July is out!

On what will be my fifth anniversary at Latin Trade, we have come full circle in every sense of the phrase. July is likely our largest magazine since 2000, at 106 pages in Spanish, our single largest circulation language. There's a lot to talk about, but for now it's worth pointing out a couple of really decent pieces of business reporting.

Mike Kepp got to Jorge Gerdau Johannpeter in his profile of Gerdau's international expansion. A fascinating read, in part because it's a common story: Brazil, Inc. needs to grow abroad or stagnate, a trend we'll very likely see continue for years to come.

Similarly, Ken Rapoza tracked down Carlos Brito speaking in Massachusetts, and with Mike's help in Rio asked the newly minted superbrewer Inbev about its single largest bet -- that U.S. drinkers will be enticed to drop their Coronas, Heinekens and Budweisers for an essentially unknown brand, Brahma.

Marisol Rueda, our Mexico correspondent, nailed the eternal Pemex story -- their running out of cash and time to invest to find more oil -- with tremendous precision and highly placed sources, on the record. Liseth Camacaro in Caracas pulled together a great takeout on PDVSA's surprising turnaround, also with plenty of sources on the record.

Margardia Pfiefer, our Brazil correspondent, took a very complex story, CSN's expansion into mining, and made it relevant and readable to folks who don't know flat from rolled (steel). Finally, if you're looking to turn lemons into lemonade, don't miss Priscila Guilayn's perfect Radar item on selling fake-brand foods in Spain to Latin Americans. She started out trying to simply profile an importer. When her sources began to allege that they guy was breaking the law, it looked like we lost a story. Not so, the story just got better.

You want timely?

Writers often complain to us that their ideas don't make sense in our magazine because of the production and distribution lag. If you want to write for a Web site or a newspaper, that's great, but writing for Latin Trade needn't mean coming up with a steady supply of evergreens. Today, the Miami Herald got in a quick phone interview in with former Ecuadoran President Lucio Gutiérrez.

It's fascinating to hear him spin so furiously against the powers that be back home. But if you really want to know what his argument is, in depth, just read Andrés F. Velázquez's interview with him -- done months ago -- and you're there. Timely means talking to the right people, not so much worrying about when something might be published.

An era ends

Major U.S. daily to stop printing stock tables. Eds say it's easier to go on the Web. What they are not saying is, "Old folks no longer matter" and "paper is too expensive." But that is suddenly obvious when you consider that most investors who actually follow their money --- whatever their age -- are now online.

June is out!

Our June issue -- a warm-up to the enormous undertaking that has been our first-ever Top 500 Companies issue, in July -- is nonetheless a strong book, with some excellent work worth noting:

Jorge Garretón and Paulo Prada teamed up to produce a truly model story on increasing royalties on foreign extraction companies. It started out with Jorge noticing that Chile -- always reticent to tax foreign investors due to the country's pariah status during the Pinochet years -- was talking about finally adding on a royalty to copper production. We knew Venezuela had just done the same, and that other countries, notably Brazil, were talking about it. News Editor Forrest Jones drafted Paulo in Rio to pull together some regional reporting, and a great story resulted. It talks about borders being crossed (money, commodities, policy), saw a clear trend in the market and explained it well, and it was fully and highly sourced, with ministers and executives galore.

If it's screwy news you want, search no more. Spanish Editor Andrés F. Velázquez managed to talk with Ecuadoran President Lucio Gutiérrez days before he was deposed. And Correspondent Wayne Bernhardson in Buenos Aires found a guy making money in post-default Argentina taking dogs to the beach.

Meanwhile, Brazil Correspondent Margarida Pfeifer did some great reporting on the money pouring into Viracopos airport in Campinas; Priscila Guilayn in Madrid explained how Bajaras airport is aiming to become the center of Europe for Latin American travelers; and Mexico Corrspondent Marisol Rueda shed some light on a burning issue for the region's hundreds of thousands of small companies -- how to export in a world where China rules on price. Just turn on the light. (More on China and Brazil from Correspondent Ken Rapoza, too.)