It varies depending on the year, but about a dozen Mexican tycoons usually appear in Forbes list of the world’s billionaires.
Yet in a country of deep inequality and contrast, the publication of this list prompted a group of prominent Mexican journalists to seek an answer to the question: “What exists on the other side of this extreme wealth?”
They compiled their answers in a new book, “The 12 poorest Mexicans: The B Side of the Millionaire’s List.” The project was stared more than a year ago and led by Salvador Frausto.
“The aim was to highlight inequality in the country through stories with names and faces. Every year, Forbes magazine publishes its list of the super-rich. We know these people, their tastes, customs, where they eat and go on vacation, but we know nothing of the people who have no resources. We wanted to contrast the extreme wealth documented by the magazine with the extreme poverty portrayed in our project,” he said.
Frausto consulted the National Institute of Statistics (Inegi) to find the poorest states, the poorest municipalities within those states, and then the poorest people within those communities.
“We found a lot of discrimination against women and against indigenous people,” he said. Fraustro also found that much of the poverty is the result of physical isolation from the rest of the country.
“In some communities, there are not even dirt roads to reach other places and there are no schools nearby. Children have to walk one or two hours to school, without breakfast. All these complications deepen poverty.”
The book focuses on 12 startling cases of extreme poverty, including a woman who lives on government support totaling less than 20 pesos a day and a man who lives in a cardboard dwelling.
Testimonies for the project were mostly collected from southern Mexican states such as Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca but one case even features a Mexican immigrant living in the United States.