From the editor.

• Position: Editorial

In this first issue of 2009, Americas invites you once again to explore the remarkable lands of our continent and the many expressions of its culture. In these pages, you will find carnivals, cities reborn, legendary music, and wonders wrought by mestiza hands. You will also find the plight of an endangered species and a story of courage summoned once again in a nation ravaged by natural disaster.

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Start your journey in Lima. Stroll through the streets and discover the new urban development and cultural transformation taking place in the historic Peruvian capital. From there, you won't want to miss out on the opportunity to drop into the highlands of Bolivia and become one of the 45,000 dancers at the Majestic Carnival of Oruro this February.

Then, you are invited to Brazil to celebrate a half a century of bossa nova and to converse with renowned biographer and journalist Ruy Castro, a native of Minas Gerais. Literary interest will soon compel you to turn the page and fly to Prince Edward Island in Canada, where you will learn about a curious connection that many tourists feel with the home of "Anne of Green Gables," the famous character of Lucy Maud Montgomery's books.

From Canada you can travel back south to the famous town of Mata Ortiz in Mexico and find a potter in every house, creating legendary and original works of Mexican tradition clay. And on the other side of the border--in Albuquerque, New Mexico--the de la Tone brothers are inviting you to their extraordinary exhibition of blown glass that gives form to mestizo history and to elements of identity and human...