Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be seen dead drinking Starbucks coffee. But ignore the small-minded souls who protest its arrival; Starbucks is a good thing for Colombia.

Colombia is now opening her doors to global brands, and Colombians starved of outside influences should rejoice.

Colombia’s cultural identity is strong. Starbucks is not a threat.

Sure, Colombia is the home of coffee so why does it need a huge US corporation to provide its caffeine fix?

Well, Colombians may well produce the best coffee in the world but most of that is drunk by middle-class Europeans. Colombians have by and large been left with the low-grade off-cuts. Many Colombians have grown up on the hideous instant powdered stuff; on tintos at 800 pesos.

I must confess I too drink this mud, but I’m a coffee heathen.

Now I also have little time for Starbucks coffee. It’s too weak and too expensive. But at least they serve it in mugs and not polystyrene cups.

Starbucks understands customer service, revolutionizing cafés over the last decade.

To my mind Starbucks will now force Juan Valdez to compete, to drive up standards.

Thinking about it, functioning Wifi began to appear in JV’s cafes last year when rumours of Starbucks’ arrival made the news. And I have even seen JV has taken to offering its coffee in mugs.

Competition is progress.

Now I agree with little lefty senator Jorge Robledo says, but I nodded when he told me last year that Colombia was “pre-capitalist”; that her economy was built on monopolies that stifle competition and concentrate power and riches.

Many of Colombia’s businesses are great. Crepes and Waffles deserves to go global. But those that are not, that offer poor customer service, that live off their name or the fact that they are the only ones in the game, do not deserve to be in business.

The market is democracy.

I will continue to buy from Juan Valdez because I believe in it, I like it, and I prefer the coffee. But I believe in choice and also in competition.

If Starbucks improves my Juan Valdez experience, which I am convinced it will, then who will complain? Well, perhaps the fat cats who’ve gorged on the cream of a monopolized market? But who gives a skinny latte about them?

It is not as if by buying products from Juan Valdez you’re making the coffee farmers themselves rich. Colombia’s farmers have suffered too from the monopoly. I’m sure the good farmers would be delighted to have other buyers for their coffee.

So forget the protests and note that queues have formed all week outside Starbucks’ flagship store at parque 93, Bogota.

It’s time to burst the suffocating Macondian bubble that has isolated Colombia from the world for too long.