Last March I sat in a conference room of one of the leading construction firms in Panama, Constructora Urbana or CUSA, and had an extensive conversation with company president, Rogelio E. Alemán.

The reason for my visit was the ancillary effects of the upcoming $5.25-billion expansion for the Panama Canal but Aleman was quite clear his company — one of the largest in Panama had aims quite a bit beyond that.

CUSA, he explained, is riding a strong boom in Panamanian construction and looking for ways to expand internationally in order to sustain the progress. Already they have branched out across the Caribbean basin to take on projects in Puerto Rico and other Central American countries.

The next step is the United States.

"We are quite U.S. oriented," he said of the company's long term vision. "Given the opportunities that are available, why not go to the U.S. and compete there?"

The company's strategy is not an isolated one. More and more, Latin American companies, particularly those associated with the construction sector, are seeing the U.S. market as one of opportunity rather than of prohibitive risk.

Just last week the New York Times featured an extensively researched story that detailed the trend of Latin American countries coming north.

Typically, investment with Latin America has been seen as a one-way street with money flowing to the southern half of the western hemisphere from without. The actual situation seems to be much more complex, according to reporter Clifford Krauss.

"Direct foreign investment from Mexico, Central America and South America rose from a tiny base of $8 billion in 1995 to $13.5 billion by 2000, but then jumped more sharply to $30 billion in 2005, according to the Commerce Dept.'s Bureau of Economic Analysis."

One particular demand in the construction industry right now is for cement and both the New York Times and ENR have singled out the recent efforts by Mexican company Cemex as an example of the trend.

Now the No. 1 supplier of cement and ready-mix concrete in the United States the company is continuing its aggressive approach, as its recent $14-billion acquisition to buy the Rinker Group, an Australian construction supply company with an extensive presence in the US.

And although it is one of the largest such moves by a cement company, it is by no means the only one. Two years ago, a Colombian company, Cementos Argos, purchased U.S. suppliers Southern Star of Dallas and Savannah, Ga.-based Concrete Express for a total $257.5 million-a move it heralded as the largest ever made by a Colombian company in the U.S.

As a region, Latin America is slated for another year of 4.5 to 5 percent growth in 2007 — the sixth year of expansion. The regional GDP has reached $2.26 trillion, a figure that puts it just behind China.

The tendency for regional governments to avoid expansionary fiscal policies and, instead, build up primary surpluses and pay down debt has bolstered economic confidence. But despite the upbeat appraisal, the sustainability of the trend is not at all a certainty.

The longest such growth cycle in the region is ten years, noted Felipe Larraín Bascuñán, Professor of Economics, Catholic University of Chile at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Santiago, Chile last April.

And for larger businesses in the region, one of the safest ways to hedge against future uncertainty is internationalization. Despite the worries over the economic health in the U.S. housing sector and a subsequent slowdown in consumer spending, it remains an attractive frontier for a company looking for diversifying their bottom line.

It's a business model Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht has used to great success over the past several decades. After first expanding across South America to offset the economic uncertainly of Brazil, the company opened operations to stabilize themselves against the longer-term economic trends common to the region.

"The demand here in the United States is tremendous for everything — for goods, commodities, services, everything," Gilberto Neves, chief executive of Odebrecht Construction told the New York Times in the story.