General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Ustedes los Ricos

Ustedes los ricos (released in English as You, the Rich) is a 1948 Mexican feature film directed by Ismael Rodríguez and the direct sequel to Nosotros los pobres, continuing the story of the barrio carpenter Pepe "El Toro" played by Pedro Infante.¹ It was filmed beginning 29 July 1948 and premiered on 31 December of the same year, and it forms, with Nosotros los pobres and Pepe el Toro (1953), a trilogy centered on the Pepe el Toro character.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Original title / English title	Ustedes los ricos / You, the Rich¹
Year and country	Mexico, 1948; filmed from 29 July 1948, premiered 31 December 1948¹^•²
Director and writers	Ismael Rodríguez; screenplay by Rogelio A. González, Ismael Rodríguez, Pedro de Urdimalas, and C. González Dueñas¹
Running time	130 minutes per the official cultural registry; streaming databases list 125 minutes¹^•⁴
Principal cast	Pedro Infante (Pepe "El Toro"), Evita Muñoz "Chachita", Blanca Estela Pavón (Celia "La Chorreada")⁵
Production	Producciones Rodríguez Hermanos; 35 mm black-and-white; music by Manuel Esperón, cinematography by José Ortiz Ramos¹^•³
Place in series	Second film of the Pepe el Toro trilogy, between Nosotros los pobres (1947) and Pepe el Toro (1953)³

Spoilers

Plot

The story resumes the family situation of the first film. Pepe encounters Manuel, Chachita's biological father, who draws the girl toward his wealthy household with money and threats against Pepe.¹ Chachita also comes to know her real grandmother, the rich doña Charito, who takes the girl from Pepe and tries to turn her into a rich young lady, while the young El Pichi and Chachita are in love but separated by social differences.⁷

The tragedy arrives through the escaped convict El Tuerto, who takes revenge on Pepe by causing an explosion and fire in which Pepe's small son El Torito dies, along with Manuel, who dies saving Chachita from the flames.¹ Pepe's discovery of his son's death after the fire became one of the most famous sequences of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, remembered even by viewers who have never seen the complete film.⁸

Production and release

The film was produced by Producciones Rodríguez Hermanos, the company of director Ismael Rodríguez, with Manuel R. Ojeda and Armando Espinosa handling production management.¹ Shooting began on 29 July 1948 and the premiere took place on 31 December of that year, eleven months after Nosotros los pobres.² Some later reference works date the film 1949, following its year-end release.⁶

The technical crew reunited key figures from the first film: José Ortiz Ramos as cinematographer, Manuel Esperón composing the music, Fernando Martínez Álvarez editing, Jesús González Gancy on sound, and Carlos Toussaint in art direction.¹ The screenplay credits four writers: Rogelio A. González, Ismael Rodríguez, Pedro de Urdimalas, and C. González Dueñas.¹

Cast

Pedro Infante returned as Pepe "El Toro" and Blanca Estela Pavón as Celia "La Chorreada", while Evita Muñoz "Chachita" gained greater weight in the family conflicts.⁸ The credited cast also included Fernando Soto "Mantequilla" as Antonio Feliciano de la Rosa (El Bracero), Pedro de Urdimalas as Topillos, Ricardo Camacho as Planillas, Delia Magaña as La Tostada, Amelia Wilhelmy as Malena la Guayaba, Freddy Fernández "El Pichi" as El Atarantado, Jaime Jiménez Pons as El Güíjolo, Jorge Arriaga as Ledo (El Tuerto), Jesús García as El Camellito, Nelly Montiel as Andrea, Miguel Manzano as Manuel de la Colina y Bárcena, Mimí Derba as doña Charito, and Juan Pulido as Archibaldo.⁵ Ismael Rodríguez himself appears uncredited as a passerby.⁵

Themes and cultural standing

The film belongs to the urban melodrama of Mexico's Golden Age (roughly 1935 to 1955), a cinema that scholars describe as celebrating machismo, noble poverty, and a moralistic ordering of characters in urban tales.³ Its central opposition is the poor vecindad (Mexican tenement with shared central courtyard housing poor families) household against a rich class depicted as selfish and unscrupulous; money brings disputes rather than happiness.⁹ The closing scene makes the stereotype explicit: doña Charito, whose son caused the humble family's misfortunes, comes to the vecindad patio where the poor have laid out their shared meal and asks for "a little corner in your heart, you the poor who have a heart so big for everyone."⁹

The film closes with an epigraph of Rodríguez's own words: "El rico no quiere al pobre, el pobre no quiere al rico, por que no se conocen... conocerse es amor" (the rich man does not love the poor man, the poor man does not love the rich man, because they do not know each other; to know each other is love).² A UNAM thesis reads the trilogy's class mediation as consonant with the politics of national conciliation accompanying Mexico's industrialization in the late 1940s, when rural melodrama was giving way to barrio stories that matched the great migrations toward industrial centers.² Ismael Rodríguez himself described Nosotros los pobres and Ustedes los ricos as his neorealist version of the Mexican milieu, although scholars place the films closer to sentimental, baroque melodrama than to Italian neorealism.¹⁰^•²

The trilogy's success was large enough that a 2022 study of vecindad settings in classic Latin American cinema dates the peak of the setting to 1948–1950, crediting the enormous success of Rodríguez's trilogy.¹¹ The Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences nominated the film for Best Actress in 1949.¹² More than seven decades later, the film and its predecessor still appear on Mexican television, and UNAM research has credited the two films with consolidating an image of the Mexican based on honest work, sacrifice, and solidarity, an image that coexisted with an idealized view of poverty.⁸ In 1950 Luis Buñuel's Los olvidados broke with that sentimental representation of the urban poor, and both ways of seeing the city became part of the history of Mexican cinema.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1940s

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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