Los Ricos También Lloran (“The Rich Also Cry” — Televisa soap opera, 1979)
El Llano en Llamas (“The Burning Plain” — short-story collection by Juan Rulfo, 1953)
La Vida No Vale Nada (“Life Is Worth Nothing” — song by José Alfredo Jiménez, 1954)
Cantinflas (iconic Mexican comedian of mid-century cinema, symbol of clever humility, social inequality, and working-class wit)
Nosotros los Pobres / Ustedes los Ricos (“We the Poor / You the Rich” — films by Ismael Rodríguez starring Pedro Infante, 1948)
El Chavo del Ocho (“The Kid from Apartment Eight” — TV sitcom created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, 1971)
Pobre pero Honrado (“Poor but Honest” — traditional Mexican refrain repeated for generations)

A country where the titles alone told you the whole story:
the rich cried, the poor endured,
and life seemed written so that someone like you always lost.
Between José Alfredo, Rulfo, Televisa, Pedro Infante, Cantinflas, Chespirito,
and the quiet murmurs of the barrio,
this was how millions of us learned
what destiny was supposed to look like.

I was born in 1979, in a Mexico where mental models weren’t learned in school but absorbed from the air. They floated in conversations, jokes, the silence of adults, the songs of José Alfredo, the pages of Rulfo, and the tired speeches of presidents who promised eternal recoveries. There was no escape: the country eventually made its way into your head.

I grew up in a place where suffering was culture and scarcity was identity. Some phrases were so ingrained they sounded like natural laws:

“La vida está cabrona.”
(“Life is damn hard.” — a phrase of collective resignation)

“Así es México.”
(“That’s just Mexico.” — accepting dysfunction as destiny)

“El que nace para maceta del corredor no pasa.”
(“Whoever is born a flowerpot never leaves the hallway.” — meaning: people never rise above their fate)

Television reinforced these ideas: soap operas where the poor were noble and the rich were villains, stories where wealth only arrived after oceans of tears—as if prosperity was something life granted reluctantly. Radio warned constantly about austerity, about saving for worse times, as if “the worst” were guaranteed.

Presidents spoke with the tone of a country always recovering but never healed.
“We’ll get there soon.”
“Better times are coming.”
“Tighten your belts.”
Decades of promises stuck in the future.

In my street in Martínez de la Torre, poverty created community. It wasn’t shame—it was shared identity. We all lived the same way. And although that community had beauty—solidarity, humor, resilience—it also imposed invisible limits: wanting more was breaking the barrio’s unwritten pact.

Even inside my own home, mental models shifted. My brother Erik was born into a Mexico where the father’s word was law, even when wrong. By the time I was born twelve years later, my mother had already survived her own battles. She had awakened. She stood straighter. She decided her own life.

That duality shaped me: understanding that inside one family live several eras, several wounds, several freedoms. Parents change. Children meet different versions of them.

I grew up hearing Mexico say that suffering was normal, that poverty was fate, that money was dangerous, that ambition was suspicious.
But I also grew up hearing my mother insist on the opposite.

Between these two voices—country and mother—my mind was forged.
Part resignation, part rebellion.
Part inheritance, part instinct.

And although all those models shaped me, the one that changed everything didn’t come from television, presidents, schoolbooks, or the collective culture.
It came from her.

---

My Most Convincing Mental Model: Emma Pazos

I remember the exact day my life changed. I lived in Xalapa, renting a room my friends and I jokingly called “the barracks,” because it looked like something out of a World War II film: three by three meters, a thin, improvised wall built by a careless mason to separate my room from the next. The wall was so poorly made it absorbed moisture; drops slid down as if it were crying. I lived there because that’s what I could afford while studying. It wasn’t irresponsibility—it was poverty.

That month, I didn’t have the rent. Not because I had spent the money—there simply was no money to spend.
And so, just like “Ron Damón,” I started hiding from the landlord.
(The character’s real name was Don Ramón, but in El Chavo del Ocho—that iconic sitcom that turned Mexican poverty into comedy—the poor, dyslexic kid known as El Chavo mispronounced it as “Ron Damón.” It was funny back then.
But the truth under the joke was darker: El Chavo had no access to real education, no stable home, no social safety net of any kind. His hunger, his confusion, his homelessness were delivered as humor. We laughed—because in Mexico, laughter was how we survived the things we couldn’t fix.)

One day, when I came home, I found a note pinned to my door:

“If you don’t pay tomorrow, I’ll throw your things out.”

Inside, all I could think was: “Puta madre…”

I called my mother.
I didn’t need to explain much.
She simply said: “I’m on my way.”

She took a bus to Xalapa—a long, exhausting trip.
As soon as she arrived, we went straight to the pawn shop.
She carried a thick gold bracelet—an esclava, as they called it. Heavy, almost narco-like. I don’t know why she had it, but I knew she had pawned it many times for emergencies. She had done it before, yes—but never in front of me. That day, she did.

We stood in the sad line of the pawn shop, each person holding a small piece of their life to trade for survival. I watched my mother with a love that almost hurt. She had been strong her entire life. Orphaned at eight, raising her younger siblings Antonio and Blanca in the homes of Poblanan aunts who gave them a roof but reminded them daily that they were “arrimados”—unwanted burdens.

With time, I understood that those aunts did what anyone would have done after growing up in trauma. They reacted with the hardness life taught them.
And later, when I had money, I helped them.
The same aunts who were once harsh became my “favorite” aunts—because life is complex, and so was our Mexico.

My mother’s childhood wasn’t childhood—it was survival.

And now she stood there, holding that bracelet, ready to pawn it to save me from eviction. Something inside me broke. Not because of my situation—I was just a kid studying, doing what I could to survive. What broke me was seeing her there, giving away a piece of her life because poverty had cornered us again.

I thought:
“This isn’t right. Damn poverty. Damn this merciless poverty.”

She saw it on my face.
She stepped out of the line, grabbed my arm with that steel-forged strength she carried, pulled me outside.

Then she grabbed me by the shirt—like someone about to deliver a lesson carved in granite—and said:

“Listen to me. I’m doing this because it’s urgent, do you hear? I’m doing it for you.
But this is not right.
Do you see now why I always tell you: you have to make money?
Do you see it?
Poverty is a bitch.
So promise me something. Wherever you go, whatever you do… promise me this: you will always be the best.”

I nodded, scared, sad, shaken.
“I promise,” I whispered.

But she didn’t want a whisper.
She wanted a vow.

“No, cabrón! Say it out loud. Promise me out loud!”

And I did.
“Yes, ma’am. I promise I will always be the best at everything I do. And I promise I will make money.”

That day my life split in two.
That day my mental model about money was born.
Not from a book, not from a seminar, not from a guru.
From Emma Pazos, my mother.

From then on, I chased money.
Whenever there was an opportunity at school, I negotiated with professors.
But negotiation in Mexico didn’t look like negotiation in textbooks—it meant entering the underworld of informal agreements, where the law was optional, where favors and silence ruled.

A professor would smirk and say:
“Oh, so you’re skipping class to make some money?”
Then came the real question:
“And what do I get?”

I’d pretend to hesitate, then:
“Well… you tell me.”

He’d lean back, stare, and drop the code:
“I have a friend I like to talk to… Johnnie Walker.
See if he pays me a visit.”

Deal sealed.

That was my first school—the school of the Mexico I manifested.
Not everyone needed corruption to make money. Some had last names, connections, another path.
But my path required navigating that world, and I learned to do it the cleanest way possible.

That skill later got me the contracts that pulled me out of poverty.

Eventually I entered the government, even without the right name, without connections, without pedigree. And there I fulfilled the promise I made outside the pawn shop: I learned that environmental law could make money—and it did.

Later, I fell again—not into poverty, but into demons I didn’t know I carried.
But that’s another story.

---

The Universal Shift

With time, I learned that mental models of scarcity don’t come from inside us—they are inherited. Passed down like old furniture, stuck to us like the smell of smoke. But they aren’t permanent.
They change when we change what we believe is possible.

Scarcity is learned.
Abundance is chosen.

---

Here, in the Mountains

Now, living in the mountains of Colorado, near Mount Sopris, everything becomes clearer.

Every morning I wake under its enormous, silent presence. When the sun sets it on fire or dresses it in snow, I feel something familiar:
it reminds me of how I once looked up from below at the mountain called Emma Pazos.

And second, because today I live inside a mental model I chose—one where discipline opens paths, where honest work pays off, where effort becomes destiny. This model isn’t American—it’s human. And I can carry it back someday to the land where I took my first steps.

Maybe someday I can be for someone else what Emma Pazos was for me.

---

The Provision of Today

I took responsibility for my life.
I learned a language.
I built my skills.
I shaped the man I wanted to be.

And when you grow from within, you attract minds that refuse to romanticize poverty.
Because life is simple, not easy—but always fair to those who face it standing tall.

And so today, honoring the promise I made to Emma Pazos, imitating her strength and dignity, I live with a mind that recognizes only one side:
the good, the perfect, the individual.

Because provision does not arrive.
It is generated.