Roger Crombie

Latin America, shunned by former vice president Dan Quayle because he didn't speak Latin, is coming to Bermuda, which doesn't speak Spanish.

One recent Wednesday, at noon, the Bermuda press corps gathered at the Cabinet Office, the gray stone building that plays home to the physical office of Bermuda's prime minister.

The press was told that the island would host the Asociacion Latinoamericana de Adminstradores de Riesgos y Seguros (ALARYS) Congress, "the Latin American RIMS," next year.

ALARYS will bring to the island 400 or more insurance people, and with them families and translators. Ay Caramba! A conglomerate of interests has made this possible and is represented in the briefing room on this occasion.

But this day belongs to the Bermuda Insurance Management Association (BIMA), expanding its visibility as the Bermuda market deepens.

BIMA president Rory Gorman is there, as are Derek Strong of the Insurance Advisory Committee, the industry action group, and Jorge Luzzi, president of ALARYS. Attending for the Bermuda Government are Eugene Cox, the finance minister, and Neletha Butterfield, the acting minister of tourism. High-ranking civil servants from various Bermuda ministries are also present, discreetly dolled here and there.

Deborah Middleton, the new head of the Bermuda International Business Association (BIBA), the service providers' umbrella organization, sits at one end of the Cabinet table.

Local law giant Appleby Spurling & Kempe's Mexican partner Eduardo Fox sits at the other end. Fox is a relation of the Mexican president, who, the scuttlebutt has it, flies into Bermuda at 3 a.m. on occasion. A representative of the Bermuda Insurance Institute is on hand, as are people from the prime minister's office of communications.

These worthies outnumber the press corps, which has turned up in force. It's a quiet news day in August, and this is a big story for Bermuda. You can almost hear the sound of Hamilton's reseguridores salivating at the prospect of so many customers arriving just as the renewal season kicks off.

The daily newspaper sends both its business journalists. The biweekly and weekly papers have people there also, as do both TV stations, with their older, more distinguished correspondents and all the kerfuffle of cameras, microphones and wires. Risk & Insurance takes a seat next to BIBA.

Bermuda has made its case to the South Americans and the result will be a fiesta de segurado that will underline existing relationships and maybe herald something even bigger.

Fifteen minutes late (a.k.a. Bermuda Standard Time), and the press conference is off and running.

Cox talks of "the valuable business relationship between Bermuda and Latin America." Butterfield, whose civilian job is running computer camps for kids, says the conference will provide "a boost for the tourism industry and the economy."

Gorman says that "Bermuda is the first non-Spanish or Portuguese-speaking member of ALARYS." Luzzi then says, "I feel only support since I arrive on the island." No one dares make fun of his English because their Spanish or Portuguese is worse. Luzzi says of Fox: "He's one of you, and one of us."

Questions follow, including a slightly insulting inquiry about how Bermuda could help people in, say, Uruguay, when they apparently can't help themselves. The event is duly reported in every publication at the table and on both channels' evening news. Thus is a reputation built, one brick at a time.

As the main players prepare to leave the building, they are invited to drop in and meet Alexander Scott, Bermuda's new prime minister, who is sitting in his office downstairs.

A reporter who dallies and misses the cut lingers in the lobby. On a side table, he spots a copy of a Latin American financial magazine that looks as if it has been there for quite some time.

Roger Crombie, our regular Bermuda correspondent, can be reached al crombie@northrock.bm.

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