> The question is; How can I escape the & sign from the xml 
> file to the xml
> output so I can write to the xml output: "America & Brownie" 
> instead of
> having: "America & Brownie".

If the output contained the string "America & Brownie" then it wouldn't be
valid XML. If you want to write non-XML output, that's another question.
> 
> I also need to count on the number of characters for "America 
> & Brownie" and
> not from "America & Brownie".

No problem, string-length() counts the number of characters in the text
node, not the number of characters in the external serialization. In the
text node there is a single "&" character.
> 
> I have read about CDATA but doesn't seems to be the better 
> solution. 

Doesn't help. Ampersand characters in the data model have to be escaped,
either using entities, character references, or CDATA, when they appear in
lexical XML. Otherwise it's not XML.

Michael Kay