The cry from the streets offers a real opportunity for governments to strike an innovative balance: reform laws to reduce the burden on employers to hire and fire employees while aggressively working to improve labour and social protections for all workers, including those in the informal sector.

To be effective, a special envoy must have the full confidence of the president, but must also be able to work cooperatively with the bureaucracy. Together, the relationship must be truly symbiotic.

What’s good for Mexico—a new, coherent growth strategy—might be good for Latin America. The real news, though, is that, in a world where the United States has abdicated its leading economic policy role, at least some Latin leaders are again beginning to think about defining their own future course.

With Iraq and other priorities competing for the attention of U.S. policymakers, the question of Bolivia is overlooked. But, situated in the heart of South America, with the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere, Bolivia's unsettled course bears close watch.

In the end, elections in the hemisphere will produce governments with which the US will share more in common than not. The trick will be to remain engaged with those governments as they tackle the difficult problems of addressing structural poverty, exclusion, and inequality with respect for democratic institutions and rights.