To Those Who Have Much, More

Julio Santo Domingo (seated), with his son and heir Alejandro.

In a nation which still has one of the world's most unequal distributions of property and income, it hasn't seemed to make waves that one of its two richest families, the Santo Domingos, has suddenly become billions of dollars richer - without breaking a sweat.

The family patriarch, Julio Mario Santo Domingo, who died in 2011, possessed a fortune of $8 billion dollars, with a business empire including the El Espectador newspaper, Caracol TV and radio and 14% of the SABMiller beer company.

It was the SABMiller interest which contributed the new billions this week, when the world's largest beer maker, InBev, bought the company for $104.2 billion dollars. According to El Tiempo, the interest which cost the Santo Domingos $7.8 billion in 2005 is now worth $14.8 billion.

The new company, AB InBev, will control 30% of the world's beer sales, including Bavaria's 98%
chokehold on the Colombian market. The combined companies control 61% of Latin America's beer sales.

Don't be surprised if the decrease in competition means paying more for your pola. The Wall Street Journal, no critic of capitalism, says the fusion "prepares the ground for an increase in beer prices all over the the world."

Call it the fulfillment of the Bible's Parable of the Talents: For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours