The Nails in the Coffin of the ‘Elefante de Acero’: The Hiriart report, the Industrial Conversion Program, and the various reasons for the closure of Fundidora Monterrey (1986)

Abstract

Many consider Engineer Fernando Hiriart's report to be the culprit behind the closure of Fundidora Monterrey. However, Hiriart did not propose its closure, and his report would be merely the first nail in the coffin that would lead the Steel Elephant to bankruptcy. The points he makes also turn out to be true. In the midst of a national and global economic crisis, and amid the global deindustrialization of the steel industry, the neoliberal Mexican government of Miguel de la Madrid decided to implement the Industrial Reconversion Program for the SEMIP (Mexican Ministry of Energy, Mines, and State-Owned Industry) sector, in which SIDERMEX was involved. SIDERMEX divested dozens of its companies, the largest and most notorious being Fundidora Monterrey. Investigating mainly the Fundidora Monterrey Historical Archive, as well as statements by several members of SIDERMEX both before the closure of Fundidora as well as after in the newspaper "El Porvenir" and “El Norte”, this article aims to demonstrate how the administration of SIDERMEX, focused more on the interests of the nation and not in a business manner, caused, in part, through poor decisions, that Fundidora could not recover economically, that it could not increase its production due to the restrictions of SIDERMEX and therefore suffer a loss of relevance in the national steel scene that eventually led to its being declared bankrupt.