Monterrey
Founded on its third attempt in 1596, then built Mexico's first vertically integrated industrial complex from beer profits. CEMEX, FEMSA, Banorte—all trace to the same families. Now generates 7–8% of GDP, but the river that drew settlers runs dry.
Monterrey was founded three times before it stuck—a persistence that foreshadowed the city's industrial stubbornness. Diego de Montemayor established the settlement in 1596 on a site at the foot of Cerro de la Silla, after two previous attempts failed to survive indigenous resistance and the harsh terrain of northern Mexico. The location offered water from the Santa Catarina River and a mountain pass connecting the Gulf Coast to the interior. For three centuries, Monterrey remained a small, remote town, far from Mexico City's political orbit—a geographic marginality that forced self-reliance.
Self-reliance became industrialization. In 1890, the Cervecería Cuauhtémoc (now part of FEMSA) began brewing beer, and its founders—the Garza and Sada families—reinvested profits into glass (Vitro, 1909), steel (Fundidora Monterrey, 1900), and packaging. By 1940, Monterrey had created Mexico's first vertically integrated industrial complex, controlled by a handful of families who built everything from raw materials to finished consumer goods. CEMEX, founded here in 1906, became the world's largest building materials company. Grupo Alfa, Grupo FEMSA, and Banorte all trace their roots to the same early-twentieth-century industrial network. Monterrey's oligarchs built a city that functions more like a northern European industrial Mittelstand than a Latin American metropolis.
NAFTA (1994) and nearshoring demand since 2020 have supercharged the economy. Nuevo León generates 7–8% of Mexico's GDP. Kia, BMW, and Tesla have manufacturing operations in the state. The Tec de Monterrey (ITESM), founded in 1943, produces engineers who feed the industrial machine. Monterrey's metro area exceeds 5 million people, with per-capita income roughly double the Mexican average.
The risk is water. The Santa Catarina River that attracted Montemayor now runs dry most of the year. In 2022, a severe drought emptied reservoirs and forced water rationing across the city. Monterrey's industrial metabolism demands water that the geography no longer reliably provides—a constraint that no amount of industrial stubbornness can overcome.