Biography|Carlos Slim — The Capuchinas Street Where a Ledger Became a Mexican Fortune

Readers who treat Carlos Slim Helú as a self-made telecom story miss the first address.

He was born on 28 January 1940 in Mexico City, the fifth child of Julián Slim Haddad and Linda Helú Atta.

CNN and Britannica both record the date and the city. The exact delivery room is not a public record, so this pin sits on the street that actually trained the household.

Julián had arrived from Lebanon in 1902 as Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz, fourteen years old and sent out of the way of an Ottoman draft.

In 1904 he and his brother José put about 25,800 pesos into a dry-goods shop they called La Estrella de Oriente, on Calle de Capuchinas in the first square of the capital.

The street is Venustiano Carranza now. The convent that gave Capuchinas its name is gone.

The commercial block is still a working Centro Histórico street of shopfronts and upper floors.

In May 1914, in the middle of the Revolution, Julián bought out his brother's half for 30,000 pesos.

By January 1921 the shop's merchandise was valued at more than 100,000 dollars, and the proceeds had already been turned into downtown buildings bought cheap in the war years.

That is the method the son inherited: keep a book, buy when other people sell, stay inside the city you can walk.

Forbes still repeats the Sunday exercise. Julián handed the boy a five-peso allowance and made him write every purchase in a ledger.

At twelve Carlos bought shares in Banco Nacional de México. At thirteen his father died.

The shop itself is not a marked museum. Do not look for a plaque that names the counter.

Stand on Venustiano Carranza in the first cuadro and you are on the street where a Lebanese mercería became the first Slim balance sheet Mexico ever kept.

Photo: street view of Avenida 20 de Noviembre at Venustiano Carranza, Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Imperio Reséndiz, Presidencia de la República, public domain.