This Sunday, I walked in the shoulders of Giants, giants with iron and fire in their hearts.
Hi! Here’s another Discovering Mexico post, and I’m very excited to show you the main driver that powered and prompted my hometown to become the biggest steel manufacturer in Latin America: The Fundidora of Steel and Iron Company of Monterrey.
In this post I’ll show you a little bit of the history of the Fundidora, the impact that left on Monterrey and its people, its current situation after the factory closed, and several photos of Fundidora Park.
But First, as usual, here’s my 15-words introduction:
Hello I am Humberto Quintanilla, inveterate socio-economic entrepreneur. Bitcoin advocate and Nikola Tesla fan.
The Iron Giant
It was the 1890s, Monterrey hadn’t had big entrepreneurs at the time. Just a city of hard working people that worked the deserted soil under the burning sun. They wanted more. Monterrey already had a diverse community, with low-income families and high-profile families with businessmen and royal ambassadors.
For good or worse, the high profile families took upon the task of creating a megaproject that could revolutionize how things were in Monterrey, or doom us all. Lucky for us happened the first.
In 1900, the most powerful families and the governor of Nuevo Leon (a state just below Texas) founded the Compañía Fundidora de Fierro y Acero de Monterrey, S.A. From that point on, Monterrey went on to become the largest producer of steel and iron for Latin America, and part of most important factories in the world.
The Fundidora brought upon the city a Foreign Direct Investment (FDA) as never before seen in a state of Mexico, a country which had been stagnated and torn apart from the days of its Independence in 1810.
Many structures, real state, schools and hospitals were built around the Fundidora for the hundreds of families of thousands of workers. As impressive and majestic as it may sound, it wasn’t all pretty and epic. Corruption and unsafety was always around the corner.
Nevertheless, the Fundidora had already set a staple for hardworking people, who would not take anything for granted, they had it all… a living and breathing environment with everything they needed just a couple of steps from them.
Years passed, families grew, but so did the Fundidora problems, corruption and unsafety at work, all of these were the poison that brought Fundidora’s demise in the year of 1986.
And from the Ashes… rose the Phoenix
In 1988, the Fundidora was bought and began the initiative to transform that graveyard into a central park for the center of Monterrey, where families would not return to work, but to enjoy, remember and hope for the better.
Now we have the Fundidora Park a place where all its citizen can exercise, go to festivals, enjoy museums, arts, ice skiing, watching art movies and more. It truly is amazing and a piece of perfection.
Photos around Fundidora
Here are some photos of my trip with Marisa, a lovely lady with whom I walk towards new and old paths. She even better photos which I will feature on the next post of Discovering Mexico.
There’s photos of Fundidora, and the centre of the town of Monterrey.
Please enjoy the photos! Feel free to comment anything you want and any new place you’d want me to go.
Marisa
Endnotes
Well, this Part 2 of Chapter 1 in Discovering Mexico was a blast, shout out to Marisa to help me with the photos and amazing company.
Also, remember, I will be posting Discovering Mexico one post per week, so stay tuned for more! In the next Chapters i will be exploring different states of Mexico... you can help me out by making suggestions of next cities.
Lastly, if you help me to get this post to the Top many people can get to know Mexico, because I will be able to travel with the money generated in Steemit, so help me out here and will post beatiful photos and stories for you.