In Mexico, a coyote de trámites is “el intermediario informal que se ofrece a resolver gestiones ante oficinas de gobierno” (the informal middleman who offers to sort out procedures at government offices), according to Cultura Colectiva. The coyote does this for money. In formal language, the same person is a gestor informal.
Remittances
Remittances are the money that Mexicans working abroad send home to their families. In 2024, according to Bank of Mexico figures reported by the agency EFE, remittances to Mexico rose 2.3 percent to a record 64,745 million dollars.
The Grandmother Cares
INEGI’s National Survey of Employment and Social Security of 2017 asked who cares for the children up to six years old of working mothers. “El 16.3% fueron atendidos en una guardería” (16.3 percent were cared for in a day care center). “El 83.7% estuvo al cuidado de una persona” (83.7 percent were in the care of a person), “destacando la abuela como la principal cuidadora (65.6%)” (above all the grandmother, the main caregiver at 65.6 percent).
Kinship, Friendship and Paisanaje
In 1986, the sociologist Douglas Massey published “The Social Organization of Mexican Migration to the United States.” Its abstract states: “Migrant networks are based on the bonds of kinship, friendship, and paisanaje.”
Paisanaje is the bond between people who come from the same town or region.
Verified 19S
After the earthquake of September 19, 2017, more than a hundred volunteers met at the Centro Cultural Horizontal, in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. They built a platform called #Verificado19S to verify and organize information for citizen relief. One volunteer told El Financiero: “Todo esto nació como una forma de organización civil” (All of this was born as a form of civil organization).
Reports arrived through forms and WhatsApp groups. Networks of volunteers checked them by telephone and on site. Urgent needs were posted on Twitter.
Obeyed and Not Complied With
Spanish colonial law gave officials a way to stop a royal order for a time. A royal declaration of 1509 says such orders “primero deben ser obedecidas y no cumplidas, y después consultadas” (must first be obeyed and not complied with, and then consulted on). The Recopilación of 1567 uses a similar formula: “que la tal carta sea obedecida y no cumplida.”
Between 1571 and 1574, the authorities of Mexico City, doctors included, applied the formula obedézcase pero no se cumpla, “let it be obeyed but not carried out,” in a dispute over medical practice. A study of the case sums it up: “obedecieron pero no cumplieron” (they obeyed but did not comply).
Saint Monday
Hacer San Lunes, “to keep Saint Monday,” meant not going to work on Monday. A study in the journal Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México describes the “tradicional San Lunes, que culturalmente había sido el descanso de facto en ciertos oficios y en sectores populares” (traditional Saint Monday, which had been the de facto day of rest in certain trades and among the working classes).
In 1902, when Sunday rest was being regulated, the newspaper El Faro hoped that “descansando sin emborracharse, el pueblo dejará de hacer San Lunes” (resting without getting drunk, the people will stop keeping Saint Monday).
Sister Filotea
At the end of 1690, Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz, bishop of Puebla, printed a critique by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz under the title Carta atenagórica. He added a letter of his own that urged her to concentrate on divine studies and reduce the human ones.
He signed the letter “Sor Filotea de la Cruz,” a nun’s name. According to the edition published by the government of the State of Mexico, “Fernández de Santa Cruz no quiso que la admonición se interpretara como surgida de su potestad episcopal” (did not want the warning to be read as coming from his authority as bishop).
Sor Juana answered on March 1, 1691, with the Respuesta a sor Filotea de la Cruz, addressed to the pseudonym.
Strictly Personal
In 2019, the first year of López Obrador’s government, a series of senior officials resigned. Simón Levy, undersecretary of tourism, called his resignation “estrictamente personal” (strictly personal) and “irrevocable.” When Patricia Bugarín left as undersecretary of security, her ministry spoke of reasons that were “estrictamente personales.”
Two officials broke with this. On May 21, Germán Martínez left the IMSS, the social security institute, and called excessive savings in health “inhumano.” On July 9, Finance Secretary Carlos Urzúa wrote in his letter of resignation: “Discrepancias en materia económica hubo muchas” (There were many disagreements on economic matters).
The Children of Tepeaca
In the first decades after the Conquest, some Indigenous families in the new Christian communities kept images of their old gods at home. In Tepeaca, Puebla, the friar Bernardino Minaya used boys who had been raised as Christians to find them. The chronicler Motolinía wrote that he “envió a aquellos niños a que buscasen por todas las casas […] los ídolos” (sent those boys to search all the houses for the idols).
According to México Desconocido, the boys searched for several days, entered the homes and took the images away.