Al mal tiempo, buena cara. “To bad weather, a good face.”
No hay mal que por bien no venga. “There is no misfortune that does not bring some good.”
Dios aprieta, pero no ahorca. “God squeezes, but he does not strangle.”
Como lo que el viento a Juárez. “Like what the wind did to Juárez.” It is said of something that has no effect on a person.
Calaveras literarias, “literary skulls,” are verses written for the Day of the Dead. National Geographic calls them the Day of the Dead tradition that mocks death. They are “epigramas o versos rítmicos de rima variada cuyo motivo principal es la muerte” (epigrams or rhythmic verses with varied rhyme whose main subject is death).
The first ones were published in 1879 in El Socialista, a newspaper of Guadalajara. In the early 1940s, the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a collective of printmakers, promoted them.
The people of Santiago Xalitzintla, San Pedro Benito Juárez and Tochimilco call the Popocatépetl volcano Don Goyo. Every March 12 they celebrate what AFP calls his birthday.
Antonio Analco, the tiempero of Xalitzintla, told N+: “estamos acostumbrados a vivir con él de años, de tiempo” (we have been used to living with him for years, for a long time).
A resident, Juana Pérez, said: “Estamos en las manos del Señor, si nos va a llevar, nos va a llevar, y si no, pues qué vamos a hacer” (We are in the Lord’s hands. If he is going to take us, he will take us, and if not, well, what are we going to do).
Quirino Mendoza y Cortés composed Cielito lindo in 1882. Its chorus says: “Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores” (sing and do not cry). Excélsior notes that its first verse is very similar to an old Andalusian song.
Mexican fans sing it at sporting events. Vanguardia called it the most representative song of Mexico at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. According to Por Esto!, the phrase represents for many people “una forma de enfrentar las dificultades con optimismo” (a way to face difficulties with optimism).
In the World Happiness Report 2025, Mexico ranked 10th of 147 countries, with a score of 6.979. In 2024, it had ranked 25th.
In the Gaceta UNAM, the university’s newspaper, the researcher Roberto Castellanos Cereceda noted that the highest levels of happiness are found in households of four to five people.
Mexican psychologists have long studied the traditional beliefs of Mexican families. A 2011 study in the Revista Mexicana de Investigación en Psicología lists among them “machismo, obediencia afiliativa, virginidad, abnegación, miedo a la autoridad” (machismo, affiliative obedience, virginity, self-denial, fear of authority). The psychologist Rolando Díaz-Loving summarizes one finding of this research: “self-modification coping styles are preferred over self-affirmation as guides of interaction mechanisms.”
These beliefs change over time. The 2011 study found that “unas se mantienen inalterables, mientras que otras perdieron más del 50% de apoyo” (some remain unchanged, while others lost more than 50 percent of their support).
Exvotos are “pequeñas pinturas, hechas sobre láminas de metal o madera” (small paintings, made on sheets of metal or wood), in the words of Chilango. They are “pinturas de pequeño formato en las que se registra el favor recibido de Dios, la virgen o algún santo” (small paintings that record the favor received from God, the Virgin or a saint).
In 1649, Luis Lasso de la Vega published in Nahuatl the account of the apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Juan Diego. In the Spanish translation by Primo Feliciano Velázquez, published in 1926, the Virgin asks Juan Diego: “¿No estoy yo aquí, que soy tu madre?” (Am I not here, I who am your mother?)
In Juan Rulfo’s story “Nos han dado la tierra,” from El Llano en llamas (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1953), the government gives a group of peasants land on a dry and barren plain. The official dismisses their complaints and hands them papers. One of the peasants says: “No, el llano no es cosa que sirva” (No, the plain is good for nothing).
On June 13, 1998, in Lyon, Mexico beat South Korea 3-1 at the World Cup. Cornered by two Korean defenders, Cuauhtémoc Blanco trapped the ball between his feet and jumped forward over them with the ball. The move became known as the cuauhtemiña.
The sports newspaper Récord describes it as a technical resource “nacido en el barrio” (born in the neighborhood).