Food and Drink « The Mex Files

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Hungry for recovery

18 June 2009 · Leave a Comment

According to Jose Angel Gurria Treviño, the current Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mexico has seen the worst of the present economic downturn.

Gurria (a Mexican economist and official in the Zedillo administration) is quoted as saying “The strongest, the most important, the most negative of growth or deceleration of the economy, of exports, of industrial production, of employment, etcetera, the most severe has already been seen.” In other words, all the export income that could have been lost, has been lost, and there’s nowhere to go but up. People still have to eat.

Bimbo — one of the few Mexican multinationals around — paid off a 600 million dollar “bridge loan” ahead of schedule… something unheard of in this financial climate. Bimbo paid 2.38 BILLION dollars in January to purchase the baking unit of Canadian food conglomerate George Wesson, Ltd. While many financial analysts thought the purchase made strategic sense in expanding Bimbo’s global market in the baked goods business, borrowing a huge amount of money in a recession seemed dubious. However, Bimbo — betting on the continued relative stability of the Mexican Peso — was able to issue peso-denominated bonds last week that raised more than enough cash to pay off the loan. Not all Bimbos are bimbos.

Add SuKarne Beef to the roster of Mexican firms that are growing — in spite of the recession — in the United States… and even creating jobs. As James Flannigan writes in the New York Times about SuKarne’s U.S. division, Vit Cattle Corporation

… handles exports of Mexican beef to Japan and South Korea, through contracts made in Compton, Calif. The beef originates in SuKarne’s home base in Culiacán, Sinaloa, in northwest Mexico. “Japanese and Korean executives buy here, and they go to inspect the ranches in Mexico, too,” said Jesus Tarriba, manager of Viz Cattle’s warehouse operation in Compton, in southeast Los Angeles County. “Last year we sold $40 million of beef to Japan and Korea and $80 million here in the U.S.”

Viz Cattle has grown rapidly, from less than $10 million in revenue five years ago to $120 million in 2008. And it is doing well this year despite the downturn, Mr. Tarriba said. Its main business is importing beef from Mexico for American restaurants and retailers. “We specialize in smaller cuts of rib-eye and strip steaks because Mexican ranches slaughter livestock at younger ages than American ranches,” Mr. Tarriba said. “Restaurants like those cuts.”

I like those cuts too, for what it’s worth. I am not buying the export quality steaks, but just the regular domestic SuKarne beef — so lean I have to add a little oil to cook it — trucked in every morning to my neighborhood butcher shop. I have Iowa visitors this week who are raving about the good beef… and well they should.

If you by some chance ARE using Sinaloa’s best known agricultural export you may experience an unusual side effect known to science as “the munchies.” The best cure is a Sinaloan beef hamburger… on a Bimbo bun.

plain_hamburger

Categories: Aerospace · Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Gringo(landia) · Multinationals

Saturday morning cartoons

6 June 2009 · 1 Comment

Terrorists? Ruh-roo!

John Boonstra (U.N. Dispatch) on a model for fighting terrorists (and narcos) that flies in the face of Dick Cheney and Gitmo (and the Calderon “mano duro” drug “war”), but is grounded in common sense.

Consider the Scooby Doo villains as rudimentary terrorists. They dress up as scary monsters, terrify the local population, and chase Shaggy and Scooby through endless halls and mismatched doorways. That they wear masks, and often are after financial gain, may make them seem to resemble old-school bank robbers, but the crux of their power is the terror they invoke in residents.

The mysteries are inevitably solved by the members of the team — Fred, Daphne, and Velma — who remain relatively calm and treat the monsters as criminals — not, say, “enemy combatants” of the beleaguered town. This is despite the fact that they are impersonating what is, in terms of fear-inducing presence, essentially a child’s equivalent of a bomb-laden terrorist.

But no lockdowns are conducted, there is no torture for information on the monster’s identity, and no pre-emptive strikes.

Doooo!

Rodrigo Contreras Diaz, whose dropped out of business school after two semesters (he was too busy watching cartoons) at learned enough to recognize a loophole in Mexican intellectual property law. And an opportunity. A product that is known to a portion of the public from a foreign registered trademark cannot be registered in Mexico, but nothing is said about registered name that is not a product. Sort of like Like Homer Simpson’s beverage of choice, Duff Beer.

Or, for that matter, the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Roman Catholic Church, under the 1992 treaty between the Vatican and the Mexican Federal Government, has some economic rights within a zone surrounding the Basilica, mostly regarding the regulation of what can, and cannot, be sold — the Church wanted to avoid the situation outside the Metropolitan Cathedral, where Communist literature is sold just outside the main gate. Church lawyers complained about some souvenir vendor’s images of the Virgin (claiming these were not Church-sanctioned images), but — without proof of the Virgin’s actual existence (or, the judge added, as an aside, if She registered a complaint herself) — there was no way to issue an injunction against the vendors.

As Burro Hall discovered, you can buy genuine Duff Beer, even if in his colonia, the bar looks like Death’s waiting room (sort of like Moe’s Bar, only in Spanish)…

duff_beer

Duff: si existe

Los de abajo

At least in cartoon-landia, the Mexican campesino is saved from injustice.

Categories: Beer · Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Terrorism · Virgen de Guadelupe

The flu and diet

23 May 2009 · 2 Comments

While hotels and other sectors of the tourism sector have also been hard-hit (including English language bookshops), with 2000 restaurants in Mexico going out of business as a result of the losses over the “sanitary contingency” period , there may be a long-term negative health consequence we won’t see for a while.

Most of the restaurants that are closing are cocinas economicas — mom-n-pops that the working poor (and lower middle class) and single people depend upon to get a decent, nutritious and healthy daily meal.

Your typical cocina economica isn’t a fancy place… there might, or might not be a posted daily menu with two or three entrees and sometimes two choices of soup, but for making one’s selection, you depend on the aroma wafting from the stove in front of the shop… with the seating (such as it was) behind. That, and whether the cook was jolly looking and well fed (or like whatever a mom who cooks might look like).

These were always marginal businesses — at least as far as cash flow and financial resources go — but being affordable, they meant Mexican workers could meet their nutritional needs while simultaneously meeting the expectations of employers who have to go to the “semana ingles” work schedule, which assumes people eat their main meal in the evening — and not in the mid afternoon (some of the more barbaric companies try to make their Mexican workers eat at the uncivilized hour of noon).

Some of these businesses are holding on by converting themselves into snack bars or selling a limited menu (like sandwiches), which may make economic sense, but over the long run means the working poor in Mexico (who — thanks to the pressure to conform to what the rest of the world thinks are “normal” working hours — can’t go home for the healthy, mid-day main meal) who ate at these places will be eating more like the working poor in the United States… not a decent meal, but junk food.

Categories: Ciudad de México · Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Health · Informal economy · Nutrition · Real Mexico
Tagged: Swine Flu

Mexico conquers the world

5 May 2009 · 1 Comment

Mexico, has been reinterpreting the wider world in its own terms for as long as there has been a Mexico (or longer — there are those who believe that the Chinese and Mayans were in contact with each other). Today is Cinco de Mayo… a rather unimportant holiday as far as Mexico is concerned, but one celebrated elsewhere as a day to celebrate all things Mexican. Sometimes, as in the United States, this takes the odd form of politicans inviting Puerto Rican pop stars to their fund raising events… or melting Velveeta cheese and frying some hamburger to stick in fried corn shells… but giving a bit of thought to something other than flu and narcotics is appreciated.

And, when it comes to reintrepreting Mexico through a secondary source, the results can be … um… interesting. I found this in Manil Suri’s “The Death of Vishnu” (2002, Perennial) about life, death and apotheosis in Mumbai:

As Mrs. Pathak dabbed the sweat on her forehead, she wondered again why she had embarked upon the recipe for Russian-salad samosas. It was all Mrs. Jaiwal’s fault, of course — serving those strange Mexican things at the last kitty party — “tocos” she had called them. They had been nothing more than fried chapatis wrapped around salad leaves and califlower curry, but the woman had been shrewd enough to mix in lots of mango pickle and chili, and the ladies (including Mrs. Pathak, despite herself) had just gone wild over them. “Rohit tells me that tocos are very popular in Omaha right now,” Mrs. Jaiwal had crowed, lest anyone forget that her son was currently enrolled at the University of Nebraska, in the States. This had been particularly galling, vien that Mrs. Pathak’s elder son, Veeru, had just failed his first-year exams at Bombay University.

Chili, tomatoes, turkey, corn, squash, beans, avocado … Mrs. Pathak, and the rest of us, whether in Mumbai or Minnesota, Malawi or Mongolia, Munich, Manchester, Mukdin or Melbourne… serve up Mexican food every day even if we don’t identify it as such.

Happy Cinco de mayo, enjoy your tocos.

Categories: Food and Drink · India · World (outside the Americas) · Writers, artists, philosphers outside Mexico

The Texas flu-step

2 May 2009 · 1 Comment

A renowned Texas research journal, following up on reports on an outbreak in Finland, of “TexMex Flu” notes that the Finns seem to be misidentifying H1N1 viral infection for the more common North American endemic illness. The two diseases appear to show a markedly similar symptoms (headache, joint pains, weakness, sensitivity to light, dehydration) but field study under the direction of noted researcher Shelly West uncovered most likely cause of the dreaded TexMex flu, which, Ms. West’s extensive study showed, has little to do with pigs… of the four-legged variety:

Categories: Country-Western · Humor · Music · Music in English · Tequila

Sex, drugs and other news o’ the day…

16 April 2009 · 1 Comment

The Secretary of Health, Jose Angel Cordova said that if marijuana were legalized in Mexico, it would strengthen the cocaine cartels because the use of marijuana would lead to the use of cocaine. He said that studies proved that users of marijuana are 13 times more likely to use harder drugs.

Of course, Jose Angel Cordova also tried to sell the idea that condoms lead to sex. Cordova’s comments on cocaine came during Congressional hearings on decriminalizing marijuana.

Speaking of mood-altering substances, At the Red Fly, in Mexico City’s Condessa, serious research is being conducted, Ejutla, Oaxaca native son, Cornelio Lopez:

Led by the erudite López, the mezcólatras embarked on their quest in late 2005, taking the Red Fly as their base. Defined as those “who know the history, rites, manufacturing procedures, properties, tastes and ways of tasting mezcal,” the mezcólatras see it as their mission to defend the mezcal making tradition while making others aware of its value.

And, in the world of dangerous substances:

“BKC (Burger King Corp.) has made the decision to revise the Texican Whopper advertising creative out of respect for the Mexican culture and its people,” the company said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

…”It was our intention to promote a product whose culinary origin lies in both the American and Mexican cultures, and was meant to appeal to those who enjoy the flavors and ingredients that each country offers,” the company said.

Burger King does not address the more serious issue of referring to something described as “taco coated chilli con carne” as Mexican food… or even food.

Categories: Condoms · Drugs · Food and Drink · Health · José Angel Cordoba Villalobos (Sec. of Health) · Tex Mex “food”

What Mexico Really Needs…

14 April 2009 · 1 Comment

I may disagree with him, but John Ackerman, a Processo and Jornada columnist feels comfortable telling Barack Obama what Mexico really needs in the Los Angeles Times:

… Calderon’s most important failing has been his political isolation. Instead of reaching out to former allies on the political left — whom he joined with only a decade ago to end the rule of the old-guard Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI — he has depleted his political capital by relying exclusively on loyalists from his right-wing National Action Party. The result has been a dangerous resurgence of the PRI, as Calderon increasingly depends on cutting political deals with the old authoritarian party to get laws through Congress and assure stable governance. This is a worrisome trend because the neglect and complicity of PRI governments of the past are directly responsible for the current strength of Mexico’s drug cartels.

The Obama administration seems to be unaware of these deeper institutional issues. During her recent trip to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t push Calderon on corruption control, human rights, freedom of the press, institutional reform or political reconciliation. She also went out of her way to cater to conservative constituencies. Her visit to Mexico’s principal basilica implied a nod to Calderon’s efforts to narrow the traditional separation between church and state. Her choice to travel to the city of Monterrey, home to the most powerful members of Mexico’s corporate oligarchy, also sent a clear signal about the priorities of the U.S. government.

Two thoughts:

1. I’m not sure I would say it was “dangerous” to see a resurgence of the PRI, nor do I think the PRI was responsible for the growth of the cartels (which had a lot more to do with consumption north of the border,and pressure on Colombian cartels than the PRI). I expect the largest party (the PRI and PRI-Green coalition*) will sweep the 2010 Congressional elections, and I’m not sure that’s so bad. The left-left (as opposed to the sorta-left PRI) dismisses PRI and PAN as two sides of the same neo-liberal coin, with the same tendency to rely on clientage and calling them PRIAN. Be that as it may, the transfer of power between two relatively similar political parties is normal in democratic states.

2. It’s worthwhile to remind the U.S. administration that Mexico is not “all drugs, all the time” and that there are several more pressing concerns in Mexico, and that Mexican policy issues are more than those expressed by Felipe Calderon. But, Ackerman still seems to be of the mindset that its the U.S. perogative to drive the Mexican agenda, which it certainly isn’t. If I were to give advice to the Obama Administration (and free advice is worth what you pay for it), it would be to listen to what is going on, and respond according to the U.S.’s own best interests — which includes a stable, prosperous trading partner which can buy U.S. goods, and next door neighbor.

– Keeping Mexican trucks out of the United States does not allow for the easy importation of U.S. goods, and is not in the U.S. interest.

– Agricultural subsidies prevent Mexican farmers from competing with corporate interests in the U.S., both forcing Mexican agricultural laborers to emigrate to the United States which is seen as a social and political problem for the U.S., and hurts U.S. consumers who pay twice for their fruit and vegetables… once through tax breaks and subsidies for the corporate farmers, and again through higher supermarket prices.

– Continued arms sales (both informally and through State Department license) fuel criminal activity which is said to “spill over” into the United States, fostering not social and political stability in the United States, creating a need for non-productive expenditures on prisons and policemen, instead of productive ones like schools and health care.

– Energy misuse creates a need for the United States to spend a fortune worrying about places like Iraq when there is still oil to be bought from Mexico and Canada. Lowering oil consumption will, over time, mean less Mexican oil sales, but if Mexico needs “help” with anything, it’s with developing its alternative energy industries, which will, in turn, also supply the United States. AND… more Mexican energy sources will mean more consumer use in Mexico, which will mean more U.S. imports. In the short run, the Mexican auto industy builds more energy efficient cars than the same companies north of the border. Mexican plants can, as U.S. plants retool and redesign, fill an important U.S. need.

– Staying out of Mexican political and social movements will also benefit the United States in the long term. There are always going to be dissident movements in Mexico (and in any normal country), but favoring one side over another (as in the 2006 Presidential election) delays changes, but doesn’t stop them. WHEN (not if) change comes, people will remember who stood in the way. Mexicans have long memories, and a mistrustful, resentful neighbor is not in the U.S. interest.

* David’s right… the PRI itself is the largest single party, but counts on the Greens as partners in the Chamber, and often runs a fusion ticket with them.

Categories: Agriculture · Automotive industry · Barack Obama · Border Issues · Economy & Business · Emigrant labor/remittances · Food and Drink · Gringo(landia) · Oil and PEMEX · Technology

Axis of weevil

10 April 2009 · Leave a Comment

“We face a new and dangerous dimension since the September 11 attacks,” said Robert C. Gómez, New Orleans Operations Director for the Customs and Border Patrol.

And, with the federal budget in the works, September 11 is as good a reason as any to duplicate Department of Agriculture functions. Which is why, when an unidentified weevil was found in a shipment of Colombian bananas arriving in Gulfport, Mississippi, it wasn’t treated as an agricultural problem, but as an “agro-terrorist threat.” And the Customs and Border Patrol went… oh… bananas.

Osama bin-weevil, aka “Faustinus rhombifer champion“, was detained, briefly questioned by Agricultural Department experts and expelled from the country. Probably to weevil Gitmo.

Sombrero tip to Colombia Reports.

Categories: Agriculture · Americas (outside U.S. and Mexico) · Animals · Bananas · Border Issues · Bugs · Bureaucracy · Colombia · Economy & Business

AH NUTS!(and Christmas trees, and deodorant and copier paper and…)

18 March 2009 · Leave a Comment

“Grab ‘em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow” (Devious bastard, Lyndon Baines Johnson)

Or, in the NAFTA trucking dispute, grab ‘em by the nuts…

… for those who mistakenly assume Mexican businessmen are stupid, A Mexican official confirmed Wednesday that pressuring specific U.S. politicians was one consideration in picking products from certain states for tariffs. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying Mexican officials don’t want to inflame the dispute further. The same Mexican official confirmed his government chose the $2.4 billion worth of products partly to target states with powerful Democratic politicians.

“The intention is to let the constituents know that it’s important the United States respects and abides by its international obligations,” the Mexican official said.

Mexico Trucker

I was mistaken when I wrote yesterday (17-March) that I expected the new tariffs to target agricultural products (which might benefit small farmers here), though U.S. nuts are among those items facing a twenty-percent retaliatory tariff in response to the Obama Administration’s bone-headed decision to stop cross-border trucking.

I’m not sure the tariffs were aimed solely at Democratic Party politicians, though California agricultural products (wines, fruit juices, nuts, iceberg lettuce) are among those products subject to the new rates. The list of products subject to the punitive tariff was designed to economically affect 40 of the 50 states in the United States.

So the list is a hodge-podge, including things like nail polish, deodorants, kitchen appliances, carpeting, toothpaste, dental floss, sunglasses, drapery rods and dog food. None of these are essential to the Mexican economy, Mexican-made brands being already available (the U.S. brands competed because of heavy advertising and sales at U.S. owned supermarkets).

Except for the “juniors” who think U.S. made products are automatically superior, and the silly gringos who can’t imagine buying a LG refrigerator as opposed to a Sears Kenmore, or feed their pooch Iambs or Science Diet there’s not going to be any noticeable effects on anyone.

The only quasi-essential on the list are copier paper, since Mexico does not produce much paper, but Canadian and Russian paper products are available. I’m wondering if Office Max or International Paper pissed off someone down here… the tariff also applies to ball point pens, post-it notes, and pencils. And, if the tariffs last until December, Mexicans can go back to putting up a naciameinto at Christmas instead of a tree (the 20% tariff on Christmas Tree tariff is aimed at Oregon politicos), we grow them here, for EXPORT, but can always sell them locally.

Ho, ho, ho…

evilsanta

The official decreto authorizing the tariffs and listing the rates has been published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, which is the final step in making this legal.

Categories: Agriculture · Border Issues · Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Gringo(landia) · NAFTA · Organized Labor (Sindicatos) · Politica (Mexicana) · Trade agreements and issues

Seeds of change

2 February 2009 · Leave a Comment

I didn’t realize this is the centennial of one of the great precursors of the Mexican Revolution.

Ray Acosta at the Yahoo Group MexRevResearchers has been diligently preparing a month-by-month calendar of the Mexican Revolution. February is the month that not only marks the birthday of the multi-faceted Álvaro Obregón Salido (19-Feb-1880), but February 1909 was the… uh… seed of Obregón’s brilliant military and political career. And the start of a revolution not just in Mexico, but in military strategy, and — incidentally helped save Europe from starvation, and — peripherally — led to a complete change in the economic and political structure of the United States.

Obregón was phenomenally gifted… an orphan from Alamos, Sonora, his photographic memory, keen eyesight and linguistic abilities had made him a valued and respected member of the Yaquí and Mayo communities while still a boy being raised by his schoolteacher older siblings. At thirteen, he’d started a small cigarette factory, and in his mid-teens, learned poker well enough to be a professional gambler. His poker playing skills were good enough that local businessmen paid him NOT to play — preferring he not take their workers for their paychecks at those back-room games.

With the “grants” from local businesses, he went into business as a shoe and sewing machine salesman, free-lance mechanic and farmer, buying a small piece of property he named — with ironic wit — “the poor farm”. He did quite well attending to his garbanzos.. then… in February 1909 … came the seminal event….

(more…)

Categories: Aerospace · Agriculture · Alvaro Obregon · Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Garbanzos · Gringo(landia) · Herbert Hoover · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Mayo · Mazatlan · Mexican Air Force · Mexican Army · Mexican History 1824-1910 · Mexican History 1910-20 (Revolution) · Mexican History 1921+ · Military · Navy · Provincia · Sinaloa · Sonora · Technology · Trade agreements and issues · Yaqui

That “five dollars a day” is now… $3.98

20 December 2008 · Leave a Comment

I buy my eggs at the neighborhood grocery by the half-kilo. Some of my neighbors — who are earning the salario minimo, or a bit more — buy theirs by the peso. They have to watch every centavo, and figure the family food budget based on what cash is on hand that day. It’s not usual to hear someone ask for four pesos of eggs, four of tomatoes and ten pesos of beans rather than a quarter kilo of eggs, three tomatoes and a bag of beans.

For them, the below-inflation raise in the salario minimo is going to create new challenges. From The (Mexico City) News (links tend to disappear after a day or two):

The below-inflation hike to Mexico’s national minimum wage will help preserve jobs, although workers will be unhappy, experts said on Friday.

“The main reason the wage hike was below inflation levels reflects the worsening [economic] situation … a lot of companies are trying not to fire people but to implement cost cutting measures,” said Gabriel Casillas, an economist at UBS Bank México.

The National Commission on Minimum Wage, or Consami, said Friday that it would raise the top rate minimum wage by 4.6 percent to 54.80 pesos ($4.18) a day on Thursday. Lower minimum wage rates of 53.26 pesos and 51.95 pesos apply in some areas.

However, the Association of Mexican Human Resource Professionals, or Amedirh, said it was stunned that the wage increase had come in so far below inflation, which was 6.23 percent in the 12 months ending on Nov. 30, according to statistics published by the Banco de México.

Approximately 5 percent of Mexican workers receive minimum wage, and they are seeing their purchasing power weakened every day, she said.

What I see in U.S. and foreign presses all the time is a confusion between this figure (or these figures) and “average wage”. Mexican workers are not paid an hourly figure, but a daily one. The person receiving the “salario minimo” may only work that particular job a few hours a day. And, if they are a regular employee, their paycheck also includes one day of rest per week, vacation and year end bonus pay.

In theory, it’s based on the cost of basic goods and services, needed to support a family of four. The calculations include such things as the price of milk, mangos and beans, as well as cooking gas, transportation expenses and electricity. It doesn’t really meet a family’s needs (and doesn’t include — but should — things like school supplies and union dues), but with a state-run medical system and assuming the family receives assistance for school uniforms and supplies, it is possible to get by, if the family owns their own home. That five percent who live on the salario minimo are sometimes “not in conformity” with the Mexican constitution’s stated human right to a decent home, though they are usually people having SOME kind of home.

The other thing that needs to be understood is that the figures reported ONLY apply to unskilled general labor. Everything from janitors to carpenters to editors to financial analysts have a set “salario minimo”. Salaries are low here (and some of us, like I do, fall into anomalous categories that don’t have a set wage, or are — like commissioned sales persons — not covered by these rules.

However, the lower than inflation raise in the salario minimo cuts into everyone’s purchasing power, not just the low wage worker. Job contracts are usually written as so many times the salario minimo — what’s a few centavos difference to the fruit picker in Chiapas is a few hundred pesos to the Mexico City executive whose salary is expressed as 1250 salarios.

And, things like legal fees and fines are not a given amount in the law, but a number of salarios minimos (a parking ticket in Mexico City, for example, is 2.5 salarios. It saves the trouble of revising the traffic code every time there’s a change in the currency value).

Still, while controlling wages may be a time-honored way of controlling inflation, its the housewife who buys her beans not by the kilo, but by the peso who is going to be cutting back, not the bankers and economists.

Categories: Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Human Rights · La Raza (Mexican cultures and peoples) · Real Mexico

Bimbo lays out some bread…

13 December 2008 · Leave a Comment

Despite the general credit crunch, Grupo Bimbo managed to come up with the $2.4 billion (thousand million) U.S. dollars needed to buy out the Canadian-owned George Wesson, Ltd. According to Milenio, the purchase will make make Bimbo about twice the size (in annual sales) as the next largest baked goods seller, Kraft Foods.

The debt is financed through six different banks, and one third is payable in Mexican Pesos, the rest in U.S. dollars. Mexican companies that have run into trouble lately (like Comercial Mexicana) had financed their growth solely on dollar-denominated lending. It’s still a lot of dough (sorry… had to say it). Probably the only impact on Mexican consumers will be a label change on some products. “Pan Bimbo” is already slang for “white bread” (as in boring, as well as … white bread), even though Bimbo bought out Continental Baking several years ago, and the packages often say “Wonder Bread”.

The other thing to notice is that successful Mexican companies which have a world presence, like Bimbo or Cemex, stick to basics… food (Bimbo), cement (Cemex) or telephones (TelMex). While the Slim family controlled Carso Group operates in a number of unrelated sectors (banking, telecommunications, retail stores, hotels), the companies under Carso ownership keep their separate identity and Carso stays out of the day to day operations of the firm. What’s making the Mexican companies so successful is the weird idea that wealth is measured in goods and services… not just stock prices.

Categories: Carlos Slim · Economy & Business · Food and Drink · Multinationals