In Mexico, pena means shame or embarrassment. The 2001 edition of the dictionary of the Spanish Academy lists this sense for the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. Me da pena means “I am embarrassed.” Qué pena means “how embarrassing.” Pena ajena is the embarrassment a person feels for someone else.
Making Somebody Nobody
In El laberinto de la soledad, Octavio Paz recalls the answer of a maid who was asked who was in the next room: “No es nadie, señor, soy yo” (It is nobody, sir, it is me).
In the same chapter, “Máscaras mexicanas,” Paz describes el ninguneo: “El ninguneo es una operación que consiste en hacer de Alguien, Ninguno” (Ninguneo is an operation that consists of making Somebody into Nobody).
The Workplace Standard on Psychosocial Risk
Since October 23, 2019, Mexican employers have had to comply with the official standard NOM-035-STPS-2018 on psychosocial risk at work. It defines workplace violence as acts of harassment or mistreatment that can harm a worker’s integrity or health. Mistreatment includes “insultos, burlas, humillaciones y/o ridiculizaciones” (insults, mockery, humiliation and/or ridicule).
One of the standard’s questionnaires asks workers about statements such as “Recibo críticas constantes a mi persona y/o trabajo” (I receive constant criticism of my person and/or my work).
Humiliating Punishment
On January 11, 2021, Mexico reformed its General Law on the Rights of Children and Adolescents and its Federal Civil Code to ban the corporal and humiliating punishment of children. Humiliating punishment is defined as any treatment that is “ofensivo, denigrante, desvalorizador, estigmatizante, ridiculizador y de menosprecio” (offensive, degrading, devaluing, stigmatizing, ridiculing and belittling).
Who Is Who in the Lies
On June 30, 2021, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s morning press conference added a weekly section called “Quién es quién en las mentiras de la semana” (Who is who in the lies of the week). Each Wednesday, Ana Elizabeth García Vilchis presented statements by journalists, commentators and social media users and labeled them false.
The next day, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asked the government to reconsider the section. The government replied that what it stigmatized was “the lie or the slander,” not journalists.
Lady Profeco
In late April 2013, according to press reports, Andrea Benítez did not get the table she wanted at Máximo Bistrot, a restaurant in Mexico City. Soon after, the reports said, inspectors from Profeco, the federal consumer protection agency, came to the restaurant. Its head was her father, Humberto Benítez Treviño. Profeco never formally closed the restaurant, but the owners kept it shut. The story spread on social media, and she became known as #LadyProfeco.
In mid-May 2013, by order of President Enrique Peña Nieto, her father was removed from his post.
Here the public exposure was aimed upward, at a powerful family, and it produced a result within weeks.