The fun started late last month when, with the end in sight to a 16-month probe conducted by Mexico's National Banking & Securities Commission (CNBV) into
Salinas' handling of a 2003 debt deal, the net accused Mexico's finance secretary Francisco Gil Diaz of attempted program censorship.
Most of the letters reveal the distinction long made by
Salinas between "real world" and "poetic world." They are addressed to a beloved distant in space and time.
The link between the episodic, muddy surges that Johnson's team observed and the flooding in the
Salinas River will help scientists determine when they're most likely to see such underflows, he notes.
For those who are unfamiliar with it, the
Salinas Valley is, in the words of native son John Steinbeck, "a long narrow swale between ranges of mountains, and the
Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay."
According to lore, Telmex tycoon Carlos Slim and the
Salinas brothers schemed to profit from the company's privatization--a charge that has never been substantiated.
While
Salinas Pliego is battling the market, Televisa's Azcarraga Jean is facing inherited debt.
When then-President
Salinas was riding high as a reformer and NAFTA architect, however, there was little talk of the bad smell that NAFTA and privatization cheerleaders now say followed him even then.
Salinas' first poems were published in the literary magazine Prometeo.