Of course, I believe some names are missing and would drop others, but, even more striking, is that the list prompted so many disparate reactions among a short sample of Latin American and Spanish friends of mine. I thought sharing some of their comments would be in line.

The general sentiment of the comments I abundantly received was “Oh, well, that list is an Anglo-American list, what did you expect?”

My best friend, a barrister and baseball fan, has a knack for pulling up instant statistics. This is what he told me: “Latin America, Spain, Portugal…Together we don't make up 10 percent of the world's population. Of course, we should have sneaked at least 10 guys in that list. We got only five; it's OK with me. Sure we could be doing much better than that, but look at China! Only five Chinese sabios [Spanish for “wise men”] were drafted.”

Even an American journalist who covered Latin America for a long time e-mailed me that the list was more evidence “of the centuries-old disregard for Latin America among the people who compile such lists – combined with their objective of trying to see that every part of the world was represented. They could have dropped some of the Anglo-American ones, though. Anne Applebaum – globally influential? ¡Por favor! [Gimme a break!].”

Still, I got a few thoughtful, somewhat elaborated answers that might shed light on the matter instead of shrugging it off.

Pepe Verdes Vallejo, for instance, who lives in Madrid and works as an executive in the global publishing business, wrote, “Fine, it's an Anglo-American list and it reflects the backwardness of our countries, but let me hint at yet another answer: they [the Anglo-Americans] take issue and manage to compile lists, whereas in any of our countries you would be in a jam trying to gather a list of the top 100 influential intellectuals, be it Latin Americans or Spaniards, because no one would ever agree to appear in a list with another 99 guys who just cannot bestow the kind of influence that each one of them thinks he has.”

All this brings to my mind what Mexican writer Gabriel Zaid has written about Latin American intellectuals and their lack of leverage when it comes to global affairs. Zaid's elegant prose and idiosyncratic judgment of both cultural and economic matters have earned him a unique place among Latin America's foremost writers. “He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be, read him—you'll see,” writes Paul Berman, an American author and journalist, who is well-acquainted with many things Latin American.

The sad news for PostGlobal English-speaking readers is that although Zaid's poetry, essays, and social and cultural criticism have been widely published in Spanish, only one of his books has been translated into English so far. So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in the Age of Abundance (Paul Dry Books, Philadelphia, 2003), superbly translated by Natasha Wimmer, is just one of Zaid's illuminating forays into the uncharted territories that extend beyond globalization.

Though Latin American and Spanish fiction and non-fiction writers are increasingly being published in the U.S. and the U.K., the language barrier is still there and it solely might explain the scant presence of our men and women of ideas on the FP-Prospect list.

Zaid argues in one of his essays that, in Latin America, a public intellectual, if anything, “is someone—a writer, an artist, a scientist — whose unsolicited opinions on matters of public interest are unwittingly conveyed with enough moral bearing as to force the elites to consider his views.” He also contends that such intellectuals rarely belong to academia, a stark departure from what you can see in the U.S. and Europe. Most of them are usually mavericks connected with the publishing and journalistic worlds, though often keep distance from their editor's views or interests. Zaid makes a distinction between being a public intellectual and belonging to the intelligentsia in Latin America. The intelligentsia, he thinks, dreams of attaining what he calls “platonic sanctity” while accumulating academic and bureaucratic capital. The intellectual dreams of attaining “Socratic sanctity” while always showing off his accumulated public opinion capital.

“Intellectuals move from writing books to renown, the intelligentsia moves from writing books to flattering the powerful,” Zaid writes.

Thus, for most Latin American intellectuals, being influential is more of a domestic affair than a pursuit of global audiences.

How about Spain? Ana Nuño, a much-respected Venezuelan-born Spanish poet, essayist and editor, thinks that the absence of Spanish intellectuals on the FP-Prospect list is related to what she deems a centuries-old “holing-up complex.” Trying to alleviate the narcissistic wound inflicted by the ignorance or sheer contempt for Spanish realities shown by foreign dominant cultures, “Spaniards have put all their immense fund of intelligence to auscultate their own navels and they have ended up convincing themselves of the unyielding peculiarity of their local cultures and that's why they do not even try to place their analysis in a global context,” she says.

I agree with them all.

And, yes, I would drop more than one name from the list, but will settle for having Tomás Eloy Martínez (Argentina), Jorge Castañeda (Mexico), Patricio Navia (Chile) and Javier Marías (Spain) added to the “smart bunch.”

Additionally, Mr. Eduardo Galeano, the brilliant leftist Uruguayan journalist, author of Open Veins of Latin America —the bible of populist collectivism and anti-imperialistic explanations of Latin America's economic plight, a bestseller over the last three decades— should be placed in the upper echelon of the “Wickedest Influential Writers” list.