This document analyses the different phases of a restructuring cycle undergone by manufacturing industry in the Central Region of Mexico during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Four distinct phases can be identified: rapid growth with increasing instability from 1970 to 1980; crisis and marked deindustrialization from 1980 to 1988; reactivation during the five year period from 1988 to 1993; and finally, a recessive period from 1993 to 1996. In each phase, a comparative analysis is carried out of the principal productive, work-related and territorial changes experienced by the primary urban-industrial nucleus and by the regional periphery, with the aim of identifying the "winning" and "losing" industries, changes in the regional division of labour and in the levels of industrial territorial concentration. A comprehensive reading of this cycle will enable us to identify a notorious instability in industrial growth, which feeds intraregional differences and leads to a greater industrial territorial complexity