Ardila was distinguished in Colombia by the National Government with the Grand Cross award , for services to the Colombian military, and the Order of Democracy of Simón Bolívar.
He was listed as one of the richest men in Latin America, and appeared on several occasions in magazine, with his capital assets estimated at over 1 billion dollars.
A second paper examined the life of a Carlos Canales, a somewhat idiosyncratic man whose life illustrates the tensions between conflicting notions of honor, nobility, work, and vagrancy in Bourbon Spain.