Mexico, Competence, Eloquence - understand-culture

The Debate of 1994

In 1994, Mexico held its first televised presidential debate. The candidate of the PAN, Diego Fernández de Cevallos, was seen as the winner. In a poll released the next day by the PAN’s secretary general, Felipe Calderón, “54 por ciento de los entrevistados pensaba que el panista se había llevado la noche” (54 percent of those interviewed thought that the PAN candidate had won the night). Ernesto Zedillo had 24 percent and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas 8 percent.

In 2014, the news site Sopitas recalled: “En los días siguientes, extrañamente, Diego Fernández desapareció de los medios de comunicación” (In the following days, strangely, Diego Fernández disappeared from the media).

Form Is Substance

En política, la forma es fondo. “In politics, form is substance.” UNAM Global attributes the phrase to the politician Jesús Reyes Heroles and quotes it in a longer form: “seremos inflexibles en la defensa de las ideas, pero respetuosos en las formas, pues en política, frecuentemente, la forma es fondo” (we will be inflexible in defending ideas but respectful in forms, because in politics, form is often substance).

The common short form drops the word frecuentemente, often. No original speech or date for the phrase could be found.

To Talk Like Cantinflas

Cantinflear is a Spanish verb made from the name of Cantinflas, the Mexican comic actor Mario Moreno. The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines it as “hablar o actuar de forma disparatada e incongruente,” to speak or act in a nonsensical and incongruous way.

According to Excélsior, the Academy recognized the word in 1992. The newspaper quotes the definition with a further phrase, y sin decir nada, “and without saying anything.”