Crystal Ball

New York Times today...

Graft Mars the Recruitment of Mexican Guest Workers

By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: May 24, 2007
TAMPAMOLÓN CORONA, Mexico — Cástulo Benavides, a union organizer, came to this forgotten mountain town to tell its men how to get legal jobs in the tobacco fields of North Carolina.
But this year he introduced them to a change in a longstanding practice: the men will not have to pay anyone to get those jobs.

“That’s something that we won with the union,” Mr. Benavides explained to the workers in the sweltering municipal auditorium here. “We are stepping on some people’s toes, and we’re doing it hard.” ... Before planting and harvest time in the United States it has been common for local recruiters to fan out across Mexico’s parched countryside to sign up guest workers. The recruiters charge the Mexicans hundreds of dollars, sometimes more, for the job and the temporary visa that comes with it.

"Silicon" Jack Epstein in Latin Trade, May 2007...

The New Underclass

Expanding an abusive U.S. guest-worker program is great business—and borderline slavery.

When was the last time you paid to work? Latin Americans seem to be doing just that under the current U.S. guest-worker program. Some are even paying with their lives.

Eighty-two workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic have filed a class-action lawsuit against Decatur Hotels in New Orleans, a luxury hotel operator. The employees say hotel recruiters promised them 40-hour weeks and plenty of overtime. Instead, they claim, they received only 25 hours or less and quickly fell into debt since they couldn’t pay back hefty recruiting fees of between US$4,000 and $5,000. It’s the kind of employment scam more often associated with the poorest of developing world economies, and usually seen among rings of sex workers or field hands, not carpenters at luxury hotels.

Crystal Ball

New York Times today...

May 17, 2007
Clash of Hope and Fear as Venezuela Seizes Land
By SIMON ROMERO

URACHICHE, Venezuela — The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes. Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.

For centuries, much of Venezuela’s rich farmland has been in the hands of a small elite. After coming to power in 1998, and especially after his re-election in December, President Hugo Chávez vowed to end that inequality, and has been keeping his promise in a process that is both brutal and legal.
Mr. Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.

Mike Ceaser in Latin Trade, December 2005...

The Plot Thickens
Venezuela seizes private ranches and gives them to the poor, which has businesses—and environmentalists—worried

Anthony Richards' business card describes him as the "administrator" of Hato Charcote, a 5,220-hectare ranch of plains, woods and wetlands in central Venezuela, where thousands of cattle are fattened to become steaks and hamburgers. But seated in his small office at the ranch's entrance, Richards' exasperated tone makes it clear he's administrating less and less these days.

"It isn't easy living surrounded by people who don't like you," the British-born Richards says of the hundreds of government-backed campesinos, landless peasants who have squatted property on Charcote and now claim nearly all of it. Richards accuses the campesinos of shooting cattle, setting fires and cutting down trees.

Crystal Ball

Financial Times today...

Biofuels industry courts private investors

By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires
Published: May 15 2007 20:38 | Last updated: May 15 2007 20:38

As Latin America’s traditional producers of cereals, oils and sugar jump on the biofuels bandwagon, private investors are increasingly being courted to finance a host of new ethanol and biodiesel ventures.

Up to $4bn (€3bn, £2bn) will be needed in Brazil alone to triple production of ethanol from sugar cane by 2020. Brazil produces almost half the world’s ethanol and has secured more than $2.5bn in financing from the Inter-American Development Bank to help it achieve its output goal.


Meghan Sapp in Latin Trade, June 2006...

Sweet Deal

Brazilian companies send ethanol technology abroad to make money, and to improve life in poorer countries.

Brazilian sugar companies are spreading the gospel of ethanol—fuel made from sugar or corn—across the developing world, from the Caribbean to sub-Saharan Africa. Though ethanol has been used as a fuel in Brazil for more than three decades, demand for it only began to pick up after oil skyrocketed on the sudden awakening of the Chinese economy.

As famous names such as U.K. billionaire Richard Branson, Sun Microsystems Founder Vinod Khosla and Microsoft’s Bill Gates write checks into the hundreds of millions of dollars in the race for green fuels, Brazilian companies are already there, doing deals. “Brazil is doing everything it can do to help other countries,” says Paul Wrobel, commercial advisor on sugar and ethanol issues at the Brazilian embassy in London. “It is an intent of Brazil to make the Brazilian experience well known all over the world and make ethanol an international commodity. Brazil cannot be the only world supplier if demand picks up.”

Crystal Ball

LA Times today...

Argentina's Ushuaia rides eco-tourism wave
The Tierra del Fuego city, which bills itself as the End of the World, cashes in as thousands flock to its relatively untouched terrain.

By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer

Ushuaia, Argentina — This is a place where "The End of the World" sells. The theme is celebrated in T-shirts, bumper stickers, coffee mugs and posters. You can't get away from it.
"It's the magic of 'The End of the World,' " says Mayor Jorge Garramuño. "As a brand, it is very powerful."

He's talking geography, not Armageddon.

Ushuaia, situated along the picturesque Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego, amid a backdrop of jagged, snow-capped mountains, proclaims itself the world's southernmost city.
...

Foreign vacationers, mostly from the United States and Europe, can't seem to get enough of this rugged and glamorous terrain at the tip of South America.

Nonstop flights from Buenos Aires touch down daily. Hundreds of cruise ships now anchor here during the relatively mild months between Christmas and Easter. The number of visitors to Ushuaia approached a quarter-million last year, double the total five years earlier.

Juan Pedro Tomás in Latin Trade, March 2006

Hotel Patagonia

Patagonia - the southern tip of South America - has become a brand name in the tourism world. Its dreamy landscapes seem to entice ever-increasing numbers of visitors. That's why large hotel chains and smaller Argentine companies want to boost their presence at the end of the world.

The Hilton chain plans to open a hotel during the first quarter of 2007 in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego province. The US$13 million property will have 150 rooms. Yowen Hotel, a group of Argentine investors, will build the Hilton Ushuaia while Hilton will manage the brand and decide the architecture, as well as oversee day-to-day hotel affairs.

Hilton's managers for the region recognize that the "world's southernmost city'' is a great growth market since none of its international competitors are there. The company plans to position itself as the highest-caliber luxury hotel in the area. The new Hilton Ushuaia will have meeting and events salons, a gymnasium, a heated pool, restaurant and bar packaged in a property overlooking the Beagle Channel and surrounded by Patagonian forest, says Tom Potter, vice president for Hilton's Latin American operations. "Ushuaia is visited by a very significant number of foreign tourists and besides, it's the starting point for many trips to Antarctica,'' says Potter.

Crystal Ball

Financial Times today...

FT REPORT - ENERGY IN THE AMERICAS: 'Delicious dream' in decline

In 1976, the future of Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly, looked as bright as it ever had.

The discovery of Cantarell, a huge oil complex located in the Gulf of Mexico, assured abundant supplies of crude for the foreseeable future and cemented the country's place as one of the world's most formidable oil exporters.

For the best part of three decades oil from Cantarell flowed fast and furious - so furious, in fact, that by 2004 its average daily volume of just over 2.1m barrels ranked it the world's second-fastest-producing oil complex after the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia.

Not only did that make Cantarell by far the most important source of Mexican oil - today it accounts for about 60 per cent of total production - but it also helped turn Mexico into the world's third-biggest oil exporter.

Today, that "delicious dream", as one Pemex official once described Cantarell, is in danger of becoming a nightmare. Production at Cantarell is falling rapidly - according to Pemex, it declined 12 per cent last year and will fall a further 15 per cent this year.

Marisol Rueda in Latin Trade, July 2005...

Slippery Slope
Despite high oil prices, lack of investment at state-run Pemex means Mexico could soon become a crude importer.

After being a virtual gusher of cash for Mexico for many decades, state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) seems to be on the verge of drilling a dry hole. The company faces serious challenges in terms of infrastructure and a critical financial situation that, among other things, keeps it from making the exploration investments it needs to counteract a gradual production decline at its existing deposits. If the situation remains unchecked, in a decade Mexico could become an importer of crude oil, warns Pemex General Director Luis Ramírez Corzo.

For now, the two main problems at Pemex are high levels of debt and the decline of its known oil reserves, according to oil analysts. More money is needed, clearly, but it's less clear from where that cash will come - outside or inside Pemex. New private financing, although not voting shares, is one route, although allowing Pemex to keep more of the cash it generates is another, less politically painful choice, and the more likely path, according to Pemex observers.

Welcome Marisol Rueda

I'm very pleased to announce that Marisol Rueda, our Mexico Correspondent for several years, will be the Spanish Editor of Latin Trade beginning on June 1.

Santiago Fittipaldi, the current Spanish Editor, will remain at Latin Trade, taking charge of developing our high-net worth magazine LT Elite, as well as contributing from time to time to Latin Trade.

Marisol has done exemplary work as a correspondent, landing major interviews including Mexican President Vicente Fox. She will continue to cover Mexico, adding to her role assigning and editing Spanish-language coverage from around the region and the world. You can reach her by e-mail.

Marisol has been a Notimex correspondent in Brazil and holds a masters degree in journalism from Spain. She will be working for Latin Trade from Mexico City.