The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 9 Latin America? We Don’t Know and We Don’t Care During the last week of July, Inter- American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank, collaborated with Zogby International to conduct an online poll of more than 7,500 adults nationwide on the topic of America’s southern neighbors. The startling results sug- gest, in the words of Inter-American Dialogue President Peter Hakim, that “American adults are badly misin- formed about the region.” “Most Americans believe Brazil and Mexico are the U.S.’s best friends in the region, but the great majority cannot identify the president of either country,” Hakim adds. “And they mistakenly identify Washington’s clos- est ally in the region, Colombia, as an adversary.” Only 10 percent of online poll respondents said they were familiar with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the second-term president of Brazil; and just 20 percent were familiar with Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico who was elected last summer by a narrow margin. Even more surprising, more than half of the respondents said they believe that Chinese involvement in Latin America represents a serious threat to American interests — 48 percent among self-identified liberal respondents and 76 percent among conservatives. “The poll results on China suggest a huge gap between U.S. public perception and reality,” says Hakim. “Any threat from China is among the lower-priority worries the U.S. faces in the region.” On the topic of trade, American views seem to be very confused. While 55 percent said they believe the American economy benefits from Latin American migrant workers and 48 percent said the U.S. should pursue more free-trade agreements with Latin American nations, 48 percent believe that the U.S. has been harmed more than Canada or Mexico by the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1993. For more information, go to www. thedialogue.org/press/zogby.asp . — Susan Brady Maitra Trafficking In Persons: The 2007 Report “Trafficking in persons is a modern-day form of slavery, a new type of global slave trade,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice writes in the Seventh Annual Trafficking in Persons Report ( www.state.gov/g/ tip/rls/tiprpt/2007 ). The State De- partment is mandated by the Traf- C YBERNOTES U nless we correct the fundamental challenge of the violation of human rights of Latin American or Central American migrants crossing the border into Mexico, it’s very hard for me to come up and wag a finger and say you guys should protect the rights of my citizens in this country. — Ambassador of Mexico to the U.S. Arturo Sarukhan, The Washington Times , July 20. FSJ Web Site Redesigned In an ongoing effort to make the Foreign Service Journal more accessible to AFSA members and more widely available outside the Foreign Service, we recently re- designed our Web pages — www. fsjournal.org and www.afsa. org/fsj . The new FSJ home page gives readers an overview of the maga- zine and allows them to go directly to what they need, whether it is an article on the FS in Iraq, the latest obituaries or information on how to submit a letter to the editor. The page offers links to articles on specific topics (e.g., Iraq, FS in Transition), particular departments (e.g., FS Know-How, In Memory, Tax Guide, Family Member Mat- ters) and practical information (e.g., contact, subscription, adver- tising), as well as a prominent link to AFSA News. On a related note, we have shifted our production schedule so that we can succeed more often in getting the magazine out before the first of the month. Our longer-term goal is to make the Journal totally searchable, thereby bringing its unique content (posted online in its entirety since June 2005) into the mainstream of online discussion and research. Take a look and let us know what you think! —Susan BradyMaitra, Senior Editor