#2 - The Top Ten Web Searches in March at:
telemundo.yahoo.com

You can see these for yourself at: http://telemundo.yahoo.com/ysearch/marzo08.html
The number one search? “Prueba de Infidelidad”. That’s right, Infidelity Test! It seems that a significant number of Latino men may have gotten a bit spooked by Gov. Spitzer’s downfall. Ironically, not too spooked as the second most searched term was the young lady with whom he had his trysts, Ms. Dupré. These same people kept searching as #7 was “intelligence test.” Ok, I’m being a bit tongue-in-cheek here but there is significant value to this exercise. On the same page, under “Noticias” you can quickly get a sense for the most popular musicians. Also, under “Imagenes” the number four search was “tatuajes” or “tattoos” so if you want to start a tattoo shop, maybe consider a Latino neighborhood.

Here’s the point, and it is an important point if you do any marketing, analyzing search terms is a very good way to find out what people are thinking. Also, if you do Google AdWords or any type of Pay-per-click advertising sometimes you can get a lot of hits by advertising on some of these places where people are searching at the time. The most astute internet marketers follow this type of data on a daily basis. If you do on-line marketing to Latinos you should at the very least check these out monthly at the address I gave you. Of course, change “marzo08.html” to “abril08.html” next month.

#3 - Hugo Chávez is Creating Five Socialist
Cities in Venezuela. Ten More in Planning.

Whatever our views about Hugo Chávez let’s give the guy his due and admit that he is a very creative person. He failed to institute socialist reform throughout all of Venezuela so now he has decided to prove his model to the people through a series of socialist cities. Five are in production and ten more are in the planning stages. He proposes a model which is both ecologically and commercially self-sustaining. Cities with their own radio station, newspaper (with gov’t approved content for sure), hospital and even university. These will be cities built out of nothing but a wild socialist imagination. High-risk, poor people will move into these cities. Most people, and I am included, doubt the model will succeed because of the nature and dynamics of societal evolution.

There is a lot to learn here. Let’s take the United States for example. Couldn’t we recruit a few major cities to work together in an open platform to solve, say the Latino high school dropout rate which hovers around 50% nationally? Couldn’t we come up with a model that works? Couldn’t we try until we find something viable. We know the primary issues; language, cultural assimilation, single-parent households. Couldn’t we then roll out a proven model to several other cities and thus, eventually eliminate this serious issue in our country? That would be positive social engineering.

#4 - Bill Gates: Latin America Must Invest
More in Education

In his meeting with the Inter-American Development Bank last week, Bill Gates, said that Latin America could be instrumental in the eradication of up to 12 major diseases and that the knowledge gained there could go a long way to help solve the issue of disease in Africa. He mentioned that there were few, if any, Latin American universities listed among the top schools in the world and that investment would have to be made to improve the educational infrastructure. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, they also announced a grant of $4 million dollars to help disabled Latin Americans learn computer skills.

This is significant in the sense that he also clearly asked the wealthy of Latin America to be more philanthropic and to start being so at a younger age. The cultural tendency to cover up the most abject visual elements of poverty without creating long-term and well-funded public and private initiatives will need to change in order to produce a shift in the embedded socioeconomic structure. I am impressed here that Mr. Gates is willing to go to Latin America and encourage this type of change and to issue this kind of challenge. I admire him for doing so.