and Frente Amplio colleague, Tabaré Vázquez. The AS/COA looks at his inauguration, the composition of his cabinet and Uruguay’s’ newly inaugurated General Assembly.

"As long as young political leaders committed to the ideals of democracy, freedom and equal access to opportunities remain on the sidelines, we'll never progress," writes Julio Rank Wright of the Executive National Council of El Salvador's ARENA party, in the Winter 2010 issue of Americas Quarterly.

A moderate leftist president seeks a new way to rule a traditionally polarized country, where moderate options have often failed.

The president-elect is expected to maintain pro-business and pro-free trade policies while ramping up the fight against crime and narcotics trafficking.

Laura Chinchilla, hand-picked successor of President Óscar Arias, won the February 7 election. She will be the first woman to serve as Costa Rica's president.

After sustaining losses in Mexico's 2009 midterm elections and with 12 governorships up for grabs this year, the National Action Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution could build an unlikely alliance against the Institutional Revolutionary Party ahead of the 2012 presidential vote.