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.
Article 78 of Mexico’s Commercial Code reads: “En las convenciones mercantiles cada uno se obliga en la manera y términos que aparezca que quiso obligarse, sin que la validez del acto comercial dependa de la observancia de formalidades o requisitos determinados.” In commercial agreements, each party is bound in the manner and on the terms in which it appears it wished to be bound, and the validity of the act does not depend on particular formalities or requirements.
Article 1832 of the Federal Civil Code applies the same principle to civil contracts, except where the law expressly requires a particular form.
A manda is a promise made to the Virgin or to a saint in return for a favor. On December 12, 2024, the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, pilgrims came to the Basilica in Mexico City to fulfill their mandas, some on their knees. Jesús Lucas crawled about a kilometer with an image on his back. His promise was linked to overcoming his addictions.
The television news service N+ also reported, citing the Catholic publication Desde la Fe, that the Virgin does not punish a manda left unfulfilled, and that it can be adapted with the help of a priest.
Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo (1955) begins with a promise. Juan Preciado travels to Comala to find his father, Pedro Páramo, because he promised his dying mother that he would.
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.
Everyday Spanish has a common way to report a mishap. The speaker does not say “I dropped the glass.” The speaker says se me cayó el vaso, literally “the glass fell, to me.” The same form gives se me olvidó (it slipped my mind), se me rompió (it broke on me) and se descompuso (it broke down).
In this construction the object is the subject of the sentence. The person appears only as the one it happened to. The form is common in everyday Spanish, in Mexico as elsewhere.
On November 28, 1911, Emiliano Zapata’s movement issued the Plan of Ayala against President Francisco I. Madero. Its first article accuses Madero of trying to evade “el cumplimiento de las promesas que hizo á la nación en el Plan de San Luis Potosí,” the promises he had made to the nation in the Plan of San Luis Potosí. It calls him a “traidor á la Patria,” a traitor to the homeland.
Ni modo is one of the most common expressions in Mexican Spanish. It means roughly “no way around it” or “oh well.” The dictionary of the Spanish Academy marks it as colloquial and Mexican. It is used “to indicate that something no longer has a remedy.”
People say it when a bus is missed, a deal falls through or a plan fails, and the conversation moves on.
At school flag ceremonies, Mexican students recite the pledge to the flag: “Bandera de México, legado de nuestros héroes, símbolo de la unidad de nuestros padres y de nuestros hermanos. Te prometemos ser siempre fieles a los principios de libertad y de justicia que hacen de nuestra Patria una nación independiente, humana y generosa a la que entregamos nuestra existencia.”
“Flag of Mexico, legacy of our heroes, symbol of the unity of our parents and of our brothers and sisters. We promise to be always faithful to the principles of liberty and justice that make our homeland an independent, humane and generous nation, to which we give our existence.”
Fue sin querer queriendo, “it was without wanting, wanting,” is what El Chavo says to explain things he did not mean to do. El Chavo is the boy at the center of El Chavo del 8, the comedy by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, known as Chespirito. When a rude word slips out of him, he says se me chispoteó, “it sparked out of me.”
The series began as its own program on February 26, 1973. Its last episode aired on January 7, 1980.