Carlos Slim
The Power, Money, andMorality of One of theWorld’s Richest Men
Diego Enrique Osorno
This English-language edition published by Verso 2019
Originally published in Spanish as Slim: Retrato del hombre más rico del mundo
© Diego Osorno 2016, 2019
Translation © Juana Adcock 2019
Foreword © Jon Lee Anderson 2019
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-437-5
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-435-1 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-436-8 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Osorno, Diego Enrique, 1980- author.
Title: Carlos Slim : The Power, Money, and Morality of One of the World’s Richest Men / Diego Enrique Osorno ; translated by Juana Adcock.
Other titles: Slim. English
Description: Brooklyn, NY : Verso, [2019] | “Originally published in Spanish as Slim: Retrato del hombre mas rico del mundo.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017201| ISBN 9781786634375 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781786634368 (US ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Slim, Carlos, 1940- | Telefonos de Mexico—History. | Businessmen—Mexico—Biography.
Classification: LCC HC132.5.S55 O85313 2019 | DDC 384.6092 [B] –dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017201
Typeset in Sabon by MJ & N Gavan, Truro, Cornwall
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
To Daniel Gershenson, Cuauhtémoc Ruiz and Andrés Ramírez
In memory of Conrado Osorno
All power is a permanent conspiracy.
Balzac
Contents
Foreword by Jon Lee Anderson
Preface
I
1. Negotiating
2. Forbes
3. Success
4. Khan
5. Money
II
6. Telmex
7. Privatization
8. Monopoly
9. PRI
III
10. Heart
11. Soumaya
12. Gemayel
13. Exodus
IV
14. Don Julián
15. Al Kataeb
16. Racism
V
17. Childhood
18. Youth
VI
19. Julián
20. Security
21. Close
22. Heirs
VII
23. Philanthropy
24. Press
25. Telecommunications
26. Sharks
VIII
27. The Left
28. Kafka
29. Virreyes
IX
30. 1 Percent
31. Favela
32. Libre Empresa
X
33. Retirement
34. Sophia
35. Failure
Acknowledgements
Since the beginning of his reporting career, Diego Enrique Osorno has dedicated himself to some of Mexico’s thorniest issues, covering everything from the Zapatista insurgency and narcotrafficking to the migrant traumas along the northern border with the United States. For the past fifteen years, his books, articles and documentaries have positioned him at the forefront of his generation and earned him wide public recognition and the respect of his peers. That’s because Diego always delves deeply into the issues he tackles, and he reports them firsthand. He is brave. If you are a Mexican journalist, it’s dangerous to write about drug cartels and police corruption, and Diego’s investigations into the Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels, among other stories, are evidence of his determination to push the boundaries.
Diego Enrique Osorno was born in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey in 1980. When I first met him, more than a dozen years ago, he was still in his mid-twenties, and had just come out of a dramatic experience in Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, where months of protests by teachers had turned bloody as the authorities had responded with a brutal crackdown. Diego said that he felt as if he had been living in a war zone, and when he told me what he had lived through and witnessed, I agreed with him. More than twenty activists had been killed during the time he was there; others had been detained, tortured and some of them forcibly disappeared. Diego had also been an eyewitness to the shooting deaths of several men, including a Mexican mechanic named José Jiménez Colmenares and an American cameraman named Brad Will, and he had been left shaken and indignant from the experience.
What came next was a profound learning experience for Diego. As he followed up on the abuses he had discovered in Oaxaca, seeking justice,