MEXICO: Mountain Metropolis

The men of Monterrey, Mexico’s industrial capital and third city (pop. 250,000), are like few other Mexicans. They are grave, busy, in a hurry. They wear felt hats instead of sombreros, and take short siestas. An ordinary Mexican, if he wins in a lottery, buys a car and goes on a spree. The man from Monterrey starts a new business. Throughout Mexico, the sign for stinginess, hitting the elbow of one arm with the fist of the other, is used almost automatically in referring to Monterrey.

The regiomontanos (literally, those of the mountain region), as other Mexicans call them, don’t care. In fact, they like it. Last week, in celebrating the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Metropolitan City of Our Lady of Monterrey, they staged a contest for the best Monterrey jokes. Too well-known to compete: the story of the Monterrey bridegroom who honeymooned alone in Mexico City because the bride had already seen the place.

As might be expected, the regiomontanos were too busy to bother much about their week-long celebration. Elsewhere in Mexico, the slightest excuse for a fiesta would have closed the town, jammed the streets with pavement dancers and flavored-ice vendors, filled the air with shots and shouts. In Monterrey moderate crowds were moderately enthusiastic, a total of two small boys climbed the rooftops to watch the fiesta-day parade.

Built by Beer. Few cities, in Mexico or out, have grown up so compact and self-centered as Monterrey. That is due in part to the cool, clear spring water that caused Don Diego de Montemayor and twelve followers to pitch camp in the hot mountain valley on Sept. 20, 1596.

Almost three centuries later, after a railway from Laredo, 160 miles north in Texas, had reached and roused the sleepy town, a brewery started in Monterrey, using the sparkling water to make the beer that most Mexicans now drink, many Americans import, and some connoisseurs call the world’s finest.

Though other industries, notably Mexico’s largest iron-&-steel works, have since risen in Monterrey, the brewery has remained the key to everything. It brought in other industries — glass factories to make bottles, metal works for bottle caps, paper plants for labels and cartons. The Sadas, Muguerzas and Garzas, the families who brewed the famed Carta Blanca and Bohemia, came to a large extent to control Monterrey’s 600-odd industries. The brewery also set Monterrey’s labor pattern, with independent (i.e., company) unions for its 4,000 employes, one of the most elaborate social centers in Mexico, evening classes, free beer, swimming pools, free medical clinics, and interest-free loans for those who wanted to buy their own homes.

Trouble in Heaven. Into this closely knit little capitalistic heaven, in which everyone worked and worked hard, and in which everyone prospered a little (and some a lot), the war brought a good many changes. The number of industries jumped from 438 in 1937 to about 600, invested capital doubled, and the number of industrial workers rose from 24,350 to about 42,000.

Labor grew restive. Always keen to get into Monterrey, the Mexican Confederation of Labor (CTM) struck a key glass factory last June, forced the Government to seize it and satisfy worker demands. The Government still runs the plant, reputedly at a big loss. Some regiomontanos favor starting another plant like it and running the Government out of business. Others see changing times, the first threat of expropriation.

One of the five oppositionist deputies in Mexico’s new Congress comes from Monterrey. It is no secret that his election was mainly due to the well-organized vote of the independent unions. But Monterrey also hopes for much from President-elect Miguel Alemán. José (Don Pepe) Muguerza, the driving chieftain of the “brewery group,” campaigned for him, admires him as an administrator and for that quality most urgently required by the regiomontano, “ability to get things done.”