Welcome back, my friends, to Mexican Meme day! It might not be the day you’ve been waiting for, but this is a day, and we’ll take whatever progress we can get. At least these are funny Mexican memes (we think, anyway).
My greatest hope is that at the very least you’ll glance at them and say, “oh yeah, the memes” before you yawn and go back to your videos from “Come live in Mexico!” influencers on YouTube and TikTok.
Enjoy!
Meme translation: “Tlaloc is so nice. When he sees we don’t have enough water, it starts to rain.”
“Not like some others who give their worst battles to their strongest soldiers.”
What does it meme? Is everyone enjoying the rain now? Honestly, I thought it would never come, and nothing makes me happier than our long drought becoming a thing of the past.
Tlaloc, of course, is the Mexica god of rain. He has provided! The jab at another god here is what cracked me up: it’s hard to argue that giving difficult battles to people is an act of divine love. Three cheers for Tlaloc!
Meme translation: “I’m not leaving tips anymore, Morena can help them.”
“The kind of tip they’d leave:”
What does it meme? When Morena swept the elections a few weeks ago, there was some bitterness on the part of the country’s more conservative voters, who tend to be better off financially than the average citizens.
Sadly, this is a sentiment that I saw expressed by quite a few people. “Poor people think Morena will help them? Fine then, let them help, I’m out!”
Yikes.
Well, at least we can make fun of what some of them had previously considered generosity.
Meme translation: “My uncle in 2006 saying there was no [election] fraud with a 0.56% difference [in the votes].”
“My uncle in 2024 saying there was fraud when the difference was 30%.”
What does it meme? Okay, this is my last jab. I promise. I just can’t resist a little ridicule when those on the losing side decide that foul play was the only way they could have possibly lost.
For those who were paying attention to the news back in 2006, you might remember the tight, tight race that put Felipe Calderón in Los Pinos. The difference was less than 1%, but for reasons unknown to me, the INE refused to perform a full recount.
Conservatives were happy and insisted on the integrity of the election. AMLO and his supporters were not, and occupied the Mexico City Zócalo for months afterward. “Get over it already, and stop blocking traffic” was the main consensus on the right.
Ironic.
Meme translation: “Me saying goodbye to the Uber driver so the taxi drivers won’t beat us up.”
What does it meme? Ah, Uber. It’s not that I love Uber, or any other ride-hailing app, for that matter. Any “innovation” which is actually just a repackaging of worker exploitation gets nothing but an eye roll and perhaps a fist shake from me.
But gosh, there are definitely some places where taxi drivers have really gone overboard defending their industry. In recent years, taxi drivers have even used physical violence against competition from Uber. When one comes to get you at the airport, it’s best to pretend like your Uber driver is your friend — or more! — just in case.
Still, they have at least some of my sympathy; if my profession were threatened, I’d be mad and want to fight, too. Actually, my profession as a writer and translator is threatened by AI, or at least by the employers who think AI can do just as good a job as me and at a fraction of the cost and time [Editors note: Sarah, we need to talk].
Who do I beat up about this?
Meme translation: “Inside of me there are two wolves.”
“One is a real idiot.”
“And the other one is an even bigger idiot.”
What does it meme? I don’t know what it is with this kind of self-deprecating humor that just kills me, but I think I laughed about this one for a solid 2 minutes.
Or maybe it’s the faces? It must be the faces.
The meme references, of course, the old parable of the two fighting wolves inside each of us, one representing our highest self, and the other our lowest. When someone asks which will win, the answer is, “the one you feed.”
It’s a pretty nice reflection the first time you hear it, though it’s become so common lately that it’s almost cliché. Maybe that’s why the above is so funny: you think you’re going to hear the same story again and begin to cringe internally at the teller’s excited face as they search your expression for sudden enlightenment.
But no; this one’s about two dummies.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.
