The three weeks since the peso was abruptly devalued have not been kind to the people of Mexico. The worst economic crisis in a decade has splashed icy water on many who thought they had worked themselves up the ladder, and on many who remain at the bottom.
Prices have risen far more than the 10 percent wage increase the government allowed in a recent pact with labor and business. For Mexicans who are poor - more than 45 percent of the 90 million people - that means staples like cooking oil, eggs and milk have become distressingly like luxuries.Jose Socorro Palomares, 64, a street sweeper who earns Mexico's official minimum wage of what now translates to about $3 a day, says he has no idea how he will make ends meet now.
His wife, Aurora, is also a street sweeper, and together they barely made enough before the crisis to pay the rent and feed their seven children.
But many of the most disillusioned are among the more than 40 million in the rapidly expanding middle class - defined here as everyone who earns enough to keep from being hungry but not enough to be considered among the richest 10 percent.
The steep rise in interest rates that has accompanied the devaluation has hurt them. Monthly payments on adjustable-rate mortgages suddenly eat up an entire salary; credit cards are charging interest rates as high as 80 percent; payments on car loans have ballooned.
Intoxicated by an overvalued peso before the current crisis, many Mexicans binged on imported stereos, videocassette recorders and other goodies. But now those goods seem unaffordable to many people now.