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2. Why Entrepreneurship Matters in Cuba
- Author:
- Susan Segal
- Publication Date:
- 05-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- For almost two decades, I have watched entrepreneurship explode across Latin America and the Caribbean, empowering citizens, transforming economies and changing lives. In sectors ranging from restaurants and small manufacturing to high tech, entrepreneurs are changing the economic and social landscape of the region. Perhaps most important, they are also generating jobs. Across the region, 60 percent of employees work for businesses with five or fewer employees. In Mexico, 72 percent of employment comes from micro-, small- and medium-size businesses. In Brazil, small enterprises create two out of every three jobs.
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Cuba, Latin America, Caribbean, and Mexico
3. Robert A. Boland and Victor A. Matheson debate: Do megasports events contribute to economic development?
- Author:
- Robert A. Boland and Victor A. Matheson
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- The urgency and scale of hosting can provide a needed boost to public investment and transform a country's image, infrastructure and business conditions beyond the games. BY ROBERT A. BOLAND Do megasports events contribute to economic development? Yes Following the 2014 World Cup? Read more coverage here. In the next two years, Brazil will host the three largest mega sports events in the world: the 2014 FIFA World Cup this summer, and then the Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Rio in 2016. Other nations in the Americas and across the globe will be watching to see if Brazil's hosting duties lead to broad-based, lasting growth, or are merely an expensive distraction. While history provides examples of both scenarios, hosting such megaevents can provide lasting and transformative value, including to developing nations. Megaevents can accelerate the process of planning for and executing much-needed public investment, while the host countries or cities can rebrand themselves as safe for investment and trade, and as a destination for tourism. For democratic governments, the construction blitz around megaevents can cut through political deadlock, representing the best available chance to quickly bring about focused and necessary change. The ability to develop infrastructure that can improve the quality of life, health and economic strength of the host nation is key. Hosts with plans focusing on self-improvement, investment and the enlargement of existing assets tend to fare better than countries that simply build competition venues.
- Topic:
- Development and Economics
- Political Geography:
- America and Brazil
4. Finding multimedia stardom in Chile — Building soccer pitches for kids around the Americas — Digitizing ecofriendly wedding albums for Brazilians — Linking Indigenous Guatemalans to the Web.
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- Arts Innovator: Francisca Valenzuela, Chile Singer. Fashion designer. Entrepreneur. At 27, Francisca Valenzuela has already reached the kind of success usually associated with a professionally managed career. But instead of a top agent or a big record label, the San Francisco-born Chilean artist owes her achievements to a team that includes her mother, biochemist Bernardita Méndez, her boyfriend and artistic confidante Vicente Sanfuentes, and a small, committed staff in Chile that has skillfully used social media—including 275,000 Twitter followers and fans known as “Franáticos”—to spread the word of her talents. Valenzuela is one of the most engaging examples of a new generation of artist-entrepreneurs who are controlling their own career paths. “I'm not waiting for someone to come rescue me industry-wise,” Valenzuela says, describing how, when her music took off in her late teens, she and her mother purchased Business for Dummies online to understand the fine print in her first contract. Valenzuela's early musical success—with a hit single, Peces (Fish) in 2006—came after years of performing in talent shows, but she was never “serious” about music until she started performing on the underground jazz circuit in Chile. She eventually dropped out of the Universidad Católica de Chile, where she was studying journalism, to pursue her burgeoning musical career. Along the way, she has had two books published, two pop-rock albums that went platinum and gold in Chile, and designed a clothing line for the Chilean brand Foster. Now, Valenzuela develops projects and artistic collaborations through her own company, FRANTASTIC Productions. “We've structured an independent enterprise basically run by two people [that's] competitive with counterparts who have a whole corporate background,” she says proudly. Valenzuela's do-it-yourself ethic in the music industry is not the only thing that sets her apart from many of her peers. Valenzuela spent the first 12 years of her life in the United States before the family relocated to Santiago. In fact, Valenzuela's first book—Defenseless Waters, a collection of poems that she published at age 13 about themes ranging from long-lost love to social injustice to nature—was written in English. “When I was young in the Bay Area, everyone seemed to be doing extracurricular activities, sports, painting, nurturing kids,” she recalls. Valenzuela's literary background and political convictions have inspired her songwriting in Spanish. The title song of her latest album, Buen Soldado (Good Soldier, 2011), focuses on the power dynamic between men and women, and she has been an outspoken advocate of sexual diversity and LGBT rights in Chile, participating in gay rights marches since she was 14.
- Topic:
- Development and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, and Brazil
5. Who to watch in the World Cup — Barbados' Crop Over Festival — 10 Things to do in Manaus — Baltimore's pop-up farmers market. (slideshows available.)
- Publication Date:
- 04-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- World Cup Update Following the 2014 World Cup? Read more coverage here. With preparations for the 2014 FIFA World Cup nearing completion, soccer fans across the region can turn their attention to what really matters: their national team's chances of winning on the world's biggest stage. Although European teams have won four of the last six competitions, South American teams have historically fared far better when playing at home. The World Cup draw last December placed the 32 qualifying teams in eight groups of four. From June 12 to June 26, each team will play the other teams in its group in a round- robin format. The top two teams from each group will advance to the elimination round. Not all groups are created equal, so here are some predictions for the hemisphere's 10 qualifying teams.
- Topic:
- Development and Markets
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Brazil, and South America
6. The Pull and Example of Science Education in the United States
- Author:
- Timothy DeVoogd
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- I expected high school biology students. Instead, I was facing 120 middle school students who were on an outing to Maloka, an innovative science museum in Bogotá.On the fly, I changed my presentation on how the brain works into a series of demonstrations. At the end, I was awed by the questions: "My mother has epilepsy; why is it that she doesn't recognize me when she has a seizure?" "I have a pet bird. Does he learn like I do?"
- Political Geography:
- United States, Brazil, and Riyadh
7. Colombia's elections — Brazil's insular economy — the case for coordinated NAFTA-TTIP and TPP negotiations.
- Author:
- Jaana Remes, Patricia Ellen, Raúl Rodríguez-Barocio, and Cynthia J. Arnson
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- Peace: Elections and Peace in Colombia BY CYNTHIA J. ARNSON Colombia's 2014 presidential elections marked a watershed in the country's politics. This was not because incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos won by nearly six percentage points, after having narrowly lost the first round to Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a hardliner backed by Santos's political nemesis, former president Álvaro Uribe. Rather, the campaign offered—as never before—starkly opposing visions of how to end Colombia's 50-year conflict with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC): through direct peace negotiations on a tightly constructed agenda, or through military action aimed at the FARC's defeat or surrender. Understanding how the elections became a referendum on the peace process—and on uribismo itself—requires looking less at the candidates themselves than at the alliance, and then bitter parting, of Santos and Uribe. Santos and Zuluaga served together in Uribe's cabinet, Santos as defense minister and Zuluaga as finance minister. Both had similar attitudes toward Colombia's economic opening and management, which led to record levels of foreign direct investment and growth rates well above the Latin American average.
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and Colombia
8. Women's Rights U.S. Foreign Policy
- Author:
- Melanne Verveer
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- When I attended the first Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994, only two female heads of state represented their countries: Dominica and Nicaragua. This past April at the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, five of the presidents and prime ministers representing the 33 participating countries were women: from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago. Their presence was an important example of the progress the hemisphere—and its women—have made. In fact, the region continues to make progress in a variety of areas. Latin America and the Caribbean are tackling ongoing challenges head-on, including promoting girls' education, improving women's and girls' health, facilitating women's political participation, and expanding women's economic opportunities. Governments throughout the hemisphere are increasingly recognizing that no country can get ahead if it leaves half of its people behind.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- America, Brazil, and Caribbean
9. Increasing Women's Representation in Politics
- Author:
- Magda Hinojosa
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- Dilma Rousseff. Laura Chinchilla. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Michelle Bachelet. The political successes of these women should not divert our attention from the sizeable gender imbalance in politics that exists across the region. Slightly more than half of all Latin American citizens are female, but women occupy only one of every seven seats in legislatures—and only one of every 20 mayoral posts in the region. In fact, the existence of a presidenta appears to tell us little about how women fare politically in her country. Although Dilma Rouseff holds Brazil's highest office, only 8.8 percent of federal deputies in Brazil are women and only 14.3 percent of ministers are women. This is far behind the rest of the region. And despite Michelle Bachelet's success in Chile, women's representation in Chile's national legislature is below the regional average. [See Table 1] Women have made tremendous gains since the 1970s, when women's representation in Costa Rica's national assembly (at a mere 7 percent) was the highest in the region, and when five countries filled less than 1 percent of their legislative seats with women. The most striking changes in women's legislative representation have come since 2000—not coincidentally, after the majority of Latin American countries adopted gender quotas during the late 1990s.
- Topic:
- Politics
- Political Geography:
- Brazil, Latin America, and Chile
10. The Future of PEMEX
- Author:
- Lourdes Melgar
- Publication Date:
- 03-2014
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Americas Quarterly
- Institution:
- Council of the Americas
- Abstract:
- The time is ripe for a historic transformation of Mexico's energy sector. The 2008 Reforma Energética (Energy Reform)—a congressionally-approved presidential initiative that established or modified seven laws—highlighted the significant challenges facing the Mexican oil industry and the economic implications of a decline in oil production. The problem: it didn't resolve them. With the exception of Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution—PRD), for the first time in Mexican politics the presidential candidates this year set out a series of bold institutional reforms. These included what was unthinkable years ago: turning the state-owned enterprise, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), into an autonomous firm that could issue stock shares—a model similar to the one adopted by Brazil's Petrobras in the 1990s.
- Topic:
- Economics and Government
- Political Geography:
- Brazil and Mexico