The World

On a quick trip to any country, it is easy for a foreigner to fall prey to “capital city syndrome”. You never get out of the biggest city, and so the views that you see and hear there become the “state of the nation”. That is almost always a mistake – which is a roundabout way of saying that I am very glad that my trip to Mexico, has taken me from the capital, Mexico City to Monterrey in the north.

The sheer size of Mexico City is fairly stunning – the population of its metropolitan area is said to be over 20m now, which would make it easily one of the five biggest cities in the world. But, even so, I was a little surprised by how dilapidated the “historic centre” is. Whatever the city’s other problems, the metropolitan governments of other mega-cities, from Delhi to Shanghai, usually manage to polish up the show-piece areas.

Monterrey is a complete contrast. It is the industrial capital of Mexico and its centre looks and feels more like Houston than Mexico City. It is criss-crossed by wide motorways and its suburbs glisten with affluence. I just drove past a vast Louis Vuitton store and a Ferrari dealership. I guess one of the dealership’s best customers might be the man I sat next to at lunch – Lorenzo Zambrano. He is the head of Cemex, the world’s third largest cement manufacturer, and is said to own one of the world’s largest collection of Ferraris. Lest that make him sound like a youthful brat, I should add that he is a courtly, sliver-haired man in his mid-sixties who has turned his company from a small Mexican firm into a major multinational, over the course of more than twenty years in charge.

Zambrano lives and works in Monterrey – and he is not a one off. The city is also the base of Femsa, Mexico’s largest beer manufacturer, who have just been bought by Heineken for over $5 billion. And lots of US multinationals, including Whirlpool, have major plants here. Monterrey is now also expanding into services, including medical services aimed at Americans – apparently gastric banding is a great business to be in, if you are just a few hours drive from the US border.

One of the main things driving Monterrey’s success is the local university, the Tecnologico de Monterrey, whose annual conference I spoke at today. The Tecnologico is often referred to as Mexico’s MIT and is widely regarded as the most successful private university in Latin America. I got a tour this afternoon and saw the research lab, where they think they have just come up with a vaccine for the swine flu that hit Mexico so badly, earlier this year.

All this entrepreneurial drive makes Monterrey feel very different from Mexico City. As one of the businessmen I met today (not Zambrano) put it – “We feel much closer to Texas than to Mexico City”. While the professors and economists I met in Mexico City were notably pessimistic about the state of the nation, the businessmen of Monterrey seem much more positive about the future. Anyway, tomorrow I will leave behind all this positive entrepreneurial thinking and head back to Mexico City, for my more usual diet of meetings with confused politicians and depressed academics.