MONTERREY, NL—Just after the Green Line of Monterrey’s metro plunges into its subterranean bunker heading North to Sendero station, Avenida Cuauhtémoc becomes flanked by three-story walls crowned with a froth of razor wire. For several city blocks on either side, Monterrey is swallowed up by Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma. Large siloes peak over the wall, mazes of pipes connect buildings, and security carefully watches the gates. This brewery looks more like an oil refinery.
Purchased by Heineken in 2010, this is Mexico’s second largest brewery, producing brands like Dos Equis, Sol, Bohemia, Superior, Carta Blanca, Indio, and Tecate. While the vastness of the brewery seems out of place, it’s just the opposite. In its day, the brewery paved the original version of the street it sits on and built the surrounding neighborhood too. In fact, it can be argued that Mexico’s second largest brewery played a key role in pushing Monterrey to be the urbanized industrial hub that it is today.
For reference, Monterrey is home to some of Mexico’s largest companies. FEMSA, which bottles Coca Cola in Mexico and operates Oxxo, Latin America’s largest chain of convenience stores, Banorte, Mexico’s largest bank, Cemex, the world’s fifth largest cement producer, and Alfa Group, a conglomerate that ranks in the top 10 of Mexico’s companies, all call Monterrey their home. But the brewery predates all of these giants. More than that, it is also the direct sire of both FEMSA and Alfa Group. In one way or another, Cervecería Cuauhtémoc founded some of the city’s largest companies as well as its most important universities. Monterrey’s massive brewery has played a foundational role in the wealth and industry the city enjoys today.
Mexico did not have commercial brewing until the end of the 19th century. Artisanal production of beers made from some mix of barley, wheat, lime, tamarind, sugar, pineapple, cloves, pepper, or cilantro existed at a local level in the 1800s. Earlier, drinks that might be classified as beer, like those of fermented malted corn, had existed in indigenous Mexico for centuries. But the country’s taste for beer was changing.
In “El nacimiento de la industria cervecera en México, 1880-1910 Segundo Congreso Nacional de Historia Económica,” Recio writes, “The consumption of beer was higher in big cities as well as in those areas in the north of Mexico near the United States.” That is, before Mexico developed its domestic beer industry, people in the north were consuming more beer than in other parts of the country, most of which was imported from the US. The habit, we can guess, was from the region’s closeness to American culture. Even today, Monterrey is notably more Texan than the rest of Mexico.
In Monterrey, local breweries already existed at a small scale. The names Juan Radke and Carlos Hesselbart represent the city’s two original brewers from the 19th century. Such names point to the foreign influence that beer was, and the need for the implantation of immigrant brewing know-how into a Mexican context.
The higher demand for beer in the border states quickly correlated into a larger supply. Compañía Cervecera de Chihuahua, S.A., la Cervecería Sonora, S.A., and Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, S.A. represented three of the five largest breweries in the country in 1900. The other two were in Mexico City and the state of Veracruz.
In 1886, José Calderón opened an ice factory in Monterrey. The company developed a relationship with St. Louis, Missouri, brewery Schnaider, importing and distributing the beer locally. After a few years of the relationship, the son of the brewer, Joseph M. Schnaider, came to Monterrey with a proposal: the ice factory would go directly into the brewing business.
In 1890, a group of local men invested together to form a Sociedad Anónima, or a Joint Stock Company, called Cervecería Cuauhtémoc. The names of these original founders echo around Monterrey today like Carnegie and Rockefeller do in the states. Alongside Schnaider, the men–Garza, Sada, and Muguerza–went into business.
The first beer that Cervecería Cuauhtémoc produced was Carta Blanca, a brand the brewery still makes today. Its second brand, called La Saturno, did not last despite its slogan: “It gives force and vigor. Superior to the best tonic.”
With these beers, the brewery quickly took off. By 1900, they were producing thousands of liters of beer and continuing with local ice production. An 1897 study of the brewery says that it was consuming 300,000 kilograms of malt and 5,000 kilograms of hops annually, both imported, as well as 70,000 kilograms of domestic rice. In 1904, one of their advertisements claims they won Gold in a St. Louis brewing showcase.
But the brewery’s luck would soon run out. Political issues, both domestically and internationally, would put Cervecería Cuauhtémoc’s growth on the back burner. But, after it survived the Mexican Revolution and the First World War, the business lessons it learned would enable it to transform Monterrey.
On October 22, 1913 Mexican revolutionaries captured the brewery as they invaded Monterrey. Two days later, the Carrancistas took the brewery back. It would fall to the revolutionaries again and finally return to the owners permanently in December of 1914. The cost of the Revolution to the brewery was high, stopping production entirely, but new challenges were just around the corner.
Cervecería Cuauhtémoc was a factory that relied almost entirely on imported inputs. Malt, hops, and carbon dioxide came from abroad, and bottles, boxes, caps came from outside of the business. As the First World War led to shortages of basic brewing needs, Monterrey’s brewery decided enough was enough. They internalized nearly all of their needs.
The brewery’s original beer was bottled and stoppered with corks and then packed in wooden boxes. In 1894, they began using metal crown corks. Then, during the 1920s, the brewery switched to cardboard boxes. In 1927, it opened a box factory. In 1928, the brewery opened a factory to manufacture their own crown corks. That same year, they acquired Cervecería Central in Mexico City to expand their distribution. The same decade, Cervecería Cuauhtémoc would open its own malt house and a plant to produce carbon dioxide.
After creating all of these horizontal entities that gave the brewery total control over production inputs, the company split up. They wanted to be able to sell their boxes and corks to competition. In 1929, they formed Fabricas Monterrey, S.A. to control the factories.This entity was further divided in 1936 into Empaques de Carton Titan S.A. (for boxes,) Malta S.A. (for malt,) and Fabricas Monterrey (for crown corks.) One brewery had turned into four large factories.
But the influence of the brewery does not end with these entities. In fact, it didn’t start with them either. The original shareholders, Garza, Sada, and Muguerza, would found, council, or fund several other major projects in Monterrey’s industrial history. Starting in the 1910s, Francisco Sada and Isaac Garza were heavily involved in both Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey, a massive metal foundry, and Vidriera Monterrey, a glass factory that also made bottles. The Fundidora, now closed, is Monterrey’s preeminent park, and Vidriera is still operating as a large flat glass factory. Both are quintessential Regiomontana businesses.
The brewery also developed the neighborhood around it, offering interest-free mortgages to its workers. This was in a time when urbanization was not guaranteed. The business paved the neighboring streets as well. On top of this, Muguerza founded Muguerza Hospital in 1934 and Garza Sada founded ITESM or Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in 1943. Both institutions are held in the highest regard in the city.
In Cerveza y ahorro. La Cervecería Cuauhtémoc y su impacto en Monterrey, Isabel Ortega Ridaura summarizes the role of the brewery in Monterrey’s history. “Cervecería Cuauhtémoc, as one of the largest and oldest factories in Monterrey, experienced its development alongside the growth of the city, to which it contributed to a large extent.”
The brewery in Monterrey was the city’s first large-scale commercial project. As it matured and developed new entities, more heavy manufacturing came to the city. The founders, rich with their beer money, were able to invest heavily in other projects, both business and philanthropic. Their children would go on to be business people and advocates of urban development.
Like many large businesses, Cervecería Cuauhtémoc was riding the wave of its time. Most of Mexico’s other major breweries opened around the same time. But nothing was promised to Monterrey. The size of the city’s economy today is extraordinary. Many other northern cities have not enjoyed the same growth. So, beer and the institutional environment that came from its success, were instrumental in building a city that can now reflect on its prosperity while drinking a Carta Blanca.
Ortega Ridaura, Isabel. “Cerveza y ahorro. La Cerveceria Cuauhtemoc y su impacto en Monterrey.” Bebidas y regiones: Historia e impacto de la cultura etílica en México, edited by Camilo Contreras Delgado and Isabel Ortega Ridaura, Plaza y Valdés, 2005.
Recio, Gabriela. “El nacimiento de la industria cervecera en México, 1880-1910.” University of California, San Diego, Center for US-Mexican Studies, 2004.
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