Sacar adelante a la familia, “to bring the family forward,” means to provide for one’s family. In May 2025, before Mother’s Day, a column in the newspaper Vanguardia described mothers “sacando adelante a sus familias” (bringing their families forward).
Leaving the Boss
In March 2023, Emprendedor.com reported a survey by the job site Computrabajo on why people in Mexico quit their jobs. The most common reason was malos jefes, bad bosses, named by 43 percent. The article sums it up: “4 de cada 10 trabajadores han renunciado a causa de un liderazgo negativo” (4 in 10 workers have resigned because of negative leadership).
The article does not give the size of the sample or the dates of the survey.
Roma
Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma (2018) follows Cleo, a live-in domestic worker for a middle-class family in the Colonia Roma of Mexico City in the early 1970s. When Cleo is pregnant, doña Teresa, the children’s grandmother, takes her to a furniture store to buy a crib.
Later, on a beach, Cleo walks into the sea to bring the children out of the waves, although she cannot swim. In 2019 the film won the Oscar for best foreign language film.
We Do Not Want to Be Adopted
Marcelina Bautista worked as a domestic worker for 22 years, starting at the age of 14. In 2010 she founded the Centro de Apoyo y Capacitación para Empleadas del Hogar, and in 2015 a national union of domestic workers.
In 2016 she told Expansión: “Luego dicen que somos casi de la familia. Las trabajadoras del hogar no queremos que nos adopten, queremos que respeten nuestros derechos” (Then they say that we are almost family. Domestic workers do not want to be adopted, we want our rights respected).
What she asks for is rights, not a place in the family.
Who Inspires Trust
INEGI carried out its survey ENCIG 2023 from late October to mid-December 2023. “87.4 % dijo que sus familiares eran quienes mayor confianza le inspiraban” (87.4 percent said that their relatives were the ones who inspired the most trust in them).
The statistics institute of Jalisco published the results for that state by degree of trust. Mucha confianza, a lot of trust, went to family from 50.2 percent of respondents, to coworkers from 33.6 percent and to neighbors from 21.4 percent.
Highly Productive and Fully Human
Lorenzo Servitje was the founder of Grupo Bimbo. In En esto creo (This I believe), a statement of his beliefs reproduced by Catholic.net, he wrote: “Creo que hay que procurar el bien de quienes trabajan con nosotros” (I believe that we must look after the good of those who work with us). A company, he wrote, should be “no sólo altamente productiva sino también plenamente humana” (not only highly productive but also fully human).
He died in February 2017, at the age of 98. Expansión quoted him on the company’s staff: “el cariño que tenemos para esa gente, la verdad es que los queremos” (the affection we have for those people, the truth is that we love them). His son Daniel, then the head of the company, said his father taught him to treat people “como personas y no como instrumentos” (as persons and not as instruments).
The Value of the Manual Worker
The Ideario Cuauhtémoc, published by FEMSA, sets out principles of Eugenio Garza Sada, the Monterrey industrialist. Principle 13 reads: “Reconocer el enorme valor del trabajador manual” (Recognize the enormous value of the manual worker), “cuya productividad hace posible la posición directiva y afirma el futuro de ambos” (whose productivity makes the managerial position possible and secures the future of both).
According to the Congress of Nuevo León, he promoted “la creación de despensas familiares y el otorgamiento de casa propia para los empleados” (the creation of family food baskets and the granting of homes of their own to employees). He was killed in a failed kidnapping in Monterrey on September 17, 1973.
A Doctor at No Cost
In 1912, the peons of the hacienda of Tecoac, in Tlaxcala, complained of mistreatment and other grievances. One was that the cost of medicine was deducted from what they were owed. The owner, Gustavo Bretón, answered that when the peons fell ill, “les regala las medicinas habiendo llegado hasta traer un médico sin cobrarles” (he gives them the medicines, and has even brought a doctor without charging them).
According to the historian Mariano E. Torres Bautista, the workers agreed with the owner’s account. In the agreement of September 9, 1912, Bretón committed himself to keep giving medicine to the sick. National social security did not yet exist.
Masks
In El laberinto de la soledad, Octavio Paz describes a guarded face: “El mexicano se me aparece como un ser que se encierra y se preserva: máscara el rostro, máscara la sonrisa” (The Mexican appears to me as a being who shuts himself in and protects himself: the face a mask, the smile a mask).
Paz finds the same defense in popular speech. “El ideal de la ‘hombría’ consiste en no ‘rajarse’ nunca. Los que se ‘abren’ son cobardes” (The ideal of manliness consists in never “cracking open.” Those who “open up” are cowards). He explains rajarse as “permitir que el mundo exterior penetre en su intimidad” (to let the outside world into one’s intimacy).
Outside the Office
In September 2018, Raciel Sosa wrote in Forbes México about silence in companies. “A menudo los colaboradores de una empresa no transmiten lo que piensan” (Often the employees of a company do not pass on what they think). Instead, he observed, “los empleados de una organización hablan de lo que les inquieta y preocupa, fuera de la oficina” (the employees of an organization talk about what troubles and worries them outside the office).