March 18, 2008

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

Mexican Billionaires Rake In The Cash While Middle Class Americans Are Called Racists

Forbes magazine has just published its Annual Billionaires List. The 2008 Billionaire List has 1062 entries—and includes no less than ten (10) Mexican billionaires. Indeed, in second place worldwide is Mexico’s Carlos Slim, worth $60 billion.

Two years ago, I wrote a VDARE.COM article about the Mexican magnates on the 2006 billionaires list, which you can read here . It was followed up by an article about Mexican magnates investing in the United States.

Why is the presence of Mexican billionaires relevant to the U.S. National Question, the subject of the VDARE.COM?

It wouldn’t be, if Americans weren’t constantly lectured by the media and our leaders to open the border to Mexican immigrants. White middle class Americans are special targets of such propaganda. They are led to believe they are horrible racists if they don’t want their neighborhoods overrun with legal and illegal aliens from Mexico.

But why should middle-class Americans bear the brunt of-out-of-control mass immigration when Mexico has at least 10 billionaires who should be doing a lot more to create jobs in Mexico?

By world standards, Mexico is far from the poorest country in the world. It has plenty of resources and economic advantages. They have just been mismanaged.

But there is plenty of wealth in Mexico. I have resided here since 1991, and have had some contact with the local wealthy in the metropolitan area in which I live. And many wealthy Mexicans sure like to flaunt their wealth.

I remember in my very first teaching job—when I was rather naïve, I admit. I was telling my fifth-graders (who already had a good level of English) that knowing English better could help them get rich.

"We’re already rich", retorted one girl. Of course, she was right. What was I thinking, these kids were richer than me!

On another occasion, I invited the kids to accompany me outside, where snow flurries were falling, since it hardly ever snows in that region. But some of them weren’t interested—after all, they regularly flew to ski resorts in the U.S.!

And these kids weren’t even from millionaire families, of which there are plenty. But what Forbes is talking about is billionaires—dollar billionaires—and the magazine lists 10 of them.

In fact, it’s highly unlikely there are only 10 billionaires in Mexico. A private analyst (whose name I won’t divulge) has sent me his own Mexican billionaire list. According to his analysis, Mexico has 28 billionaires, 18 of whom are not listed by Forbes. The unlisted billionaires keep a lower profile and hide or don’t report or all their assets. That seems highly likely. It’s been estimated that 40% of Mexican businesses and 70% of Mexican professionals and small business owners cheat on taxes, so that up to 50% of potential tax revenues go uncollected. [Mexico planning to raise its tax receipts, By Marla Dickerson, and Carlos Martinez. Los Angeles Times, Jun 21, 2007 (Pay archive)]

Nor does Forbes report the wealth of Mexican narco-magnates, whose millions of satisfied American customers have made them quite wealthy. It’s highly likely, though, given the narco-barons’ use of legitimate businesses as fronts, that some of their wealth gets included as parts of the fortunes listed in Forbes anyway.

Nevertheless, the Forbes list is significant because it includes the ten legitimate, high-profile billionaires. Studying these men can tell us something about wealth in Mexico.

Top Mexican magnate, as I mentioned earlier: Carlos Slim. In 2006 and 2007, Slim was listed by Forbes as the world’s third-richest man. But in August 2007, rival Fortune magazine declared him the world’s richest man. Now, in the latest Forbes list, Slim is in second place worldwide, right behind #1 Warren Buffett and right ahead of Bill Gates at #3.

In calculating this kind of wealth, much depends on how much each man’s stock holdings are worth. Forbes did its calculation on February 11th, and on that day Slim, at $60 billion, was a mere 2 billion dollars behind Warren Buffet’s $62 billion, and a scant 2 billion dollars ahead of Bill Gates’ $58 billion.

When you’re talking that kind of money, what’s a couple of billion here or there?

Mexican per capita income is less than US $12,000 and about half the population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. Yet in the past two years, Slim has doubled his worth, from $30 billion to $60 billion.

The man known as "King Midas" or "The Engineer" really made it into the big leagues back in 1990 when he bought Telmex (Teléfonos de México) during President Carlos Salinas’ privatizations (translation : crony capitalism ). Slim still has Telmex (which controls over 90% of Mexico’s landlines, Telcel (which controls almost 80% of the Mexican cell phone market) and América Móvil, Latin America’s biggest wireless provider.

But Carlos Slim is not limited to telecommunications and related industries. This guy sells everything. It’s doubtful that any resident of Mexico can escape putting more money in his already-voluminous pockets. Slim has a bank, an airline, department stores, restaurants and music outlets. Slim sells insurance, auto parts, and ceramic tile. The Mexican government pays Slim to construct roads, water treatment plants, petroleum platforms, et cetera.

My principal email account is with Prodigy, another Carlos Slim company. (In Mexico, Prodigy holds 92% of the ISP market). So that means my articles are sent to VDARE.COM on Carlos Slim’s email network!

Thank you, Carlos Slim!

As I’ve pointed out before, Slim is an open borders booster. He has attacked the proposed American border fence (which may never get completed anyway) as "illegal" and "absurd."

Why doesn’t Slim want us to control our border? I think because the World’s Second Richest Man fears that, if the emigration safety valve were shut down, more Mexicans would start to notice his wealth—and contrast it with their poverty.

Since Slim is so outspoken in telling us how to run our immigration policy, shouldn’t we reciprocate by telling him how to manage his wealth? I would think that 60 billion dollars ought to be able to create a lot more jobs for Slim’s fellow Mexicans.

Now, I happen to personally know one of Slim’s Telmex employees, and he has some good benefits. That’s great, but how about spreading the wealth around some more?

Slim, with all his wealth and monopolistic enterprises, currently employs about a quarter of a million Mexicans. Honestly, I think he could do much better than that.

Maybe Slim could even give some money away!

Let’s take a quick look at the other 9 Mexican billionaires listed by Forbes:

Alberto Bailleres is chairman of metallurgical giant Penoles, has luxury retailer Palacio de Hierro and GNP insurance company, owns interests in the fields of finance and agriculture and raises bulls for bullfighting.

German Larrea Mota-Velasco, at $7.3 billion the third-wealthiest Mexican, is a lumber and mining magnate. His Grupo Mexico has been helped greatly by rising copper prices. Larrea also controls Mexico’s biggest railroad.

Ricardo Salinas Pliego, worth 6.3 billion U.S. dollars, runs the Grupo Elektra retail chain, the TV Azteca network, mobile carrier Unefon (competing with Slim) and has even opened his own bank which serves mostly low-income clients. Salinas is also marketing Chinese cars (but doesn’t that undercut the Mexican automobile industry?). TV Azteca’s subsidiary Azteca America broadcasts to Spanish-speakers in the U.S.

Jeronimo Arango, worth $4.3 billion. His family company, Grupo Cifra, which included a supermarket chain, partnered with and later sold out to Wal-mart and became Wal-mart de México (Walmex). Arango also owns real estate.

Isaac Saba , worth $2.1 billion, runs Grupo Casa Saba, which markets health, pharmaceutical and beauty products. Saba also partners with Telemundo (similar to Univision) to produce telenovelas (somewhat similar to soap operas). Saba has textile interests, real estate and Marriott hotels in Cancun and Puerto Vallarta.

Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, worth $1.7 billion, was CEO of Banamex when that bank sold out to Citigroup, for which he serves as a director. Hernandez also owns resorts on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Emilio Azcarraga Jean, worth $1.6 billion, runs media giant Grupo Televisa, famous for, among other things, its telenovelas—the company is now making Chinese versions! By the way, Televisa owns 11% of Univision, and Azcarraga has considered taking out American citizenship so he can acquire more. After all, what’s American citizenship about if not increasing your wealth?

Alfredo Harp Helu, worth $1.6 billion, is Carlos Slim’s cousin. Like Hernandez, Harp made big bucks off the Banamex sell-out to Citigroup, and also owns the Mexico City Red Devils baseball team.

Lorenzo Zambrano, Mexico’s tenth-richest man, is head of cement giant Cemex, which is, by the way, the biggest cement company operating in the U.S.A., and one of the world’s biggest. Additionally, Zambrano boasts the world’s biggest Ferrari collection.

What can we learn from this? They are all very sharp individuals, to be sure. However, not a one of them is known for major technical innovations. Some built their fortunes on inherited wealth, all were in the right place at the right time and shrewdly took advantage of their opportunities. Several of these men are as wealthy as they are because they sold out to a bigger company.

And of course, their political connections were important. In the old Mexico, under the one-party PRI state, there was only one party that counted. But in the new Mexico, no party has a monopoly on political power. So now you have to curry favor with more than one party, which is exactly what Carlos Slim has done.

Not one of the ten billionaires looks like a Mexican Indian, although 90% of Mexico’s population has at least some Mexican Indian ancestry, which is not surprising.

Seven of the billionaires have European, predominantly Spanish, ancestry, which is not surprising either. In fact, one of them (Arango) was actually born in Spain. Azcarraga has a French mother, and his Azcarraga surname is Basque—the Basques of northern Spain and southwestern France speak a non Indo-European language. (My wife has Basque ancestry on both sides of her family).

Three of the billionaires are of Middle Eastern origin. Slim and Harp are of Lebanese Maronite ancestry; Saba is of Lebanese Jewish descent.

Is it bad that these guys have all this money? Not necessarily.

But the extreme gap between these mega-moguls and Mexico’s poor is impressive.

It explains why all Mexico’s rich would prefer that the "Mexodus"—post-1965 mass emigration to the U.S.—continue. It keeps the pressure off them.

But that’s no reason Americans should continue to put up with it.

American citizen Allan Wall ( email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.