My name is Andrew Paxman.  Born in London, I spent the 1990s working as a journalist in Mexico, where I co-authored El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga y su imperio Televisa.  This biography of the Mexican TV mogul Emilio Azcárraga Milmo appeared in 2000.  Having completed my PhD at UT Austin in 2008, I now teach History and Latin American Studies at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.

My next project is a biography of William Jenkins, once the richest and most controversial businessman in Mexico.  The estimated publication date is 2012, with versions in English and Spanish.

 

William O. Jenkins (1878-1963)

Jenkins was a Tennessee farm boy who dropped out of Vanderbilt, eloped with his southern belle girlfriend, and settled in Mexico in 1901.  Already a millionaire through his textile businesses when the Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910, he was kidnapped by Zapatista rebels in 1919, an episode that almost triggered an armed intervention by the United States.  Through property speculation and successful ventures in sugar planting, banking, and film exhibition, he reportedly became the richest man in Mexico.  Jenkins was overlord of the Mexican film industry during its Golden Age of the 1940s and 1950s, and upon his death he left his entire fortune of more than $60 million to a charitable foundation, virtually disinheriting his family.  The charity, which still operates today, in turn set up Puebla's Universidad de las Américas (UDLA), one of Mexico's most prestigious universities.

 

William Jenkins, satirized as "Lord and Master of Mexico," on the cover of a 1959 magazine.

 

 

Links:

  Millsaps College departmental page

  Academia.edu page  This page includes my c.v. and recent examples of my research.

My first book: El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga y su imperio Televisa, co-authored with Claudia Fernández.  This is a biography of Emilio Azcárraga Milmo (1930-1997), Mexico's leading 20th-century media mogul, who was sometimes referred to as the Rupert Murdoch of Latin America.

First edition (Feb. 2000):                                 Revised edition (Sept. 2001):

               

Last Updated: 6 September 2010.