There is an anecdote circulating in Washington. It is about a meeting between the Colombian foreign minister Bermudez and the president of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senator John Kerry. It was the dawn of the Obama administration. It was a rough meeting. Senator Kerry made clear to Bermudez that there was a new game in town and that scandals such as the euphemistically called false positives - the kidnapping and killing of almost 2000 innocent young men by members of the Army - would not be tolerated. Colombian officials present at the meeting paled, and Bermudez kept his gaze fixed at the floor.

In Bogota, the perception is that with the Obama administration the mood in Washington changed dramatically. Gone were the days of great cultural and political tuning between Uribe and Bush. Gone the days in which glorious reports reached the desks of the State Department and the Pentagon. For Washington's changed attitude, in Colombia many blame the democrats and Obama himself. There is no doubt, that the message in Washington changed since Obama is at the White House, but not just for Colombia. And yes, this administration--though slow in defining a coherent policy towards Latin America--is putting greater emphasis on human rights and the role of the judiciary.

Over the past ten days, strolling along 7th street, a large, noisy and polluted avenue crossing Bogota from south to north, I was amazed to see the windows of apartments overspread with signboards of Antanas Mockus, the presidential candidate of the Green Party. It's the Colombian version of the Obama syndrome.

I am passionate about politics and become quite restless, and thus I resolved to take advantage of a blog's capacity to break down barriers. I decided to fast forward, to day after the elections, that is on May 31st, and to explain why Antanas Mockus became the president of Colombia on the first round, defeating Juan Manuel Santos, the candidate of the oligarchy, who thought the presidency was his, even before starting campaigning.

On the day the governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, signed an outrageous immigration law, I was at the JFK airport in New York about to embark on a one-month long trip to Colombia, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, and Spain. At the check-in, handing over my papers to the airline officer, I could not help but thinking about the privilege for being white, European, with an Italian passport and a green card. Every time I travel abroad, either for business or for pleasure, I do not have to face the ordeal citizens of the South of the world have to go through when they want to travel beyond the borders of their country. No long lines at European or U.S. embassies, no need to provide the details of my bank account, and a letter by my employer with the particularities of my contract and of my salary, and proof of my interest to come back. I do not have to proof my decency. I am a citizen of the first world, therefore by default I am decent and I have the right to enjoy the opportunities of our globalized world. Not so my fellow human beings of the Southern part of the world. They have less rights, less opportunities, less freedom, because, at the end of the day, they are less decent; they need to proof they are neither criminals nor suckers of our privileges and comforts. Millions of people experience this system of discrimination set up by the Western world. It so happens that while any American or European, rich or poor, is allowed to travel almost everywhere in the world, citizens from the so-called developing countries cannot. From the Southern part of the world only people with fat bank accounts can enjoy the privileges of globalization the same way I do as a white and European man: which means reach people and criminals.

Wednesday night I took a short stroll along the bustling streets of downtown Bogota and when I passed the building where senator Piedad Cordoba lives, I looked up at her penthouse apartment and observed the lights were off. The leader of a social movement favoring a peace process with the guerrillas and who successfully negotiated the realease of FARC hostages, Piedad - I thought - must be already in one of the airports from where helicopters provided by Brazil will soon take off and reach an unknown location in the thickness of Colombia where the FARC guerrilla will finally release two soldiers; Pablo Emilio Moncayo, who has been living in captivity for 12 years, and Josue Daniel Calvo, captured 11 months ago and injured by enemy fire. The FARC promised also to hand over the remains of Julian Ernesto Guevara, a police officer, who died four years ago in captivity. According to the Colombian government, the liberation should happen before Monday.