Article 23 of Mexico’s law on credit information companies requires the credit bureaus to keep a person’s credit history “al menos durante un plazo de setenta y dos meses” (for a period of at least seventy-two months). N+ explains that debts above 1,000 UDIS are removed after six years in the database of the Buró de Crédito.
A person with unpaid debts is said to estar en el Buró, to be in the bureau. N+ and Xataka both remind readers that the bureau “no es una lista negra” (is not a blacklist).
Mexico’s consumer protection agency, Profeco, runs the Buró Comercial. According to Expansión, it is a website that shows which companies have a registered adhesion contract, and “también si han tenido quejas u otros procedimientos” (also whether they have had complaints or other proceedings).
President José López Portillo promised to defend the peso “como un perro,” like a dog. Excélsior dates the phrase to August 17, 1981. Expansión places it before his last government report, without giving a date.
The crisis that followed, Expansión writes, helped “devaluar en más de 400% el valor de nuestra moneda” (devalue our currency by more than 400 percent).
On December 1, 2018, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made 100 commitments in the Zócalo. A year later, he said he had fulfilled 89 of them.
On September 1, 2021, he said: “De los 100 compromisos que hice en el Zócalo hemos cumplido la gran mayoría 98, sólo tenemos pendientes dos” (Of the 100 commitments I made in the Zócalo, we have fulfilled the great majority, 98. Only two are pending). These counts are his own. No independent count was found.
Cría fama y échate a dormir, “build a reputation and lie down to sleep.” El Imparcial explains that the saying “hace referencia a la reputación” (refers to reputation) and to how hard it is to change an image once someone has created it.
The newspaper notes that the saying comes from Spanish tradition. It can be used as a warning or with irony.
Mexican Spanish has several phrases for keeping someone content without delivering.
Dar atole con el dedo, “to give atole with the finger.” Atole is a warm corn drink. BBC Mundo, citing the Diccionario de mexicanismos of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua, glosses the phrase as engañar, to deceive.
Dar el avión, “to give the airplane,” to brush someone off.
Dar largas, to keep putting off an answer.
During his 2012 presidential campaign, Enrique Peña Nieto signed his campaign commitments before a notary. The slogan was Te lo firmo y te lo cumplo, “I sign it for you and I keep it for you.” There were 266 commitments, 210 of them on infrastructure.
How many were kept is disputed. In December 2017, Forbes México reported a count by the business federation Coparmex: 166 commitments were unfulfilled. A commissioner of the transparency institute INAI said that only 93 of 263 had been met.
Te doy mi palabra, “I give you my word.”
Palabra de honor, “word of honor.”
Lo prometido es deuda, “what is promised is a debt.”
Del dicho al hecho hay mucho trecho, “from saying to doing is a long way.” The Ministry of Public Education uses the saying as the title of a school lesson on sayings.