Miguel Manzano

Inocencio Prieto y Calvo receives a letter telling him he is the heir to his uncle's fortune of two million pesos. Not being able to read he has no idea of who sent the letter or its content. So he goes to the drugstore because the pharmacist can read the letter to him. But while waiting to be helped he sees that a young girl can read. He figures he has to be able to discover the letter's content by himself and decides he will save the letter and go to school, and wait to read the letter on his own.

Cantinflas is a clumsy fireman, who one day receives the visit of his little goddaughter, whose mother recently died in the jungle. After having work in a few fires, Cantinflas decided to quit and become a policeman, because is less dangerous. Everything goes well until a gang of gangsters kidnap the girl, because of a monetary inheritance.

Mateo Melgarejo is a notary public and scribe for the illiterate people of Santo Domingo, a neighborhood north of Mexico City's Zócalo. A squatter friend asks for his help in negotiating with the land census bureau to regularize a land title. After a great deal of frustration with the government bureaucracy, he writes a letter to the cabinet minister, earning an audience with him. The minister hires Melgarejo to reform the bureau, and the appointee proceeds to lecture the officials on their duties in a democratic society. At the end, he gives up the post, returning to Santo Domingo to help its poor residents.

Lopitos, who is horribly inefficient but quick-witted, is invited (because of the current ambassador's superstition about 13 sitting down to a meal) to a banquet attended by the ambassadors of both superpowers. After the news of a series of coups d'état in Los Cocos arrives throughout the meal, Lopitos becomes the official ambassador. At a summit of world leaders, the representatives of the two world superpowers court the allegiances of third-world diplomats to tilt the balance of global power in their favor. The last diplomat to remain unaligned, Lopitos instead harangues the superpowers for infringing on the rights of developing countries to self determination, talking to them with his point of view as a citizen not as ambassador because he arranged his demise as ambassador one day before his speech.