Don Eugenio Garza Sada was born on January 11, 1892. His childhood coincided with the first stage of Mexico’s industrialization, during the period in which Porfirio Díaz was in office, known as the Porfiriato (1876 - 1910), and when foreign investors introduced the latest technologies of that time.
As a child, through his father’s example, he received lessons that would later become fundamental to his professional career. He learned to live side by side with risk and problems. He assimilated his father’s patriotism, community service, rectitude, modesty, high standards and severity, forging definitively the personality that would touch so many people and attain so many achievements.
He studied primary school in the Colegio de San Juan, in Saltillo, Coahuila, and then came to Monterrey to study in the Colegio Hidalgo, run by the Marist Brothers, followed by high school in a military institution, Western Academy, in the United States. He stayed in the US to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering, in 1916.
While in the United States, he became aware that education is the most effective means of achieving the industrialization and development of a country, and of the connection existing between research and science, between science and technology, and between these three components and development, wellbeing and freedom. This formed the basis for building his life project.
In 1917, he began working at the Cuauhtémoc Brewery. Upon his death, almost 56 years later, in 1973, he was President of Grupo Valores Industriales, S. A., (VISA), which brought together several companies and was created around Cuauhtémoc Brewery.
He always had a clear idea of what work is. Behind each machine, each desk, each service window, he saw the human being working there. As a result, he always treated his collaborators and employees with kindness and closeness, and maintained the austere, simple lifestyle that marked his youth.
It was once said about him: "For Don Eugenio, every task is important enough to be granted all his drive and capacity to achieve a perfect result. He lived every matter intensely and encapsulated all his experience and talent in each and every activity."
Don Eugenio Garza Sada was a devote advocate of education. He firmly believed that human development would drive Mexico to become a better country. Therefore, through Sociedad Cuauhtémoc y Famosa, he channeled highly significant resources to offer courses and, above all, grant scholarships for the children of those who worked in the affiliated companies.
After 26 years at the Cuauhtémoc Brewery, Don Eugenio considered that the preparation of Mexican technicians was long overdue, driving him to undertake his most important work: Tecnológico de Monterrey, sponsored by Enseñanza e Investigación Superior, A.C.
To this end, he met with a group of Monterrey businessmen and crystallized the idea of creating an institution that would prepare men and women comprehensively–and not just as well-qualified professionals. This institution, conceived in Don Eugenio’s mind, it is said, since 1917, began modestly in a house in Monterrey’s downtown area in 1943, with 350 students and a handful of professors.
Don Eugenio devoted a large part of his time to this institution, as Chairman of the Tecnológico Board of Directors from 1943 until his death.
Don Eugenio is an enduring example. His concern for human development through education and work, as well as for enhancing the standard of living and cultural level of his compatriots, is still alive in the numerous works he undertook, whose benefits multiply to this day since Don Eugenio knew how to transmit to so many people the values that guided his life.