Inversiones francesas en la modernidad porfirista: mecanismos y actores

Transatlantic retailing

“…Barcelonnettes established ten of the 11 Porfirian department stores and owned all of them after Sebastian Robert bought out the shareholders of the Centro Mercantil in 1901 (Bunker, 2011, Chapter 3). They also became major investors in the banking, textile, beer, cigarette, paper, and dynamite‐manufacturing sectors of the economy, but their first and greatest public profile remained in retail (Pérez Siller, 2004). So associated were the French with the textile retailing that the stock Mexican stereotype of the Frenchman was “Vende mucha manta y hace buena cocina [He sells a lot of cloth and cooks well]” (Antiq‐Auvaro, 1992, p. 34).…”

“…By the time of the Revolution in 1910, the Barcelonnettes comprised 80 percent of the 6,000 member French community in Mexico, with 80 percent of them working in the garment industry, the vast majority single males. They had constructed an astonishing retailing network of 214 commercial houses in 31 cities and 23 states, a network of entrepreneurs linked by business and social ties of kinship and regional identity (Arnaud et al , 1994, p. 81; Pérez Siller, 2004, p. 91).…”

“…The most notable was the formation of La Compañia Industrial de Orizaba, S.A. (CIDOSA), which established and incorporated a number of textile factories including Río Blanco, the largest and most modern facility in Latin America. By 1910, the group generated 13.5 percent of national textile production (Pérez Siller, 2004, pp. 100‐02).…”

“…These included increased levels of capitalization, diversified merchandise, changed sales practices, expanded advertising and distribution to a regional and even national market, and incorporation of new technologies. For example, when the Palacio de Hierro incorporated in 1891 it quadrupled its capital to 4,000,000 pesos (Pérez Siller, 2004, p. 95). This allowed it to construct its new building as well as diversify and enlarge its inventory to fill the new space now specialized into departments which by the early 1900s numbered 74.…”

“…Blending French and Mexican materials, he imported the steel from the Paris foundry at Moisan and the granite façade stones from the Chiluca quarry (Homps‐Brousse, 2002, p. 11; Bunker, 2011, Chapter 3). Subsequent stores in Mexico City followed this pattern, hiring Parisian architects to work with top Mexican engineers such as Miguel Angel de Quevedo to execute the construction (Pérez Siller, 2004, p. 96).…”