The Corregidora’s Warning

On September 13, 1810, the conspiracy of Querétaro was betrayed. Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, the wife of the corregidor Miguel Domínguez, was locked in her room. She sent her warning with “el alcaide Ignacio Pérez” (the jailer Ignacio Pérez). He went to San Miguel and, when he did not find Ignacio Allende, “puso el aviso en manos de Hidalgo” (put the warning in Hidalgo’s hands), according to Excélsior. Hidalgo began the uprising early on September 16.

Accounts differ on how she reached Pérez. One says that she struck the floor with her shoe. Another says that she knocked on the wall.

Networks of Exchange

In 1975, the anthropologist Larissa Adler de Lomnitz described the Cerrada del Cóndor, a shantytown in Mexico City, in the journal Demografía y Economía. Of about 180 households, “solamente diez unidades residenciales estaban desligadas de sus vecinos” (only ten households were cut off from their neighbors). The others formed 45 networks of reciprocal exchange, averaging four or five families.

“Las redes están formadas en su mayoría por parientes cercanos, pero también incluyen a vecinos no emparentados” (The networks are formed mostly of close relatives, but they also include unrelated neighbors). When a man loses his work, “su familia recibe alojamiento y es mantenida mientras se le encuentra empleo” (his family receives lodging and is supported while a job is found for him).

The Night of Tlatelolco

On October 3, 1968, the day after the massacre in Tlatelolco, the headlines of the capital’s main newspapers played down the event or blamed the students. El Sol de México ran the headline “Manos Extrañas se Empeñan en Desprestigiar a México” (Foreign Hands Strive to Discredit Mexico). Excélsior wrote: “Recio Combate al Dispersar el Ejército un mitin de Huelguistas” (Fierce Fighting as the Army Breaks Up a Strikers’ Meeting).

In 1971, Elena Poniatowska published La noche de Tlatelolco, with the subtitle Testimonios de historia oral (Testimonies of oral history). It collects the accounts of students, workers and many others. Poniatowska later recalled that her own newspaper had turned her reporting down: “¡En Novedades rechazaron todo!” (At Novedades they rejected everything!)

Levers and Good Trees

For a study published in 2009, two researchers asked 500 adults in Aguascalientes about 60 popular sayings related to corruption. One was Más vale tener palancas que dinero, “it is better to have levers than money.” 83 percent of respondents linked it to corruption.

Another was El que a buen árbol se arrima, buena sombra le cobija, “whoever draws close to a good tree is sheltered by good shade.” 76 percent said they had used it.

Through Friends and Relatives

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.

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).

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