It was founded in 1934 by Daniel Cosío Villegas with the original purpose of providing students of economics from the Escuela Nacional de Economía with specialized books in Spanish.

Furthermore, the Mexican government provides resources to partially cover the costs of production, allowing books to be comparatively more affordable.

Fondo de Cultura Económica has 8 foreign branches in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, Spain and the United States, which cover the Spanish-speaking population from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Moreover, FCE has representative offices in Bolivia, Canada, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras and Puerto Rico, besides having distribution partners in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Uruguay.

Thanks to its authors, editors, and translators, Fondo de Cultura Económica has an 80-year history of being a leading participant in the higher education system and cultural and literary movements of Mexico and Latin America.

Among those who have shaped FCE's history are distinguished authors like Alfonso Reyes, Juan Rulfo, Juan José Arreola, Octavio Paz, Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Pellicer, Raimundo Lida, José Gorostiza, Alí Chumacero, Salvador Elizondo, Ramón Xirau, Juan Goytisolo, Camilo José Cela, Luis Rosales, María Zambrano, Miguel Delibes, Ricardo Piglia, Gonzalo Rojas, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Gelman, Nicanor Parra, Álvaro Mutis, Alejo Carpentier, Sergio Pitol, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos, Elena Poniatowska, and Fernando del Paso.

1934 In April, publication of the first issue of El Trimestre Económico, an academic journal jointly directed by Cosío Villegas and Eduardo Villaseñor with the aim of providing translations and original articles on the subject.

A small office in 32 Madero Street, downtown Mexico City, precisely at the Banco Nacional Hipotecario Urbano y de Obras Públicas, serves as its headquarters.

1935 First volumes published: Silver Dollars, by William P. Shea and Harold J. Laski’s Karl Marx, two translations made by the renowned writers Salvador Novo and Antonio Castro Leal, respectively.

FCE's logo, designed by Francisco Díaz de León (usually attributed to José Moreno Villa), is printed on the covers of both volumes.

Gómez Morin and Prieto are replaced on the governing board by Jesus Silva Herzog and Enrique Sarro.

Both FCE and Casa de España start a productive partnership of joint publications (now their offices are neighboring buildings in Mexico City).

Several refugees from the Spanish Republican exile join FCE's Technical Department as consultants, editors, translators, and trainers, a cooperation which lasted for generations and included José Gaos, Ramón Iglesia, José Medina Echavarría, Eugenio Ímaz, Manuel Pedroso, Javier Márquez, Sindulfo de la Fuente, Luis Alaminos, Vicente Herrero, Joaquín Díez-Canedo, and Francisco Giner.

1946 At the request of Cosío Villegas, Pedro Henríquez Ureña proposes a plan to create the Biblioteca Americana collection.

1947 Translated by Adrian Recinos, the Popol Vuh is the first volume of Biblioteca Americana, a collection created by Pedro Henriquez Ureña.

1951 - 1957 The complete works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz published for the first time, edited by Alfonso Méndez Plancarte.

1952 With Alfonso Reyes’s Obra poética FCE launches the Letras Mexicanas collection, focused on the dissemination of Mexican literatura.

The Colección Popular is born with the reissue of Juan Rulfo’s El llano en llamas, first published in Letras Mexicanas collection in 1953.

1965 In November, Arnaldo Orfila Reynal leaves the direction of the FCE following a controversy promoted by the government of President Díaz Ordaz for the publication of works such as Oscar Lewis’s Los hijos de Sánchez, and Charles Wright Mills’s Escucha Yanqui.

1971 During the first two months, the first issue of La Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Economica’s “new series” appears, directed by Jaime García Terrés.

1992 Located in the Carretera Picacho-Ajusco and designed by architect Teodoro González de León, FCE's new headquarters are inaugurated.

1994 Commemorating its 60th anniversary, FCE publishes its third Catálogo histórico and Víctor Díaz Arciniegas's Historia de la casa.

2005 In October, with the fourth reprint of its third edition inside the Colección Popular collection of Octavio Paz's El laberinto de la soledad, Posdata y Vuelta a El laberinto de la soledad, FCE prints the one hundred millionth copy since its founding.

2006 The Centro Cultural Bella Época in Mexico City is opened, which houses the Rosario Castellanos bookstore, the Luis Cardoza y Aragón gallery and the Lido cinema.

2008 A new building to house FCE's branch in Colombia is inaugurated: the Centro Cultural Gabriel García Márquez on the historic downtown of Bogotá.

The fourth edition of José Emilio Pacheco’s Tarde o temprano (Poemas 1958-2009) inside the Poesía collection is published.

2010 During the bicentennial of independence and the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, FCE publishes Martín Luis Guzmán’s Obras completas, and all seven volumes of Historia crítica de las modernizaciones de México, a joint publication with CIDE, as well as Alan Knight’s La Revolución Mexicana.

The Ricardo Pozas bookstore in Querétaro closes its doors to be replaced in 2016 by a new store named after Hugo Gutiérrez Vega, result of a partnership between FCE and the State’s Universidad Autónoma.

2015 The tenth branch, the Centro Cultural Carlos Fuentes in Quito, Ecuador, is inaugurated, after twenty years without any new foreign subsidiaries.

Surrounded by gardens, the facility also houses the Unidad Cultural Jesús Silva Herzog, the Gonzalo Robles Library, which preserves FCE's growing collection, and the Alfonso Reyes bookstore.