The Big Five

In the area around Matamoros, Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville, Tex., land was selling at $100 an acre only a decade ago--and going begging. By last week, land was up to $5,000 an acre and hard to find. Chief reason : the flat desert lands have blossomed into one of the world's fastest-growing cotton patches, thanks to irrigation from Mexico's Don Martin irrigation project. With the help of U.S. capital, the cotton, boom has also spawned dozens of new industries -- and a fine crop of millionaires.

Along the flowered streets of Matamoros' El Jardin district, there are so many new and luxurious houses that one awed American mumbled: "This is just what the South must have been like before the Civil War." But none of the houses is so spectacular as a palace, now abuilding up the river at Nuevo Laredo, with 17 bathrooms, a swimming pool, five-car garage and three bars. For miles around, everyone knows that the house belongs to Chito Longoria, eldest (46) of the five Longoria brothers, who have done more than anyone else to make the once-dry lands blossom.

Big Family. Together the Longoria brothers--Chito, Federico, Shelby, Eduardo, Alfredo--control 69 companies, employ 11,000 workers and gross more than $50 million a year. The brothers got a running start on their empire-building from their father Octaviano Longoria, who died in 1931, leaving his sons a tidy business in cotton, cattle, soap and cottonseed.

"The business my father left," says Chito, "was small, and we were a large family. We couldn't make the family smaller, so we made the business larger." The brothers put up a cotton mill, soon found that to be successful ginners they would have to finance cotton growers, wound up owning four banks, 10,000 acres of cottonland. In partnership with Anderson, Clayton & Co., worldwide U.S. cotton brokers, they built two big cottonseed mills. When they found they had a surplus of cottonseed oil, they built a vegetable-shortening plant to process it.

Small Taxes. To market the beef from their ranches, where they run 15,000 head of cattle, they built their own packing plant. They added a chain of wholesale and retail general stores, four Chevrolet agencies, four movie theaters, some 20 other enterprises. "We were doing in a hurry," says Chito, "what it took a hundred years to do in the U.S."

One reason the Longorias have been able to expand so fast: Mexico's laws put a tax ceiling of 333% on corporation profits and prohibit double taxation, i.e., a company's profits are taxed, but not the dividends. Says Chito, "It's a good way. You have to let the individual grow. After he has grown, O.K., tax him, but let him grow first."

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