Word: latinization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...dusty recesses of impoverished rural Mexico. The nation's massive labor migration - what President Felipe Calderon calls his country's "open wound" - was a top agenda item during his recent meeting with President George W. Bush. But if Bush was serious when he said "the working poor of Latin America need change," then many feel the U.S. should start helping burgs like Santa Cruz build the kind of small enterprises that can jump-start more viable local economies. "There is too much entrepreneurial ambition in this country that never sees one peso of encouragement," says Roberto Hernandez, 29, whose metal...
...Mexican migrants sent as much as $25 billion back to the country last year - and the total for all Latin American migrants was more than $60 billion, according to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). At its annual conference this past weekend, IDB officials emphasized the need to encourage entrepreneurial ambition like that of Hernandez, either through bank credit or the creation of venture-capital funds focused on the poor. Its "Opportunity for the Majority" initiative also promotes getting land and other property titles to the region's have-nots in order to draw them out of the underground...
...there was one thing that hinted at the potential success of that strategy, it was the fevered reaction of the de facto leader of Latin America's resurgent left, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. For years, the Administration has been falling into Chavez's traps - usually by taking the bait whenever he goes into one of his intemperate anti-Bush tirades: Chavez calls Bush a "donkey," the Administration calls Chavez a menace, Chavez's poll numbers rise. But this time Chavez looked a bit like the dupe: rather than ignoring Bush's fence-mending foray, Chavez frantically crisscrossed the continent, heckling...
...mile-long border fence to the Berlin Wall, or calling the illegal immigration issue an "open wound" for U.S.-Mexico relations. Calderon defeated his own left-wing opponent last summer by only half a percentage point, and few countries feel more resentful about Bush's recent snubbing of Latin America than Mexico does. So while Bush rightly considers the free market-minded Calderon his "anti-Chavez" in the region, Calderon knew he could score points with Mexicans who voted against him by publicly chastising Bush this week on matters like Washington's nagging failure to adopt immigration reform...
...other words, it was a lesson for Bush in Latin American politics as well as general international affairs. And it was straight out of the textbook he had angrily shut five years ago - but which, to the gratification of many Latin Americans, he finally seems to have cracked again...