Word: abaca
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COVER: Photomontage by Arthur Hochstein BUSH, BROOKS KRAFT; WITMER SISTERS, MICHAEL SEARS-POOL--GETTY IMAGES; MYERS, JASON REED--REUTERS; IRAQI WOMAN, KHAMPHA BOUAPHANH--ABACA PRESS; BREMER, ROBERTO SCHMIDT--AFP/GETTY IMAGES; PRISONER, AP; SOLDIER, AKRAM SALEH--REUTERS; TAGUBA, ALEX WONG--GETTY IMAGES; HUMVEE, ALI ABBAS--EPA; BERG, AP; ENGLAND, AP; RUMSFELD, JIM MACMILLAN...
Principal crops: rice (more of which has to be imported to eke out the local supply), abaca (the famous Manila hemp), copra, sugar, corn, tobacco. The seasons: hot (March through June), rainy (July through October), cool (November through February). In the hot season, the government itself picks up & leaves Manila, settles down in the mountain city of Baguio (pop. 29,262), which is the official summer capital...
...Filipinos had left their nipa huts and tethered carabaos, their paddies and abaca fields, copra sheds and sugar centrals to cast their votes in a free election. After five years of catching their shirttails and mashing their fingers in the machinery of democracy, imported and installed for them by the U.S., the Filipinos had demonstrated that they were learning how to operate...
...that time, a poor market for cord was just one of Yucatán's troubles. Philippine abaca made stronger rope. India's jute made better bags. On top of everything else, President Cárdenas enforced Mexico's agrarian laws, and the largest land owners found their plantations cut to 300 acres apiece. By 1938, Yucatán, which once held all the world's binder twine market, was down to a 20% share...
...Under Secretary of State Will Clayton would go to Geneva with congressional permission to cut U.S. tariffs up to 50%. The U.S. could discuss concessions on as many as 3,500 different items, including abaca, Bibles, goat meat, curling stones, unbleached teasels and zinc dust. Despite some worried special interests at home, Clayton had as clear a mandate to "take the expansionist way" as a U.S. Congress was ever likely to give...