La Plutocracia Mexicana (Colombiana...?) sigue floreciente con concesiones amañadas.

OPINION Editorial Observer

Mexico's Plutocracy Thrives on Robber-Baron Concessions By EDUARDO PORTER Published: August 27, 2007

Growing up in Mexico City, I always knew Mexico was an unjust country — a place where small coteries of the privileged control all power and wealth while half the population lives in poverty. But it never occurred to me that Mexico would have billionaires. It does. According to Forbes magazine, last year there were 10 Mexicans among the world's 946 billionaires. That might not seem out of line in a country with 100 million-plus people, which accounts for about 1.6 percent of the global economy. But here's what takes the cake, especially if you're Mexican like me. Earlier this month, Fortune reported that Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican, had just surpassed Bill Gates to become the world's richest man, with a fortune worth $59 billion. To put it in perspective, Mr. Slim's treasure is equivalent to slightly less than 7 percent of Mexico's total production of goods and services — one out of every 14 dollars' worth of stuff made by all the people in the country. The income distribution in the United States may be fast approaching Mexican levels of inequality, but in relative terms, Mr. Gates isn't even in Mr. Slim's league. His $58 billion fortune is less than 0.5 percent of the nation's G.D.P. Indeed, by this measure, Mr. Slim is richer even than the robber barons of the gilded age. John D. Rockefeller, America's richest man, was worth the equivalent of about 1.5 percent of the nation's G.D.P. It takes about nine of the captains of industry and finance of the 19th and early 20th centuries — Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John J. Astor, Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Stewart, Frederick Weyerhaeuser, Jay Gould and Marshall Field — to replicate the footprint that Mr. Slim has left on Mexico. But the momentous scale is not the most galling aspect of Mr. Slim's riches. There's the issue of theft. Like many a robber baron — or Russian oligarch, or Enron executive — Mr. Slim calls to mind the words of Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Mr. Slim's sin, if not technically criminal, is like that of Rockefeller, the sin of the monopolist.

In 1990, the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari sold his friend Mr. Slim the Mexican national phone company, Telmex, along with a de facto commitment to maintain its monopoly for years. Then it awarded Telmex the only nationwide cellphone license. When competitors were eventually allowed in, Telmex kept them at bay with some rather creative gambits, like getting a judge to issue an arrest warrant for the top lawyer of a competitor. Today, it still has a 90 percent share of Mexico's landline phone service and controls almost three-quarters of the cellphone market. Monopolies tend to generate a ton of money. Mr. Slim, a shrewd investor, deployed it well — buying up hundreds of Mexican companies and entering wireless markets across Latin America. It's hard for a Mexican to spend a day without handing him some money. But Mexico has paid, dearly. In 2005, there were fewer than 20 fixed telephone lines for every 100 Mexicans, and less than half had cellphones. Just 9 percent of households had Internet access. Mexicans pay way above average for all these services. Mr. Slim's style of wealth accumulation is not rare in modern Mexico. From television to tortillas, vast swaths of the Mexican economy are controlled by monopolies or oligopolies. Many of Mexico's billionaires were created by the government during the privatization of state-owned companies in the 1990s. That is what is most difficult to swallow for a Mexican. The United States government split up Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. A court imposed a consent decree on Mr. Gates's Microsoft to curtail its monopoly practices. In Mexico, Mr. Slim's monopoly is understood to be the natural order of things. Ask former President Vicente Fox, who appointed a former Telmex executive as minister of communications in 2000. The United States today is heading toward a Mexican-style social contract. The concentration of 44 percent of the nation's income among the top 10 percent of taxpayers is on a par with Mexico's disparities. It's getting hard to find government officials in Washington without deep ties to corporate interests. But perhaps the United States and its moguls can still provide a positive example for Mexico's coddled titans. Mr. Gates is giving his fortune away to tackle diseases in Africa and help poor Americans graduate from high school. (He has given more than $30 billion to his foundation.) Earlier this year, Mr. Slim said he would increase the donations to his companies' foundations to $10 billion from $4 billion. He has another $20 billion to go to catch Mr. Gates.

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Recetas rápidas con Tomates. NYT.

DINING & WINE

So Many Tomatoes to Stuff in a Week By MELISSA CLARK Published: August 22, 2007

OF all the produce that tastes amazingly better in season —peaches and apricots, strawberries and peas — none inspires the same cultish devotion as summer tomatoes. Right now farmers' markets are rich with them: a dizzying profusion of scarlet beefsteaks, mini red and orange cherries and luminous lumpy heirlooms ranging from mild yellow Striped Germans to tart, intense, mauve-hued Brandywines. Swooning in their midst, I can't seem to walk away without bags of them. Once I get them home, though, I'm left wondering, What the heck am I going to do with all these tomatoes? How fast I can consume my purple Krims and Green Zebras before they ooze into a sticky puddle? As I contemplated my most recent load of beauties, in hues from amethyst to gold and even a few unripe greens, it almost seemed a shame to eat them. But it would be more of a shame not to. If I really wanted to take full advantage of their delectability, and to eat them every day, a plan was in order. So I summoned all the great tomato dishes I've ever eaten, compiling a list of the easiest, most varied and most tomatoey of the lot.

Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Gazpacho with watermelon and avocado.

DAY 1: PAN CON TOMATE I could eat this Catalan dish every single day for as long as good tomatoes hold out. It resembles bruschetta, but instead of cubing the tomatoes as a topping for garlic- and olive oil-rubbed toast, all you have to do is squeeze their guts directly onto the bread. Of all the dishes, this one benefits the most from using an ultraripe tomato, still warm from the farmers' market. When you halve it, its insides practically flow out of their own accord. But be careful: one step beyond ultraripe and you are in trouble. Yes, alas, it is possible to buy a terrible August tomato. Supermarkets are full of the same wan, waxy fruit they sell all year long. (Are there people who actually prefer it?) But even the farmers' markets sell their share of lackluster, cottony specimens. Confronted recently with a bag full of mealy Brandywines straight from the Union Square Greenmarket, I couldn't help wondering how they got that way. I had always thought tomatoes got mealy because they were refrigerated at supermarket warehouses. (Chilling tomatoes ruins their texture and flavor.) But that turns out to be only one culprit. Mealiness, I have learned, can also be a symptom of overripeness. How to tell the difference between ripe and overripe? Cradle a tomato gently in your palm. Its skin should be taut rather than slack, and the tomato should feel as if its juices are about to burst out of the tight skin, like a water balloon just before it makes contact with your head. The tomatoes I chose for my pan con tomate, two heavy, green-shouldered Black Princes, fit the bill perfectly. DAY 2: BAKED STUFFED TOMATOES WITH GOAT CHEESE FONDUE Hollowed out and stuffed with a runny mix of goat cheese and mascarpone, firm but ripe tomatoes make excellent vessels for a melting fondue. I came up with the idea after considering a supper of regular baked tomatoes, the kind that nearly collapse in the oven, covered with a savory topping of garlic-laced bread crumbs. But baked tomatoes seemed meager for dinner. Since I'm always looking for an excuse to add cheese (preferably melted) to everything, it was the perfect way to bulk this dish out. The mascarpone mellowed the pungent goat cheese and added a lush, silky texture to the filling, which cascaded over the jammy red flesh when the tomato was cut. I also added minced anchovies to the bread crumbs just to ratchet up the salty factor and add a layer of complexity, though anchovy haters can certainly leave them out. I ate these marvels with toast soldiers for dunking and a giant green salad to cut the richness. Firm, flattish tomatoes that will stay upright on a baking sheet, like beefsteaks and Brandywines, are perfect here. DAY 3: MULTICOLORED TOMATO TARTLETS This is what guests who come over to my house during tomato season are served: individual warm puff pastry tarts topped with basil, nutty Parmesan and jewel-like slices of tomato. When I want to go all out, I'll use one perfect slice for each tart, cutting them from different heirloom varieties; you can mix the unused tomato parts into a gorgeous salad, or make them into tomato-ricotta soup for Day 4. As long as you use all-butter pastry and good tomatoes, you can vary or skip the cheese and herbs. Or if you have some mascarpone left over from your baked stuffed tomatoes, a smear of it at the bottom of the crust makes a luxuriant cushion.

Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Green tomato and lemon marmalade.

DAY 4: INSTANT TOMATO-RICOTTA "SOUP" WITH CAPERS My new lunchtime obsession, this is a dish I came up with one afternoon after letting a bowl of simple tomato salad (sliced tomatoes, salt, olive oil and herbs) sit while I answered a phone call. When I came back, the salt had drawn out the tomato liquid, creating a pale red broth. It tasted vibrant and heady, and somehow made the tomato chunks themselves even more intense. On a whim, I tossed in some fresh ricotta that I had planned to spread on toast and sprinkled the top with capers because I like their salty tang next to the sweet, milky cheese. There are few things easier or more addictive on a hot afternoon. DAY 5: RED AND YELLOW CHERRY TOMATO CONFIT Roasting tomatoes condenses and caramelizes the juices, turning a juicy salad-worthy fruit into syrupy tomato candy. No summer passes without my making several batches of tomato confit, which will keep for a week or two in the fridge or a month in the freezer. You can make a confit of any tomato, but thick-skinned cherry and grape tomatoes, with their high sugar content, work especially well, as do halved plum tomatoes. I eat this tossed onto hot or cold pasta, with arugula salad, mounded onto mozzarella or spooned over goat cheese, or simply piled on garlic-rubbed toast. When drizzled with lemon juice or good vinegar and sprinkled with fresh herbs like basil, mint, tarragon or sage, it also makes a chunky salsalike sauce that's terrific with grilled fish, meat or fowl. In short, once you've got an irresistible tomato confit on hand, you'll probably want to add it to everything.

Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Individual tartlets made with heirloom tomatoes, basil and Parmesan.

DAY 6: GAZPACHO WITH WATERMELON AND AVOCADO After several days of sitting out on the counter feeding the fruit flies, even the firmest tomatoes start to slacken. That's when you know it's gazpacho time. This time I added watermelon, because I had it and because I wanted a slightly sweeter soup than usual. For color and voluptuous texture, I floated buttery avocado cubes on top. It was pretty enough to serve to company, and expandable enough to use up all the soft tomatoes on the oozing brink. DAY 7: GREEN TOMATO AND LEMON MARMALADE By the time the seventh day of my tomato tour rolled around, I was ready for dessert. And why not? After all, tomatoes are botanically a fruit, not a vegetable. I thought back to all the tomato confections I'd savored: the tomato tart Tatins, the sorbets and gelées. Any would have filled the bill, but I had used the last of the ripe tomatoes in the gazpacho, and only the green ones were left. Although I had originally planned to fry them, sweet fried green tomatoes just weren't appealing. Then I thought back to a recent delicacy I'd had in Provence. My very stylish host served a memorable breakfast of day-old croissants, toasted until the butter seeped out onto the crisp, golden surface, then slathered with green tomato marmalade studded with lemon confit. Replicating that marmalade seemed just the thing to do with my shiny pale tomatoes. And so I did, keeping the recipe as simple as possible and cooking the tomato and lemon in sugar just until the fruit turned shimmering and translucent. Tangier, more complex and looser than most marmalades, this one offered candied slivers of fruit suspended in a thick, honeyed syrup that was just jellied enough to spread, yet runny enough to be dolloped over ice cream, or perhaps some leftover mascarpone. Even without the croissant, it was a mesmerizing end to a week of tomato worship that can happily continue until first frost.

RELATED RECIPES Fresh Corn Tamales with Chanterelles (August 22, 2007) Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade(August 22, 2007) Pan Con Tomate(August 22, 2007) Gazpacho With Watermelon and Avocado (August 22, 2007) Red and Yellow Cherry Tomato Confit(August 22, 2007) Multicolored Tomato Tartlets(August 22, 2007) Instant Tomato-Ricotta 'Soup' With Capers (August 22, 2007) Baked Stuffed Tomatoes With Goat Cheese Fondue(August 22, 2007)

Francesco Tonelli for The New York Times Baked Stuffed Tomatoes With Goat Cheese Fondue

Copyright by the New York Times 2007