This week, our firm launched a new web destination for all things politics and policy in Latin America. The debut of Vision Americas is exciting for us as it introduces a very unusual approach to a policy site: instead of publishing articles, it features videos. The content has pedigree too, coming from former Presidents of South and Central American countries, Ambassadors and Members of Congress.

Latin America has been a chronically overlooked region for newspapers, and the events in the Middle East in recent years have pushed some of the economic and political transformations in the South further down the list of diplomatic priorities. I think this sentiment comes through in many of the introductory videos, especially from Luis Alberto Lacalle and Jorge Fernando Quiroga, the former Presidents of Uruguay and Bolivia. Vision Americas is an experiment appropriate for the YouTube age. It will be interesting to see if the transparency implicit in the video medium can have a hand in deepening the degree of understanding the public has for this distant cousin of Latin America.

Our partner in the venture, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, who is now at the law firm of Tew Cardenas in Washington, is responsible for much of the video and blog content on the site. In the coming weeks, we will be announcing new members of our Advisory Board as well as holding events under the Vision Americas banner.