Confianza means trust. It also means familiarity between people.
De confianza, a person one can rely on, or a close and intimate one.
En confianza, in private, between people who trust each other.
Agarrar confianza, to grow at ease with someone over time.
Pásale, con confianza, “come in, make yourself at home,” said to a guest.
Tomarse confianzas, to take liberties, to act with more familiarity than the relationship allows.
Más vale malo por conocido que bueno por conocer. “Better the bad one you know than the good one you have yet to know.”
In February 2015, a telephone poll of 600 adults by the firm GCE asked Mexicans to match popular sayings with the political parties. 51 percent matched this one to the PRI.
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.
In Fernando de Fuentes’s film El compadre Mendoza (1934), Rosalío Mendoza is a landowner during the Revolution. He swaps the portraits of Huerta and Zapata as the Revolution shifts. He makes a Zapatista leader the godfather of his son, and so his compadre. Under pressure, he betrays him.
In 1994, the magazine Somos ranked the film third among the 100 best Mexican films.
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.
In an article in the Revista Mexicana de Sociología, the sociologist Héctor Castillo Berthier described the traders of La Merced, the Mexico City market that preceded the Central de Abasto. The traders followed customary norms rather than formal law. They kept “un riguroso código de honor,” a strict code of honor, and their deals were not made in writing, with notes and receipts.
The large wholesalers extended credit to the smaller traders, and the credit bound the smaller traders to them.
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.
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.
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).