Carlos Slim by José Martinez

Author:José Martinez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titletown Publishing, LLC
Published: 2012-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

SMART MONEY

Carso: A Model to Defend

With technocrats coming into power in the eighties, businesses grew in the country. The barons of wealth emulate the characters in the book Gog, by Giovanni Papini, author of Don Quixote of Deception. In this work, the Florentine author wrote:

This month I bought a Republic. A costly caprice, but one that will not have imitators. It has been a desire of mine for some time and I wanted to liberate myself from it. I figured that owning a country would be something I might like.

The opportunity was good and the matter was settled in a few days. The president was up to his neck in water: his ministry, composed of his clients, was a danger. The Republic’s coffers were empty and new taxes would have been the sign of the collapse of the whole clan that was in power, perhaps a revolution. There was already a general who was arming bands of regular people and promising positions and jobs to the first comers.

An American agent who was at the scene told me the Minister of Finance rushed to New York; in days we agreed. I advanced a few million dollars to the Republic, assigned a President and all the ministers and their secretaries and doubled the emoluments received from the State. I have the collateral—without the people knowing—from customs and monopolies.

I’m just the incognito king of a small Republic in disarray, but the ease with which I managed to dominate and the evident interest of all initiates to preserve secrecy makes me think that other nations, perhaps more extensive and important than my Republic, live, without realizing it, in a similar unit of foreign sovereigns. Still needing more money for my acquisition, instead of a single owner as in my case, I will try trusts - a syndicate of businesses, a small group of capitalists or bankers.

But I have grounds to believe that other countries are run by small committees of invisible kings, known only by their trusted men, who naturally continue reciting the legitimate role of chiefs.

In a very similar fashion, on May 28, 1984, two days before he was killed, the journalist Manuel Buendía wrote about the creation of a company incorporated under the acronym LESA of C. V. (Libre Empresa S.A. de C.V.)29 in his column for the Red Privada. It would be headed by Emilio “The Tiger” Azcárraga and other conspicuous representatives of the Mexican plutocracy who had been named in it, including billionaire Carlos Slim Helú, Roberto Servitje, Abel Vázquez Raña, Antonio del Valle, Antonio Madero, Xavier Autrey, José Luis Ballesteros, and Juan Diego Gutiérrez Cortina, among others. They would buy all the government enterprises and create an anonymous society for it, with capital formed with an initial contribution of MX$25 million from each of its members.

Encouraged by the neo-liberal policies of Miguel de la Madrid, entrepreneurs everywhere sought to acquire all public sector enterprises controlled by the state. LESA was a sign that he had private investors.

During the cycle

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