Mexico, Risk - understand-culture

Three Books

On December 3, 2011, at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Enrique Peña Nieto, then seeking the presidency, was asked to name three books that had marked his life. He mixed up titles and authors. He attributed La silla del águila to Enrique Krauze. Its author is Carlos Fuentes. He corrected himself on Twitter, and he was a popular topic on social media for days.

On October 16, 2001, at the International Congress of the Spanish Language in Valladolid, President Vicente Fox named the Argentine writer as “Jorge Luis Borgues.” The slip still appears on lists of presidential blunders.

Sayings for Hard Times

Al mal tiempo, buena cara. “To bad weather, a good face.”

No hay mal que por bien no venga. “There is no misfortune that does not bring some good.”

Dios aprieta, pero no ahorca. “God squeezes, but he does not strangle.”

Como lo que el viento a Juárez. “Like what the wind did to Juárez.” It is said of something that has no effect on a person.

Don Goyo

The people of Santiago Xalitzintla, San Pedro Benito Juárez and Tochimilco call the Popocatépetl volcano Don Goyo. Every March 12 they celebrate what AFP calls his birthday.

Antonio Analco, the tiempero of Xalitzintla, told N+: “estamos acostumbrados a vivir con él de años, de tiempo” (we have been used to living with him for years, for a long time).

A resident, Juana Pérez, said: “Estamos en las manos del Señor, si nos va a llevar, nos va a llevar, y si no, pues qué vamos a hacer” (We are in the Lord’s hands. If he is going to take us, he will take us, and if not, well, what are we going to do).

Tandas

A tanda is a savings circle. A group of family members or acquaintances each pay a fixed sum every period, and in each round one member takes the whole pot. There is no bank and no legal backing.

In Mexico’s 2024 National Survey of Financial Inclusion, by INEGI and the banking regulator CNBV, 36.6 percent of adults aged 18 to 70 saved only in informal ways. El Universal reported participation in tandas at 20 percent, up from 18 percent in 2021. The newspaper did not state the base of that figure.

The Guarantor

To rent a home in Mexico City, a tenant is traditionally asked for an aval, a guarantor who owns property in the city or its metropolitan area and puts up the deeds. The custom is a rule of the market, not of the law. Landlords prefer a guarantor whose property is free of liens.

A tenant who has no such person can buy a póliza jurídica, a legal policy, for 30 to 50 percent of one month’s rent. In 2025, the magazine Expansión reported that a guarantor with property was increasingly hard to find.

No Way Around It

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.

I Ordered It

On October 17, 2019, an operation in Culiacán, Sinaloa, to arrest Ovidio Guzmán López, a son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, failed, and he was released.

On June 19, 2020, President López Obrador said at his morning press conference: “Yo ordené que se detuviera ese operativo y que se dejara en libertad a este presunto delincuente” (I ordered that the operation be stopped and that this alleged criminal be set free).

In October 2022, he repeated that he gave the instruction “to avoid a massacre” and said that his conscience was clear.

Compadres

Compadrazgo is the bond between a child’s parents and the child’s godparents, who become each other’s compadres. A study in the Revista Mexicana de Sociología on communities of the Huasteca describes it as “a true bond of friendship” that ties the whole community together.

The godfather may take the father’s place in providing for the home if the father dies. The study observes that “a well-chosen godfather is worth more than a modern life insurance policy.”

The One Most Responsible

On November 30, 2022, Mexico was eliminated in the group stage of the World Cup in Qatar. At his press conference, coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino said: “Yo soy el responsable máximo de esta terrible decepción y frustración que tenemos” (I am the one most responsible for this terrible disappointment and frustration). He said he took “full responsibility for this great failure.”

He also said that his contract had expired when the referee blew the final whistle.