So, how exactly do you measure a country’s human development?
The way that Worldmapper does this is by multiplying the population of each territory in the world by the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Program.
The UN measures quality of life by combining measures of health, wealth and education in a territory.
The statistics available for 2004 would show an optimum score of 1000 where life expectancy was 85 or more years, adult literacy was 100%, school enrollment was 100% and the Gross Domestic Product is US$40 000 or more …

As reported by the Associated Press, the UNAM, which is a nearly 100-year-old Mexican university, was awarded Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities in recognition of its role in providing Latin America with outstanding intellectuals and scientists.
The National Autonomous University of Mexico, which has nearly 300,000 students and more than 34,000 professors and researchers, had received more than 1,500 letters of support for the award, including ones from world famous authors Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the award foundation said.
The university, founded in 1910, “has become …

In an article published recently at STLtoday.com, Jorge A. Riopedre, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan St. Louis, shared his views on the growing role of Hispanics in American communities and more precisely in the State of Missouri.
These two paragraphs from his post are very interesting, as they describe first the erroneous image that, unfortunately, prevails in the minds of many on both sides of the border and then goes on to emphasize the contribution of Hispanics to American society:
To most, “Hispanic” has become nearly synonymous with …

Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International and an author that I don’t personally always agree with. But in Newsweek’s May 25 issue, he penned a very interesting article which includes a very positive perspective on Mexico’s reaction to the swine flu scare.
We copy it here for your enjoyment:
The Sky Isn’t Falling
Our world is more stable than we think
It certainly looks like another example of crying wolf. After bracing ourselves for a global pandemic, we’ve suffered something more like the usual seasonal influenza. Three weeks ago the World …

LATIN AMERICAN HERALD TRIBUNE – Mexico’s Jose Emilio Pacheco was announced Thursday as the winner of the Queen Sofia Poetry Prize, Spain’s most prestigious literary award in that genre.
The prize, which is accompanied by a 42,100-euro ($56,000) cash award, recognizes a living author’s complete body of work and contribution to the shared cultural heritage of the Ibero-American community.
The 69-year-old Pacheco’s poetry oeuvre is universal in scope and has been included since the 1950s in the main Latin American poetry anthologies.
The president of the jury, Spanish Crown Heritage Chairman Yago Pico …

According to www.worldmapper.org, a project by the University of Sheffield, in 2002 over half a million people died violent deaths in the world. The territories where the most violent deaths occurred were Brazil and India, each with over 57,000 that year.
Violent deaths in this case include homicide (murder and manslaughter), but exclude deaths due to war.
The territories where the highest proportion of people were murdered or killed in 2002 were Colombia, Sierra Leone and South Africa. The region with the most violent deaths was South America, followed by Southeastern Africa …

Reading a review on the book “In the Shadow of the Giant: The Americanization of Modern Mexico” triggered exactly the same feelings of frustration and awe that are behind the inspiration of this blog.
The book was written by Joseph Contreras, a former Newsweek correspondent in Mexico and now editor of The News, an English language newspaper in Mexico.
From the review I gather that his book tries to show how Mexico has become increasingly Americanized, and how relations between the two neighboring countries might be moving forward.  But his insights, at …