In August 2019, Mexico’s Labor Secretary, Luisa María Alcalde Luján, spoke at the ExpoEmpleo OCC job fair. According to Excélsior, she said that 56 percent of employed people in Mexico had found their job through personal contacts, friends or relatives. Only 25 percent of job seekers used private agencies or job boards.
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.”
Article 34
Mexico’s law on the professional career service in the federal administration fills posts through open competition on merit. Its Article 34 allows an exception. In exceptional situations, a person can be appointed temporarily, without the recruitment procedure, under the responsibility of the head of the agency.
According to figures of the Ministry of Public Administration compiled in a UNAM journal, federal agencies made 4,451 appointments under Article 34 in 2019 and held 2,449 open competitions. In 2018, the figures were 2,665 appointments and 5,714 competitions.
Blind Loyalty
On September 24, 2020, after Jaime Cárdenas resigned as head of the Indep, the institute that sells seized assets, President López Obrador said: “Pedimos lealtad a ciegas al proyecto de transformación, porque el pueblo nos eligió para eso.” “We ask for blind loyalty to the project of transformation, because the people elected us for that.” He said that the loyalty was owed to the project, not to him. Cárdenas had said that his loyalty was reflective, not blind.
In February 2026, Expansión reported that Julio Scherer, in his book Ni venganza ni perdón, describes López Obrador’s formula for appointments: “colaboradores con 90% de lealtad y 10% de capacidad,” collaborators with 90 percent loyalty and 10 percent ability.
The One Who Commands
El que manda, manda, y si se equivoca, vuelve a mandar. “The one who commands, commands, and if he makes a mistake, he commands again.” In a 2019 column in Excélsior, the journalist Félix Cortés Camarillo wrote that he learned the saying from a businessman, don Emilio.
The Lever
In Mexico, a person who tiene palanca, “has a lever,” has a connection who can open a door. In a 2021 article, the researchers Arellano-Gault and Trejo Alonso describe the palanca as a mechanism for exchanging favors among acquaintances and “acquaintances of acquaintances.” It forms a network “that rests on relationships of trust.”
One participant in their focus groups said: “En México, la vida se compone de una serie de palancas” (In Mexico, life is made up of a series of levers).