A tropical Bilderberg

You might have heard of the Bilderberg Group, an exclusive club of politicians, kings, queens, bankers and businessman that gathers together annually to discuss the general situation of the world. Their meetings --which have taken place since 1954-- are held in top-secret circumstances to encourage open discussion, or so the organizers say. The mystery associated to the group have made conspiracy lovers believe that every aspect of the destiny of the world is decided in those meetings. The group, they say, represents pure capitalism plotting world domination. Domination in the form of a "New Order" in which we all are slaves of big corporations and banks. More moderate analysts consider the Bilderberg group a special academic exercise, a "harmless forum" where many issues are discussed.

You might be surprised to learn that Southamerica has its own version of the Bilderberg group. Indeed, some weeks a selected group of Southamerican billionaires got together for some sort of summit in Cartagena, Colombia. The official purpose of the meeting was to discuss the best management strategies in times of global crisis. It seems the thing was more like a tropical Bilderberg: there was much less mystery and much more press coverage. No surprise here: Southamerican rich people surely understand that having money makes little sense if you don't make sure everyone knows you're rich.

And that's what our tropical billionaires did. Complete rich families from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela attended. Rich from Colombia also attended: they made the sacrifice of leaving their lofts in NYC to spend some days in Colombia and host their friends. They all arrived in their private jets; Cartagena's little airport couldn't host all of them. The selection of Cartagena was certainly not random: a historic city, with nice weather and exotic private islands was the perfect setting. You must know that Cartagena is probably one of the most Colombian cities in Colombia: a city where extremely poor people challenge everyday the definition of misery. In Cartagena the poor and rich live so close to each other that is shocking. Poor and rich have learned to survive by systematically denying the existence of the other: after all, from the rich perspective poor ones are disgusting, scare the tourists, and live out of the law; from the poor perspective, rich ones represent the frustration of a decent life their eyes will never see.

So, Cartagena was the perfect place for restoring the millionaire self-esteem of those who lost some positions in the Forbes ranking precisely that week. Southamerican millionaires walked along the historical center of the city, which was suitably cleaned, emptied and secured for their relax. At the end of the event, Colombian millionaire Luis C. Sarmiento read a rather ridiculous statement on behalf of all attendees: they had concluded that the best way of dealing with the crisis was not firing people from their companies. Nonsense: they are already doing it! It was then clear than the tropical Bildenberg has still much to learn from the original Bilderberg: the secrecy of the event is essential to avoid stupidity leaks.