As with any year, the latter months are often filled with holiday spirit, festivities and good wishes for the year to come. While the state of the economy one year ago may have preoccupied small businesses throughout Latin America as they entered the holiday season and the New Year, this time around they are enjoying the holidays with a sense of motivation for the year to come.

UPS recently launched the fourth edition of the UPS Business Monitor Latin America (BMLA), a study based on the surveys conducted among SME business leaders to gather insight into the latest opinions, attitudes and practices of SME decision makers throughout the region. The 2010 edition of the BMLA, as in other regions of the world, reveals that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) throughout Latin America are finally seeing signs of recovery for the first time since 2008.

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Last month, we shared the story about UPS’s role to transport the drilling equipment that would accelerate the rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners. Today, we’re watching and rejoicing with the world as the miners’ rescue takes place.

In early September, the Chilean Embassy asked UPS to help aid the rescue efforts and we gladly accepted. Just before Labor Day, UPS moved special drilling equipment from several U.S. locations to Copiapo. The total weight for the more than 50,000 pounds of equipment involved 7 separate shipments that required creative logistics with multiple flights and trucks. UPS funded the initial shipment under designation as a humanitarian mission, an in-kind charitable gift funded by the UPS Foundation.

Yesterday, we were honored to receive an invitation from the embassy to join the staff as they watched the rescue efforts from their office. In his thanks to UPS, Deputy Chief of Mission Roberto Matus stated, “As you well know, UPS played a very important role in taking the right equipment to Chile. This machine enabled us to move up the dates.”

We were honored to be a small part of this miraculous effort.

Hope goes up and down at the San Jose Mine near Copiapo, Chile, like the temperature. 

On August 5, a cave-in at a gold and copper mine in the blistering Atacama Desert here blocked the only passageway in and out. Miners lucky enough to escape the disaster wept for 33 of their co-workers, left a half mile below the surface of the earth and presumed lost.

But hope soared when 17 days later a probe shaft drilled by rescue officials located all 33 men safe in a room-sized chamber of the mine. The miners had survived in utter darkness for two and one-half weeks on two teaspoons of tuna fish, a sip of milk and half a biscuit each every 48 hours.

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