The fact that Time magazine’s new list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People includes only two Latin Americans raises an interesting question: whether Latin America is totally irrelevant or the 88-year-old magazine — like much of the U.S. media — lives in a New York-centric world of the past.

The magazine’s list is headed by Wael Ghonim, the young Egyptian Google executive who sparked the popular revolt that toppled former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, followed by mostly U.S. business people, inventors, artists and sports personalities.

Among those in the first 10 places are Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Netflix home movie rental company founder Reed Hastings, New York’s Harlem educator Geoffrey Canada and Facebook social network founder Mark Zuckerberg.

But the only two Latin Americans who made the list are Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, in 27th place, and Argentine soccer player Lionel Messi, in the 86th spot. By comparison, I counted seven Africans on the magazine’s list, most of them connected to the latest uprisings in Northern Africa.

Has Latin America fallen off the map? I asked several friends who follow the region’s affairs. Most of them chuckled, and said the magazine’s list can’t be taken seriously. It’s hard to explain that it failed to include Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, and owner, among other things, of a good chunk of The New York Times. Or Brazilian mining tycoon Eike Batista, the eighth-richest man on the planet, according to Forbes.

Or Shakira, the Colombian singer who ranks among the world’s best-known and wealthiest singers, and was selected to open the Soccer World Cup tournament in South Africa last year. Or Peruvian writer and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, whose writings are read across the world. Or Colombian artist Fernando Botero, one of the world’s most renowned living painters. The list could go on and on.