The scribes' lament

A dying profession in the heart of the city

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Readers' comments



i found interesting that the economist write something about this forgotten scribes, that in some way are the only means for poor people to air their grievances against officials and the mere president, who could if not by the scribes this people could cry their pains and oblivious from their supposedly protectors....


juanmro: Most of the Economists' readership did not understand what you said. Come on ! Use the English language !

Cristian DPino

I'm not mexican, but I can undestand the irritation that this article may cause. It paints an artificial medieval image of this country by a reporter that clearly doesn't understand what he is seeing. Some journalists because of their poor knowledge of a language and culture can cause real absurdities. You can find the same kind of people in the U.S being "non functional literates", and you can percieve It eloquently in forums all around Internet; misspelling constantly or saying cultural atrocities that we all know really well; but even having this image of the americans, we don't expose them as idiots in the media. It'd be so much better to send properly formed journalists, instead of poorly educated pretentious individuals that feed the first world with this hierarchying visions that sincerely I think make us collectively more ignorant


Mexico, so closely tied to the United States' economy, had deregulated substantially under the direction of the Washington Consensus. The irony of the "scribe sector" is that the free market system is unlikely to reduce inequality, and might even reinforce the notoriously unequal system. This applies to education as it does to income, albeit unevenly. Unfortunately moving forward the ranks of the illiterate might persist, creating demand for scribes in the future.


Incredibly naif reporter. From where he come? Wonderland? Come on, let's work body! No se puede creer que The Economist presente esta historia casi rid�cula sobre los estados americanos. Casi casi podr�a tildarla de clasista pero bueno, es The Economist y su particular manera de ver las cosas, algunas veces acertada otras no. De lo que no voy a dudar un segundo es acerca del ojo del cronista: �qu� hace en M�xico? La debe estar pasando muy bien porque evidentemente es un tanto -mucho para mi gusto-naif.

Eduardo Izquierdo

I completely agree with Pedro P�ramo, there have been lots of interesting things happening in Latin America and in Mexico in particular during the lsts weeks: the sudden dead and replacement of Mexico's Interior Minister, the final veredict on the internal election of the main left party, the opposition that the educative reform is meeting, the final approval of the the energy sector reform, the new fund for small enterprises, the disarray in the bicentenary comision, the detention of the Interpol chief in Mexico, etc, and all these only in Mexico, lots of stuff is also taking place in between from Tierra del Fuego to the Rio Grande. Sadly, it seems that the Economist is making theirs Henry Kissinger's advise that Latin America doesn't matter and nobody cares about it.

Pedro Pýramo

Are you serious? Is this among the top 4 stories that The Economist could come up with for all of the Americas during the week? I think its about time this publication improves its Americas section rather than keeping it on the sidelines with these embarrassing articles.


Actually, I don't think that Mr. Samano misspelt his name at all, but that the reporter misunderstood the situation completely. The "P." at the end is probably the initial of his mother's maiden name. The Economist's reporter may not be aware that in most of Latin America and Spain, two family names are used: first your father's last name and then your mother's. This "full name" is usually only used in formal contexts (such as legal documents or business cards). It's also customary to abbreviate this full name by only including the second family name's initial letter in upper case and followed by a period (as Mr. Samano seems to have done). Mr. Samano's intention, by including this more formal form of his name, may have been to give more weight to the encounter, showing his pride for his profession and the fact that a journalist was interested in what he had to say, but the reporter seems to have missed this completely.


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