We continue walking and Slim remembers something. From between the book Historia de la deuda exterior de México (History of Mexico’s Foreign Debt), written by Jan Bazant and published by El Colegio de México in 1968, and the biography Hammer, by Armand Hammer and Neil Lyndon, he picks out an old volume entitled Geometría analítica y cálculo infinitesimal (Analytic Geometry and Calculus), by F. Woods and F. H. Bailey (UTEHA, 1979).
“This is my book from second year in college,” he says, proudly.
Then appears La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South), a novel by Arturo Pérez Reverte about a woman from Sinaloa involved in international drug trafficking. Slim explains:
“This is out of place. There are others here I haven’t read, either… Look, this one’s very good. Look at what a lovely title it has.” I read on the cover Reinas, mujeres y diosas. Mágicos destinos (Queens, Women and Goddesses: Magical Destinies), while Slim rips off the plastic wrapping that still covers it.
“We published it at Sanborns and the cover is a painting from the museum,” he says, and continues searching. “The Peter Principle, this is a great one.” He shows me the book, whose author is famous in the business world because of his adage: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of their incompetence. The cream rises till it sours.”
In this same section there is a beautifully illustrated book about modern warfare, which Slim says he just read and that I should also read to my son. There is a biography of the Kennedys and the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. He asks me if I have read it. When I say I haven’t, he says I should and gives it to me. I take it and eye the subtitle on the cover, not wondering whether it might be a hint: “Why some people succeed and others don’t.”
Slim is not only a voracious reader, but also one of the biggest booksellers in Mexico. Sanborns, his chain of about 200 restaurants and department stores, includes the country’s biggest network of bookshops, which implies that for authors and publishing houses it is vital to establish a commercial relationship with the company, currently headed up by Patrick, the youngest of his sons.
“If your book is not in Sanborns, it does not exist. It’s that simple,” said an experienced publisher I have worked with a number of times. For years there have been rumors that books are censored if Slim or his inner circle find them uncomfortable. But Slim says this is untrue and cites an example: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, MIT and Harvard professors respectively, wrote Why Nations Fail, in which they include a small section about the owner of Telmex. “Slim has made his millions in the Mexican economy in large part thanks to his political connections. When he has ventured into the United States, he has not been successful.” This section made Slim consider the possibility of undertaking legal proceedings to force a public retraction from these professors, who come from two of the most prestigious universities in the world and whose book has been praised by several Nobel Prize winners in economics.
A man who did take legal action against the publishing house was Jacques Rogozinski, who led the privatizations as head of the Office for Divestiture of Public Enterprises during the government of Salinas de Gortari, the period during which Slim bought Telmex. Rogozinski objected to the phrase that said, “Even though Slim did not put in the highest bid, a consortium led by his Grupo Carso won the auction,” and managed to get the publishing house to remove it from the following edition.
“Despite everything, we’re selling that book at Sanborns. It sold 700 copies at 349 pesos,” said Slim.
“You’ve never blocked a book?”
“Well, yes, there was just one time when we didn’t sell one.”
“Which one?”
“I can’t remember his name, but the author told us that if we didn’t do this or that, he was going to stand outside Sanborns to sell it himself, just to attract publicity. So we sold it for a while, just to get him off our back.”
“Do you mean the journalist Rafael Loret de Mola?”
“How do you know?”
“Well, because he publicly denounced it in the 1990s.”
“Yes, it was a sort of pressure we weren’t keen on, but he’s a good guy; he’s a bit weird and all, but a good guy.”
In addition to being a reader, seller and even occasional publisher of books, Slim might soon become the author of his own biography. The first time I interviewed him, one of the things he clarified was that he was writing a book about his life and family too, and that in that task he was being helped by his nephew Roberto Slim Seade, “a kind of personal secretary,” son of his late brother, Julián, and formal manager of the family’s hotel companies.
“I’m writing the only authorized biography that will exist, just that right now I have other work to do,” he cautioned at the time. “I will answer any questions you have, but regarding your book all I ask is that you don’t put in too many lies.”
Vicente Fox was the PAN (National Action Party) politician who in 2000 ended the seventy-two years of uninterrupted government by the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). Slim, who says he voted for the PRI in those historic presidential elections, financially supported Fox’s campaign. After winning the elections, Fox governed Mexico between 2000 and 2006, maintaining a close relationship with Slim, which was evident not only in the lack of regulation of Slim’s telecom monopoly, but also in the appointment of former Grupo Carso employees to key government departments. One such person was Pedro Cerisola, a former Telmex executive who became minister of communications and transport.
During those years, Slim was regularly invited to meetings at the official presidential residence and office of Los Pinos. On one of those occasions, after a lunch meeting, Slim visited the library and for some reason, one of the leather-bound books caught his eye. The title on the spine was “Leonardo,” and he went to have a closer look. He picked it out of the shelf, opened it, and found a handwritten note on the first page: “This book was donated by Linda H. de Slim.” It was a biography of the famous Italian inventor and artist, and donated by Slim’s mother, Linda, to the presidential library in the ’70s. Slim showed me a facsimile of that biography of da Vinci that he had made. As well as showing Slim’s special connection with books, this episode is also revealing of the Slim family’s long-standing close ties to the presidency at Los Pinos.
“So, is this the library where you keep your most prized volumes?” I ask.
“Look, I don’t have a uniform mentality. I am very plural.”
“But this is a special library, and it’s interesting to see it, because, as they say, ‘By your books you will know thyself.’”
“No, you won’t get to know me, because these are also books here about all the stupid things you can think of,” he scoffs, and then resumes the tour of the library. “Look, here is the annual report from the Banco de México 1994. Why ’94? Because here is the history of the devaluation,” he shows me a series of economic indicators in tiny print and points out the date: March 21. “Here is Colosio, here the reserves, and how far they are taken. Here is the ‘December error,’” he says, alluding to the mishandling of the sudden devaluation of the Mexican peso that took place that month. This was a factor that, along with the political instability following the assassination of PRI presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and the Zapatista uprising, led to a severe financial collapse of major international consequences, known as the “Mexican peso crisis.” The IMF managing director called it “the first major crisis of the twenty-first century,” and it has been argued by some that one of the underlying causes was the too-rapid process of banking