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Jenkins of Mexico - How a Southern Farm Boy Became a Mexican Magnate (Hardcover)
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Jenkins of Mexico - How a Southern Farm Boy Became a Mexican Magnate (Hardcover)
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In the Mexican city of Puebla, several decades ago, there lived an
old American as wealthy as a Rockefeller. He strode the streets
with a purposeful step and his head slightly bowed, as though he
wished not to be interrupted. For daily visits to his country club,
he had his chauffeur drive him, in one of his second-hand Packards.
But he walked often enough that his aspect was familiar to all who
lived or worked near his downtown home: tall and well-built,
cropped hair beneath a black fedora, and seeming always to wear the
same black tie and shabby dark suit. His head was large and solid,
like a marble bowling ball, the roundness interrupted by a stern
jaw and heavy chin. His blue eyes were sharp. William O. Jenkins,
said to be the richest man in Mexico, had an austere routine. He
rose early and worked all morning in his office, which shared the
same vast space as his apartment: the penthouse above Puebla's
leading department store. Though his assets included several
hundred movie theaters, substantial rural and urban real estate,
various textile mills, and Mexico's second-largest bank, his entire
staff consisted of a personal assistant, an accountant, and a
secretary. People who came to him for money - a farmer hoping for a
loan, a businessman seeking venture capital, a state governor keen
for him to finance a school - all had to climb the ninety stairs to
his rooms. Even as an octogenarian, he refused to install an
elevator, for he was a champion of physical fitness and advancement
by merit. And of course he was frugal. On more than one occasion,
visitors entered his office to find him peeling an unmarked stamp
from an envelope. He would explain: "I hate to see anything go to
waste." The biography looks at the significance of William Jenkins
within the formative period of the Mexican Revolution and the
several decades of political institutionalization and evolution
that follow it. The author shows Jenkins' involvement, particularly
in the state of Puebla, in politics and economics, and details his
ability to survive and keep and develop major holdings despite the
anti-American ethos of the Revolution itself. It also delves deeply
into his personal life and the choices that he made between the
well-being of his wife and daughters and his own desire to maintain
his important social, political, and economic position in Mexico.
It explores at length Jenkins's kidnapping in 1919 which some U. S.
politicians tried unsuccessfully to exploit to cause U. S.
intervention in Mexico. At the same time, it explores anti-American
sentiment in Mexico extensively, and it also discusses a kind of
"Black Legend" that developed around Jenkins that lasted for many
years, indeed, until the present. Nevertheless, he shows that
Jenkins overcame the setbacks and bad publicity to become
exceptionally wealthy and active in many areas, ranging from sugar
production to the development of a huge and virtually monopolistic
network of movie theaters in the country. However singular his
persona, Jenkins illustrated how much the "revolutionary" state
depended on the business elite: at first for its very survival,
then for the ascendance and supremacy of its conservatives, whose
ideological descendants remain in power today. This book is a
larger than life biography featuring Mexican history, American
history of the late 19th/early 20th century, borderlands history,
the history of business, and US-Mexican diplomatic history. Written
with verve, it should appeal to general readers interested in
business history, readers of biography, and those interested in the
Mexican Revolution.
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