Ricardo is squinting at page 13 of a document that feels heavier than the money it promises to deliver. He is a graphic designer in Tlaxcala, a man who spends his days obsessed with kerning and color hex codes, yet he is currently defeated by a single paragraph of black-and-white text.

He has a yellow highlighter in his dexterous hand, and he has already bled the ink dry on five specific terms: “Plazo,” “Comisión por apertura,” “Interés moratorio,” “IVA sobre intereses,” and the most terrifying acronym in the Mexican financial lexicon: “CAT.”

The Decryption via SMS

He pauses, pulls out his phone-which I have spent the last 23 minutes cleaning with a microfiber cloth until the screen reflects the fluorescent lights of this cafe like a dark mirror-and begins to text a friend. This friend, Eduardo, has worked in a bank for 13 years.

“The ‘CAT’ is just the total cost of the party once you include the drinks, the music, and the cleanup crew, and the ‘interés moratorio’ is the punishment for being a ghost.”

– Eduardo, Banking Professional

Watching Ricardo from three tables away, I recognize that look. I’m Jamie D., and I spend my working hours at the municipal cemetery. I deal with a different kind of permanent record. In my line of work, we don’t use euphemisms. A grave is a hole in the ground where we put what’s left.

I find myself obsessively wiping the bezel of my phone again. It’s a habit I picked up after 23 years of digging in the dirt. You want something in your life to be clear. You want to see the world without the smudge of ambiguity.

The Mexican credit market, however, is built on the smudge. It is a market where the technical vocabulary is treated as a feature of the architecture, not a barrier to the consumer. The industry has decided that it is far more profitable to keep the borrower in a state of linguistic purgatory.

The Mathematical Ghost

Consider the “Costo Anual Total.” It is a number mandated by law, meant to provide transparency. Yet, for the average person in a town like Tlaxcala, it remains a mathematical ghost. Is a CAT of 83% high? Is it low? Compared to what?

The banks don’t tell you that the number is high; they simply present it as a fact of nature, like gravity or the humidity. They have realized that if you give someone a technical term they don’t understand, they will usually nod their head to avoid appearing foolish. We are a culture that values politeness over clarity.

I’ve seen families come to the cemetery to buy a plot for a loved one, and they approach the transaction with more skepticism than they do a 43-month personal loan. Perhaps it’s because you can see the dirt in a cemetery. You can measure the depth.

The Logic of the Privilege

The friend in the bank, Eduardo, told Ricardo that the “comisión por apertura” is basically a fee you pay for the privilege of the bank saying “yes” to you. It’s like paying a cover charge at a club where you are also expected to buy all the drinks at a 33% markup.

It is a strange logic, yet it is the standard. Why is there no one hired to fix this vocabulary? Because if the terms were clear, the product would be less attractive. If you knew exactly how much the “interés moratorio” would compound after 13 days of a missed payment, you might rethink everything.

I once spent 3 hours trying to explain to a grieving widow why the maintenance fee for her husband’s plot had increased by a factor of three. I felt like a monster. But at least I was there, standing in front of her, with dirt on my boots, explaining it in words she could understand.

This is where the frustration peaks. We are told that financial literacy is the responsibility of the individual. We are told that we should “educate ourselves.” But how do you educate yourself in a language that was designed to be unreadable? It’s like being told to learn how to swim in a pool filled with ink.

Post-Mortem Education

The industry treats education as a post-mortem activity. They only explain the terms after you have failed to meet them. They wait until you are in the “moratorio” phase to tell you exactly how the interest is calculated.

It is a system designed to harvest late fees rather than to foster successful borrowers. It’s a lot like the weeds in the east corner of my cemetery. If I don’t pull them when they’re small, they eventually crack the headstones.

I stopped cleaning my phone for a second and watched Ricardo. He looked relieved after Eduardo’s text. He finally felt like he owned the information. That is the transformation that happens when you strip away the jargon.

Seeking the Shadows’ End

You move from being a victim of a process to being a participant in a contract. It shouldn’t take a secret friend at a bank to get that clarity. It should be the starting point. There are a few outliers, of course.

When I look for a way to manage my own finances-because even a groundskeeper has to worry about the future-I look for entities that don’t hide behind the CAT. I look for something like

Préstamo Ya,

where the goal seems to be getting the person the help they need without requiring a law degree to understand the price tag.

I remember digging a grave for a man who had been a local accountant for 43 years. His family told me he was the only person in the neighborhood who knew how to fill out tax forms. When he died, the neighborhood felt a little more lost.

Knowledge shouldn’t be a secret held by a few priests of finance. It should be as common as the air. But we live in a world where the smudge is profitable. I look at my phone screen again. There is a tiny speck of dust near the corner. It bothers me.

The truth is usually quite simple: money has a price. That price is comprised of the interest rate and the risk. It is a shell game played with words. I see Ricardo stand up. He’s finished his coffee. He has $3 pesos left in change on the table. He looks more confident now.

He’s going to sign the paper, but at least he knows what the hole looks like. He knows how deep it is. He knows the “plazo” is 23 months and not a day less without a penalty. I wonder, as I put my phone back in my pocket, how many other Ricardos are out there today.

We have built a society where asking for a definition is seen as a sign of weakness, rather than a sign of intelligence. And the banks, with their marble floors and their 53-page documents, are more than happy to let us stay quiet.

Integrity in the Stone

I have 3 more graves to mark before the sun goes down. The ground is hard today, full of clay and stones. It’s honest work. The dirt doesn’t lie to you. It doesn’t use technical vocabulary to pretend it’s not dirt. It’s heavy, it’s cold, and it’s there.

I wish the credit market had the same integrity. I wish the words on those pages were as solid as the granite I install. Until then, I’ll keep my phone screen clean, and I’ll keep watching the Ricardos of the world, hoping they have a friend like Eduardo, or at least a very good highlighter.

What would happen to the industry if every borrower understood the contract as well as the lawyer who wrote it?