Emilio Azcarrage Milmo has a net worth of some $2.8 billion and may be the richest man in Latin America. In 1930 his father founded one of Mexico's first radio stations and built that into a Mexican communications empire. The father died in 1972, and the son built on his father's legacy and today controls television, radio, publishing, and satellite properties under the corporate banner of Televisa, now a publicly held stock. Televisa dominates Mexican media. Until December 1991, people could only guess at the size of Azcarraga's holdings, but at that time he opened his books in connection with a public offering of Televisa shares. The market values Televisa at $3.4 billion, and Azcarrage owns 65 percent of the 309 million shares (Millman, 1992: 150).
Azcarraga, also known as El Tigre, or The Tiger, is a reclusive man who never meets the press. Even his age is uncertain, though he is thought to be about 60. Televisa was founded in the 1950s by his father, known as The Lion (Deutschman, 1990: 133).
Azcarraga is Latin America's most powerful media baron. Televisa is a four-channel broadcast television network. Azcarraga originally had several partners, but he bought them out a few years ago and put the company on the stock exchange to raise funds. He used the proceeds to go on a regionwide buying spree and extended his media empire from Chile to San Francisco. In addition to his acquisition of radio and television stations and networks, he made his own print media buys independent of Televisa. He bought controlling interests in the Miami-based Grupo America, a major Spanish-language magazine distributor, and in Ovaciones, a Mexican newspaper known for its entertainment and society coverage. Azcarraga is by all accounts a hands-on manager, and these acquisitions placed him in a strong position to form opinions of Spanish-speaking viewers and readers throughout the Americas. Televisa has had a near-monopoly in Mexic...