earning more.
But this book may say other things about Slim, depending on each reader. It may be the story of a Lebanese immigrant who added his mathematical abilities to his entrepreneurial vision to create a global empire; or it could be the record of economic inequality that is present throughout the world, especially in Mexico, where the wealth of millionaires—with Slim at the top—grew 32 percent between 2007 and 2012, despite the rest of the world’s falling by 0.3 percent according to the Global Wealth Report 2014.
Others may find here instead the story of a character who represents the neoliberal mentality of our times, which mistrusts politicians, believes that the market is the most efficient mechanism for everything, even to combat corruption, and sees philanthropy as a social investment and businesses as an aspect of collective wealth.
What is clear to me is that domination and resistance are two concepts that have marked me, sometimes unconsciously, when reporting and writing this and all my other books. My most important journalistic questions reside in that dispute between any kind of established power and the opposition that organizes to combat it. I agree with Bolivian philosopher Raúl Prada in that Marx’s theory of social struggle is not akin to a catalogue of plant species, as many dogmatic Marxists seem to believe. Instead, there is an aspect of performativity to it, “through the drama of conflict between two historical protagonists: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is not just a critical but also a dynamic theory of class struggle.”
It has fallen to me to witness and tell the story, from different perspectives, of the existence of that class struggle. My first book, Oaxaca sitiada (Oaxaca Under Siege), tells of the first insurrection in Mexico in the twenty-first century, in a state that had long been poor and subjugated. It tells of the conflict from the barricades, although I also interviewed the questioned the governor and members of the political class in power at the time, including the police chiefs who lead the repression.
In contrast, what I tried to do in this book was to tell the life of one of capitalism’s greatest figures; class struggle propels my stories and those of many other narrators living through this dynamic era riddled with inequality.
To refuse to see the class struggle behind an insurrection of the people or behind the life of the richest man in the world would be delusional. It is around that drama that history revolves.
Diego Enrique Osorno
Oaxaca de Juárez, Oaxaca,
October 2015
A few years ago, at a public charity event, a man approached Carlos Slim to make a business proposition: to produce a coffee table book about Mexico City for the tycoon to give away to clients as a Christmas gift. Slim accepted the offer. He asked them to prepare a print run of 1,000 copies to give away to his special clients at Inbursa, the bank he owns, and at his dozens of businesses across twenty countries, which include the largest telecom in Latin America, an electric cables manufacturer, several hospitals, gold mines, oil companies, cigarette factories, the plot of land containing a pre-Hispanic pyramid in Mexico City, Saks Fifth Avenue stores, bicycle factories, cable TV companies in favelas in Brazil, train lines, construction firms, shares in the New York Times and the largest collection of Auguste Rodin plaster molds in the world.
Weeks after talking to the multimillionaire, the Christmas book man made an appointment with Slim. The tycoon received him in his office in Lomas de Chapultepec, the most traditional of the affluent districts in the Mexican capital. That’s the office where Slim has on display a bronze sculpture of Napoleon on his deathbed, a work by the artist Vincenzo Vela, much admired in the late nineteenth century in Paris. According to one of his employees, Slim keeps it there to remind himself that he is a mere mortal.
When the man handed him a copy of the publication, Slim examined it carefully and glowered at the invoice. He said he could not pay that price because he thought it too high. The amateur photographer assured him he would not be making a profit, that his production costs were real. At his desk, where there is no computer or device whatsoever, Slim took a pencil and piece of paper, added and subtracted numbers, and worked out the amount he was willing to pay. The Christmas book man was haggled down to the last cent by the richest Mexican in the world.
During one of our interviews, Slim told me he could not remember the episode narrated by that character, who asked to be kept anonymous out of fear of reprisal. In Mexico, many people know things about Slim, but those willing to speak freely about him do not abound. That’s why it’s easier to find legends than true stories about this man who studied civil engineering using electronic calculators, an object about which the future millionaire wrote his honors thesis, envisioning a bright future.
The Christmas book story is one of the many which, between truth and fiction, are told time and again at business meetings to remind people of the “Slim style” when negotiating. Another funny anecdote that does the rounds among the same circles is that of the time when Slim haggled for hours with a seller in Venice just to get a discount off some souvenir.
“Yes, the Venice thing did happen, but the prices aren’t the point. I went into a shop and got chatting to an old seller, an heir of the Venetian tradition. I believe in having real conversations with real people. First I struck up conversation with the seller’s son, and then the man himself appeared. Then the conversation got a bit long,” Slim clarifies regarding that haggling episode, witnessed by a group of Mexican intellectuals who were with him. “I’m not a souvenir shop owner. I wasn’t in the store buying merchandise to resell it. I’m interested in the costs, the sales schedules, the marketing, the business plan, that kind of thing, but not because I want to buy. When you shop for souvenirs you do so at leisure, but I don’t normally go around buying things.”
For Slim, what he did with that Venetian seller was not haggling, but “to enter in communication with an entrepreneur, people who do business.”
To give a better idea of his negotiation style, Slim himself created a list of guidelines that his employees and some followers I know try to follow to a T. In 2007, when I first requested a formal interview with him, one of his 220,000 staff kindly replied that my request would be considered. Among the documents attached to the message was the one in which the magnate explains the principles of his business conglomerate:
1. Simple structures, organizations with minimum hierarchies, human development and internal training of executive functions. Flexibility and speed in decision-making. Operating with the advantages of a small business, which are what make big businesses great.
2. Maintaining austerity in times of plenty strengthens, capitalizes and accelerates the development of a company; at the same time it avoids bitter, drastic changes during times of crisis.
3. Always active in modernizing, growing, professional development, quality, simplification and tireless improvement of productive processes. Increase productivity, competitiveness, reduce spending and costs, always guided by the highest global standards.
4. The company should never be limited by the status of the owner or the administrator. We should not feel like big fish in little ponds. Minimum investment in non-productive assets.
5. There is no challenge that cannot be overcome when working as a team, with clear objectives and knowledge of the tools available.
