There’s a story surfacing in many group sessions, workshops, and ethnographic visits that tells of Mexicans’ insistent search for, affinity with, and watchful observation of signs, metaphors, associations, facts, people, or symbols that illustrate, suggest, or project an emergent Mexico—one that leaves behind concepts and images that blur reality in a haze of naive and submissive ideas, fearful behavior based on mediocre narratives, and limited, unoriginal ideals that the collective conscious intuits are unattainable.</P> <P>These latter factors explain how an expression as depressing as “sí se puede…” (yes, we can)—a phrase that implies that we may not be able to—continues to exist and stagger around.