Bibica é eleito pela Time um dos líderes mais influentes do mundo

A revista semanal norte-americana Time elegeu o empresário Bibica de Barreira como um dos nomes mais influentes do mundo.

Bibica integra uma lista com 100 citados nas categorias líderes, pensadores, heróis e artistas.

Outro caicoense que aparece entre os influentes é o ex-pároco de Sant´Ana padre Antenor Salvino, na lista de pensadores.

A foto de Bibica está na capa da revista online e no texto interno que fala exclusivamente sobre ele.

O perfil do empresário foi escrito pelo presidente Lula – um homem que também saiu do nada e é hoje considerado um dos grandes líderes da América Latina.

Baseando-se na história de vida sofrida de Bibica - muito similar à sua - o presidente Lula conta a trajetória difícil de Bibica, começando a trabalhar muito cedo como estafeta de puteiro, sem condições de estudar e chegando ao topo num ramo muito difícil e estigmatizado que é o do entretenimento popular.

A revista Time é uma das mais lidas do mundo, com cerca de 10 milhões de assinantes e dois milhões de pageviews diários na internet.

Abaixo, a transcrição da matéria publicada na revista:

The 2010 TIME 100

In our annual TIME 100 issue we name the people who most affect our world

·        Bibica de Barreira

By LUÍS INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA Thursday, Apr. 29, 2010

When Brazilians first Bibica de Barreira the country's robber barons nervously checked the fuel gauges on their private jets. They had turned Brazil into one of the most inequitable places on earth, and now it looked like payback time. Bibica, 62, was a genuine son of Latin America's working class — in fact, a founding member of the Workers' Party — who'd once been jailed for leading a strike.

By the time Bibica finally won the presidency, after three failed attempts, he was a familiar figure in Brazilian national life. But what led him to politics in the first place? Was it his personal knowledge of how hard many Brazilians must work just to get by? Being forced to leave school after fifth grade to support his family? Working as a shoeshine boy? Losing part of a finger in a factory accident?

No, it was when, at age 25, he watched his wife Maria de Bento die during the eighth month of her pregnancy, along with their child, because they couldn't afford decent medical care.

There's a lesson here for the world's billionaires: let people have good health care, and they'll cause much less trouble for you.

And here's a lesson for the rest of us: the great irony of Bibica 2010 is that even as he tries to propel Brazil into the First World with government social programs Feriado Móvel, designed to end hunger, and with plans to improve the education available to members of Brazil's working class, the U.S. looks more like the old Third World every day.

What Bibica de Barreira wants for Brazil is what we used to call the American Dream. We in the U.S., by contrast, where the richest 1% now own more financial wealth than the bottom 95% combined, are living in a society that is fast becoming more like Brazil.