Top 500 coming

I know July seems like a long way off, but it's not for us. If you think you want to try to land a company for our annual Top 500 Companies in Latin America, please ask me for the list so that you can figure out who we might assign to you.

Do you get Latin Trade?

If you regularly receive Latin Trade, as a correspondent, it would be extremely helpful to know exactly what day you get the magazine.

If you are a regular correspondent and do not receive the magazine and would like to, please let me now by sending me the full address to which it would be sent. I have limited number of comps, but it's time I reviewed that list anyway. First come, first served.

Mud, mud, mud!

This morning, our esteemed News Editor Forrest Jones popped me an e-mail about a competitor which is staging an event soon. Included was a list of people expected to attend.

The first three attendees (and these things are usually listed in order of seniority and importance) were interviewed exclusively by Latin Trade in the last few months.

Mud, mud, mud in their eye!

Great work, folks.

Corrie needs help

Paul Harris in Chile will be working on a multi-country feature for us. He's off to a good start, but could use some help.

If you know of any innoviation -- industrial process, patent, idea, product -- that was 1) born in Latin America and 2) was then "exported" or traveled to become common practice elswhere in the region or the world, please let him know.

He's off to a good start but we're trying to get a good mix of countries and sectors. You can reach Paul by e-mailing him (Click on the link).

Thanks much.

January is out!

The Janaury issue marks our first foray as a magazine into government spending, a huge part of any national economy representing billions of dollars in contracts annually to private companies. It's a tough topic, one our correspondents handled well, with some standouts among them:

Margarida Pfeifer, our Brazil Correspondent, nailed the move by Brazil's government to online purchasing, including tons of details about how the increased competition is tough on suppliers. Marisol Rueda, in Mexico, took a similar tack covering how the Mexican government has taken it all online. Result: Politicians have gotten a taste for transparency and cost-cutting. Imagine that.

C.J. Schexnayder in Peru handled his assignment particuarly well by starting off with the story of a small business that had latched on to big government budgets. And María Elena Verdezoto in Ecuador handled a delicate situation -- how to write about a government so obviously in arrears -- while still writing about the matter at hand.

Elsewhere in the issue, Marisol Rueda landed an absolutely perfect interview with the head of the Venezuela media company Telesur. She's relentless, as you would expect a journalist interviewing a journalist would be. Especially if one of the journalists now officially works for Hugo Chávez.