Bloggers of The Americas

A few days ago the prestigious Forbes magazine published its traditional listing of the most powerful in the world and for the second consecutive year was listed the Mexican drug trafficker from Sinaloa Cartel, the drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, a fact which again aroused reactions of all sides.

Perhaps for many of us it is both surprising and also outrageous that the American publication dared to qualify as powerful a terrorist who has built his fortune in the shadow of illegality and immorality. And the more incomprehensible it is to be included in a list of renowned personalities, including 65 world leaders, politicians, industrialists and bankers. But what can we do about it if it’s true. Sadly so.

A man who is able to earn between 6 and 19 billion dollars in less than 8 years, by traficking cocaine into the most powerful country in the world, must have some power. Or not? Maybe I would have placed him much higher on the list and not in the position 41. Another thing is to agree on how.

But best to disguise the power of Guzman and in order not to create critics as last year, is that Forbes had put Guzmán on a list of the richest, or in a special of the most evil and powerful, or perhaps the rich and powerful world’s most wanted, something like that … But the publication was clear and put Guzmán back on the list. Complete success.

At the time the narco business was in the hands of the Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar Gavíria, who died in 1992, Gaviria also came to figure among the 30 richest and most powerful men in the world, and in Colombia they were also reactions against this, on the grounds that the list was condoning a criminal. But unfortunately he was the most powerful in Colombia and made a whole country to its knees.

Rich and powerful

It is not the same be rich and powerful. Some of these 67 characters in the FORBES list could appear on both lists, some as the most powerful man in the world, U.S. President Barack Obama, first in the list, probably will never appear in the list of the richest one hundred.

However, on the controversial list also appears the most wanted terrorist in the world. Osama Bin Laden, leader of the terrorist cell responsible for Al Qaeda and the terrorist bombing that killed more than three thousand people in the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001 Bin Laden is located in 37th place, above Guzman.

Both Bin Laden as the narco lord appeared on both lists for a long time, to the chagrin of the governments of the United States and Mexico, mostly.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is in 15th place and is the most powerful woman. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is down two places. The third woman included in the list is the television host Oprah Winfrey at the 45th.

For now only three women appear in the Forbes list and just three Hispanics in addition to the Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (33).

Mexico’s Telmex tycoon Carlos Slim is sixth in the ranking and the colorful president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, is the last on the list (67). The other is Guzman.

Slim also joined the list of the richest being among the three richest men in the world for a couple of years and certainly Hugo Chavez, but I do not know his personal fortune, could also be in the list of 100 richest because his detractors and political enemies say they what he has stolen in Venezuela is incalculable.

This unfortunately shows that Latin America is still underdeveloped and that its leaders are too crude to assume important roles as business partners for the rest of the world. Lula da Silva may be the exception now.

Chavez’s case is clear. If Venezuela does not have the oil that the country has, the former Venezuelan military would be just like another regular president. Ordinary and without many followers. However, the oil wealth of his country, his ideas and his peculiar socialist anti-American oratory was applauded by many, have catapulted him as one of the most powerful and influential men in the world. And so we understand it all.