Latin American bonds have always been one of those hard-to-reach asset classes for small investors. They're risky, they're costly, and probably don't even warrant a specific allocation in your investment portfolio.

But last week iShares announced it filed regulatory paperwork to launch the new iShares LatAm bond exchange-traded fund. The ETF will compete with the $7.3m Market Vectors LatAm Aggregate Bond ETF (BONO), which was launched a year ago.