Last Thursday, the company that runs the lottery in the central Meta region of Colombia decided to do something new. For a change from the usual pictures of animals or iconic figures from the region, they chose to print thousands of tickets illustrated with a smiling portrait of Obama. 'We wanted to pay homage to African-Americans, explained lottery director Magdalena Gonzàlez in an interview with the international press. According to Gonzàlez, slightly more tickets were sold when they had Obama's face printed on them. The initiative is particularly symbolic in a country where around 10% of the population is Afro-Colombian. It's a poor community which lives along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and finds itself absent in political debate."