Forbe's Colombian Billionaires

A few days ago, Forbes magazine published its famous and awaited list of the richest people in this planet. As expected, Bill Gates ranked first with his 46,5 KA-ZILLION dollars, not very far away from the runner-up Warren Buffet (with 44 billion thanks to the Berkshire Hathaway company). In Forbe's list you can still find that America continues to house most of the wealth of the world with 12 of the top 25 billionaires (Silvio Berlusconi is number 25 with 12 billion dollars), and almost 50% of the total 691 listed.

The latin-american contribution to this list of billionaires begins with the mexican Carlos Slim with 23.8 billion dollars in 4th (FOURTH) position (Mr. Slim apparently owns the whole country). Appart from him, there are other nine mexicans and that's about it in central-american terms. South-America presents itself with 8 brasilians, 3 chileans, 2 colombians, 2 venezuelans, and 1 argentinian.

Although these 26 latinos represent only 3,76% of the total list, it does raise some questions and obvious comments. As a colombian I ask myself the following questions:

1) Does it make sense that in a country with 70% of the population living in extreme poverty, 2 colombians appear ranked 156 and 219 in the Forbe's list of billionaires?

2) How can it be that a country like Finland (Nokia's motherland and most competitive country in the world for many consecutive years) has noone in the list?

The second question might not have one single answer (e.g. huge taxes which have to be payed in Finland...), but i believe that the answer for the first question is: NO. I mean, I do not have anything against these two characters (Julio Mario Santo Domingo and Carlos Sarmiento Angulo). I actually believe that they have done wonderful things and have given job opportunities to thousands in my country. However, this is a clear cause of a terrible wealth distribution which keeps growing and growing everyday.

Now to the point. I wanted to write about this because i have seen that in someway there is a kind of national pride of having colombians included in this list. THIS IS WRONG!!!!! ... and if there is someone who does not agree with me and wants more colombians in a list, then he/she should think about making the list of the poorest people in this world... and then we will have more than 30 million souls contributing to the cause.

Forbe's colombian billionaires

Colombia: Right Wing Friendly

Alvaro Uribe Velez was elected in the first round of elections on the year 2002 by the colombian people. He inspired intelligence, hard-work, and most important of all: STRENGHT. The general feeling in the Colombia was that illegal armed forces (left and right wing) had taken over the country and that the central government was not able to do anything about it. Alvaro Uribe gave something that the colombian people had lost: HOPE.

The idea to have a Colombia in peace (whatever that means), plus a "realistic plan" to do it, triggered Mr. Uribe's unprecedented victory in this countrie's polls. If before the leftist guerrillas (specially FARC) were a negative symbol in the eyes of colombians and the world, now they had become EVIL.. PURE EVIL.

People forgot that the reason why there are more than 15,000 colombians behind the guerrilla's lines, is because they are hungry, sick and poor. Now, i am not saying that they [the guerrillas] do wonderful things... no they do TERRIBLE THINGS.. TERRIBLE... but Colombia became something that at least i had never seen before (probably because of my young age): Colombia became "right wing friendly".

The armed forces in Colombia have become greater in number, but as the guerrillas' last actions show, they did not become more effective. The media has been shutted up a couple of times, and now people do not know what to believe. However, president Uribe is still a very popular guy in the country... so popular that he is striving to change the constitution in order to allow re-election (s0mething which has not worked very positively in many latin american countries).

This is something to worry about.. specially now that we have seen how south-america has decided to take a more leftist focus (Venezuela, Peru, Uruguay, Brazil..). Having a right wing government in the middle of left oriented states might not be ideal. But Colombia (with or without Uribe) is far away of taking a left wing approach. The reason? Well, i believe that colombians see the word "left" as a synonym of terror, drug traffic, kidnapping and murder. It will take a lot to change this mentality, but the worst part of all, is that even if the mentality is changed, even if Colombia does not re-elect Uribe (which i am not saying that he should or should not be re-elected), even if Colombia takes the example of its left-wing neighbors... things might not change.

Somebody should make a reality show with succesful ex-presidents of all over the world to elect Colombia's next president. Not because i think that he/she will do effectively the job.. but because the world should see how ^#%@ the situation really is.

Alvaro Uribe Velez