The Seriousness of Being Unserious
Essay by Camilo Montoya Campos
July 25, 2025. Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz
I’ve become very familiar with an archetype I started to notice more and more among the different circles of friends and acquaintances since my first time in Veracruz back in 2024. This is the same archetype that the Mexican thinker and author, Jorge Portilla, breaks down really well in his book “La femonologia del relajo” which was recommended to me by good friend Joel - one of these very same archetypes I aim to explore with this essay.
What Portilla saw as a cultural weakness, I’ve come to see as a form of strength. In Veracruz, unseriousness is not an escape, it’s a language of survival.
These, often times, men are in a constant state of unseriousness. Always turning any event, no matter the nature of it, into a comedy act. They mock the harshness of living, and invite those around them to do so as well. Dancing between joy and agony, they provide an escape from the inherit weight as a society we are conditioned to place on life itself. Last night at the Fandango, I asked one of the guys around my age (whose name I still don’t know but who goes out of his way to greet me every time I’m in town):
“Como vas?”
and his answer is what sent me into writing:
“Pues bien madreado, pero voy” **
He said very little, but his tone held so much context. Something heavy must have happened, or is actively going on in his life that was not happening back in April when I last saw him. Yet, instead of sharing details he made clear to me that whatever agony he is experiencing is manageable and even worth laughing at. To me, he is very consciously using humor as a tool for vulnerability. This allowed the hug we shared at the end of the Fandango, to hold space for truth and brotherhood. With even less words, than what he shared I was able to convey that I was there for him and that I could see his pain. Something that would never have happened if he just gave a generic positive answer to my question.
Laughter as Liberation
Another not so recent example of this came from a restless night spent with one of my closest friends in Veracruz. It started with me asking why always makes a point to include his second last name, mother’s side, every time he introduces himself which opened the door for a journey through his very complex family troubles. After many beers, and other substances we were both crying about the violence women in both our families faced at the hands of the very same men we grew up idolizing.
“Ese guey* me quería tanto…
Pero el desgraciado nunca dejo de maltratar a mi jefa”
He said as he wiped tears off his face with his guayabera laying on his shoulder. Then his tone changed completely from pain to outright mockery:
“Pince borracho de la verga.
Y mirame a mi guey…aunque ande en mi desmadre me la paso bien chido.
No tengo bronca con nadie…”
We looked over to notice a street dog pooping directly on the front step of his house while looking directly at us:
“No mames…”
And just like that, a laughter emerged from the tears. We laughed so hard we had to clean up broken glass from a bottle I knocked over, as well as the poop. Again, besides how unbelievably funny it is for a dog take a shit in the middle of that conversation that story explains perfectly the archetype I am attempting to describe here. Unseriousness can free us, if used intentionally. It’s what makes the difference between an awkward silence after someone shared something “too real” and what I’ve encounter here in Veracruz.
This is where I differ completely from what I perceive as a misunderstanding in Jorge Portilla’s approach to this phenomenon he calls “el relajo.” His work in “La fenomenología del relajo” is noble but also limiting in how much we can achieve by leaning into relajo.
Portilla views relajo as an abdication of moral seriousness. But he misses how it can hold space for grief without requiring the rigidity of formal discourse. From my takeaway after studying this piece of work, he puts forward a warning that el relajo is causing us to avoid reality, leading to our own demise as a society. But I would reframe this view to propose we see relajo as a mediation tool to bear the weight of a world that will only continue to get more complex as time passes.
If Portilla’s argument is right, then why is it that the most serious conversations I’ve ever had involved the most unserious people? Maybe it’s not that we laugh to forget, but that we laugh to remember without risking our dignity.
July 25, 2025. Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz
