Memo From Middle America | Remind Amnesty Boosters That Mexico Has A Booming Economy And Fifteen Billionaires!

By Allan Wall

04/17/2013

Instead of giving amnesty to these millions of illegal aliens, why don’t we just ask them all to go home?

Amnesty boosters of both parties don’t even consider that possibility. If they were even asked about it, they would probably be shocked. After all, how could we send illegal aliens back to Mexico?

Mexico is often presented both by its defenders and its detractors (for different reasons) as a poverty-stricken country.

Well, Mexico is poor compared to the United States. But it’s not a poor country by world standards.

And there are plenty of rich Mexicans, many millionaires, in fact. And even some billionaires (dollars, not pesos).

Forbes Magazine annually releases its list of billionaires, and this year the list included fifteen Mexicans. [The Richest People On The Planet 2013, By Luisa Kroll and Kerry A. Dolan, March 4, 2013] (Last year it listed eleven and eleven the year before that. )

We can learn a lot from the list of Mexican billionaires — about a side of Mexican society rarely presented in the U.S. Mainstream Media. We learn about Mexican-U.S. relations, and the growing links between globalist plutocrats in both countries.

  1. The richest Mexican of all, of course: Carlos Slim, who was also named by Forbes as the 11th most powerful man in the world. Of Lebanese extraction, Slim’s net worth was $73 billion as of February 14th, 2013. Since that date, Slim’s América Móvil stock has fallen, and Slim might actually drop to the second position below that of Bill Gates. But so what, we’re still dealing with scores of billions of dollars.

Slim is a telecoms magnate, with Telmex and América Móvil and all sorts of seemingly-random enterprises he acquires, including soccer teams (2 in Mexico, one in Spain). But did you know that Slim now owns 3% of Apple Inc.?

Of special interest to Americans should be the fact that Slim owns 8% of The New York Times. Given that Slim is a promoter of illegal immigration, do you suppose The New York Times is more likely or less likely to give a fair hearing to the patriot side in the immigration debate? (On the other hand, how good was the NYT on the issue before Slim bought into it in 2009?)

2. The second-wealthiest Mexican, and the world’s 32nd-richest man: Alberto Bailleres Gonzalez, who along with his family has a net worth of $18.2 billion. Bailleres gained his wealth from the mining industry — Mexico is the world’s largest silver producer and mining has been important since colonial times. Bailleres heads up Grupo Bal and Industrias Penoles. Besides mining and metallurgy, Bailleres also has his fingers in retail, insurance, agribusiness, medicine and the FEMSA soft drink bottler (more on that profitable company later).

3. The 40th-richest man in the world, with a net worth of 16.7 billion belonging to him and his family: German Larrea Mota Velasco. This tycoon also made his fortune through mining, specializing in copper, and his Grupo México also has mines in other parts of Latin America. Larrea’s railroads can reach 71% of Mexico.

4. Ricardo Salinas Pliego is a media tycoon and runs TV Azteca as well as the Elektra retail stores. Salinas inherited the company from his father, and his paternal grandmother by the way was American.

Salinas is now the owner of Advance America, for $780 million in April 2012. His Azteca Foundation promotes youth orchestras across Mexico.

Salinas has expanded his Mexican media empire into the United States, with Azteca América, a TV network he began in 2001, for Spanish-speakers in the United States. The network has expanded to reach 89% of Hispanic households north of the border. Click here to find the nearest Azteca América affiliate in your area.

Hmm, do you think Azteca América is going to encourage them to assimilate?

5. Eva Gonda Rivera and her family have a net worth of $6.6 billion. She is the widow of Eugenio Garza Laguera, who was chairman of FEMSA. The company is a Coca-Cola distributor and the biggest soft drink company in Latin America. She and her four daughters have half the stock in the company and her son-in-law is the CEO. Mexicans drink a lot of Coca-Cola, so this is a high-grossing enterprise.

6. Beer heiress Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala and family are worth $5 billion. Her grandfather started the Modelo company, which brews the famous Corona beer. She’s branched out into other fields and sold Grupo Modelo to Anheuser-Busch.

Maria Asuncion is also famous for having been married to Tony Garza, U.S. ambassador to Mexico and Bush crony. Was this a conflict of interest? Garza was ambassador from 2002 to 2009. Garza and Maria Asuncion were married in 2005 and resided in the U.S. ambassador’s residence. After the Obama administration took over in 2009, Garza remained in Mexico, though the pair divorced in 2010. Garza is still in the country, in the office of a Mexico City law firm.

7. Jeronimo Arango and family are worth $4 billion. Arango and his brothers cashed in when they sold their stake in Cifra, a Mexican retail firm, to Wal-mart back in 1997. Arango currently resides in Los Angeles, while his brothers remain in Mexico.

8. Emilio Azcarraga Jean, net worth $2.5 billion, is another media magnate, president and CEO of the Televisa network, inherited from his late father

The Mexican Televisa network is a partner of the U.S. Spanish-language network Univision, providing much of their programming. Of course, Azcarraga and Televisa have a vested interest in maintaining millions of Spanish-speakers in the U.S.

But what about “Hispanics” who don’t speak Spanish, or whose primary language is English? Not to worry, Azcarraga is thinking about them also. This past January, Dolia Estevez reported that Azcarraga was working with Univision and ABC “to launch a one-of-a-kind English-only cable network geared toward second- and third-generation Hispanics who don’t speak Spanish.” Mexican TV Tycoon Azcarraga To Expand Televisa’s Reach to U.S. English-Speakers by Dolia Estevez, Forbes, January 24, 2013

Any guess as to the slant of the news on this network? Will it work to influence even English-speaking Mexican-Americans to be loyal to Mexico?

9. Mexican steel tycoon Rufino Vigil Gonzalez is worth 2.4 billion dollars. Interestingly, his company Industrias CH has 24 steel plants, and a third of them are in the U.S. and Canada, a form of reverse outsourcing.

10. The Calderon Rojas brothers — Jose and Francisco — are beverage tycoons (net worth $2.3 billion dollars), with holdings in the aforementioned FEMSA company. The company is now the world’s biggest Coca-Cola bottler in the world and is now expanding into Asia. FEMSA sells 10% of all Coca-Cola products worldwide.

11. Carlos Hank Rhon and family have a net worth of $1.9 billion. Hank Rhon’s company Grupo Financiero Interacciones is a finance and banking firm, while Hermes Infraestructura constructs roads, bridges and power plants. One of the company’s current projects is the construction of steam generators in Saudi Arabia.

12. Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, net worth $1.8 billion, made his big fortune as CEO of Mexico’s Banamex when the bank sold out to Citigroup.

13. Alfredo Harp Helu is Carlos Slim’s poorer cousin, Harp Helu and family have a net worth of $1.5 billion. Along with Ramirez, Harp Helu made his big fortune in selling out Banamex to Citigroup, and currently owns a Mexico City baseball team.

14. Max Michel Suberville has a big chunk of FEMSA and also owns part of the Puerto de Liverpool department store chain, a family business.

15. Juan Gallardo Thurlow (notice his mother’s maiden name is English), worth $1.3 billion dollars, runs Organizacion Cultiba SAB de C.V. which processes sugar, molasses, bottled water and soft drinks. This company sells Pepsi, in fact it has the Mexican monopoly on Pepsi products. In recent years Pepsi has been competing with Coca-Cola for the lucrative Mexican soft drink market. In the 1990s, Gallardo helped to negotiate NAFTA.

So there you have it — Mexico’s billionaires. That’s not to say there aren’t more, there may well be. But these are the fifteen (sixteen if you count both Calderon Rojas brothers) officially recognized by Forbes

What can we conclude from a study of Mexico’s billionaires? Several things:

  1. There’s a lot of money in Mexico. There are a lot of rich Mexicans. This is only the list of billionaires — there are many more millionaires.
  2. If you want to see successful examples of Mexicans of Indian ancestry, don’t waste your time here. A cursory glance reveals that Mexico’s plutocrats are white.
  3. Many of Mexico’s billionaires, especially those in media operations, are expanding into the United States. That’s not surprising. But those who are involved in media operations need special scrutiny, given their Treason Lobby predilections.
  4. Mexican billionaires, with the exception of Carlos Slim, receive almost no attention from the U.S. MSM, and even less from American politicians. But shouldn’t they?

Is it wrong that Mexico’s billionaires have so much money? Personally, I don’t begrudge them their wealth. Their wealth does create jobs in Mexico.

But couldn’t these Mexican billionaires create even more jobs for the Mexican economy? I think they could.

Maybe if we sent all the Mexican illegal aliens back to Mexico, these billionaires could create jobs for them.

After all, we’re constantly told by immigration boosters how good Mexican immigrants are for the economy. They ought to be even better for the Mexican economy, right?

Mexican billionaires, you’ve got your work cut out for you!

American citizen Allan Wall recently moved back to the U.S.A. after many years residing in Mexico. Allan’s wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.

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