I just spent a half-day rambling around some dusty backroads in the regions around Antotonilco chasing hopes and dreams with a dozen other like-minded people.

Not our hopes and dreams.

No, we were in pursuit of the hopes and dreams of budding entrepreneurs – a beauty salon owner, the owner of a market stall in Antotonilco, the owner of a tiny produce and dry-goods tienda in an indigenous village, an Otomi women’s collective that makes herbal remedies and natural cosmetics, an Otomi embroidery business, and a woman who sells corn-on-the-cob at local football games on Sundays.