Monterrey Audioguides

The Cerro de la Silla, the mountain whose silhouette looks like a saddle, appears on every Monterrey logo, banner, and business card because it is impossible to pretend it is not there. From the Gran Plaza in the city center, from the Barrio Antiguo's rooftop bars, from the highway approaching from the south, the Sierra Madre Oriental rises abruptly behind the city in a drama of scale that makes you feel like you are in a mountain kingdom that happened to also become an industrial metropolis. Monterrey is less than 200 kilometers from the Texas border and has always oriented itself more toward the United States economically than toward Mexico City, which is 900 kilometers south.

The Cuauhtemoc Brewery, founded in 1890, made Monterrey the birthplace of Carta Blanca, Sol, and Tecate, three beers that are now drunk on every continent.

FEMSA, the beverage and convenience retail company that grew from that brewery, is now one of the largest corporations in Latin America. Cemex, the global cement giant, and Alfa, the industrial conglomerate, both headquartered in Monterrey, represent a culture of industrial seriousness that shapes the city's self-image as Mexico's business capital in a way that Mexico City's federal government identity does not.