Economic internationalisation and regional response: The case of North Eastern Mexico

Economic internationalisation and globalising processes have a dialectical appearance. The trend towards homogenisation in an economic, social, political and cultural sense will meet with regionally generated production, innovation and knowledge systems that, while responding to these external influences, develop their own manifestation of the global‐local nexus. The developments in Mexico’s North East, with the industrial city of Monterrey as its core centre, present an example of the impact of these forces. Until 1988 Monterrey industries were operating on a protected domestic market. This situation changed with the opening up of the Mexican economy in that year and the signing of the NAFTA agreement with the USA and Canada in 1993. This paper analyses this insertion in the world economy and the regional response, first on an institutional level where the special brand of family capitalism – as found in Monterrey – is confronting the exigencies of international competitiveness and the organisation of business practice it requires. Second, on a sub‐regional level, we observe the reaffirmation of regional idiosyncracies in the social, political and cultural sphere. The interaction between these two processes has been creating a most interesting case of glocalisation within the context created by NAFTA.