 After convincing his father, they bought their first corn mill in 1948 for 75,000.00 pesos (the peso-dollar exchange rate fluctuated between $4.85 and $6.95), and took it to Cerralvo, where he started what is now Maseca, the company that manufactures and markets one out of every four corn tortillas in Europe, Asia and Central America.For starting it off they had to sell all of their other businesses, and when they ran out of money, a friend he had made in Cerralvo, General Bonifacio Salinas Leal, governor of Nuevo León, lent them money and kept some of the company's stock that, years later, would sell back to them again.Thus began a long relationship with politicians, which is one of the most repeated criticism that is made to Gonzalez Barrera