Her typical workday was 10 hours long until October, when the laundromat was sold and she lost her job. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

On this day, Alvarez is lucky enough to get a seat on the metro. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

The long hard days of Victoria Alvarez Flores, 54, begin at 5 in the morning, six days a week. She must rise early to begin a two-hour commute to her job at a laundromat in Mexico City. Here she pours coffee for her brother, Daniel. Alicia Vera for Al Jazeera America

MEXICO CITY — For the last decade Victoria Alvarez Flores worked 10 hours a day, six days a week, 51 weeks a year at a Mexico City laundromat. Her round-trip commute from a town just outside the city added another four and a half hours to an already long day. The pay was modest, the benefits nonexistent, but at least she had a job. That is, until the owner sold the business.

On Oct. 27 the laundromat closed, marking Alvarez's first day of unemployment. It was her 54th birthday.

Alvarez’s situation is not uncommon. In the past year Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto — along with much of the international media — has emphasized the growth of the Mexican middle class and portrayed the country as an economic success story, an Aztec Tiger. The reality, however, is quite different.

“The Mexican economy is going through a recession right now,” said Gerardo Esquivel, a professor at the Center for Economic Studies at the Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City. “The numbers that have been mentioned in terms of the growth of the middle class have been grossly exaggerated. There is not a clear definition of what middle class is.”

Esquivel also indicated that the number of new jobs this year will be closer to 400,000 than to the projected 700,000. Additionally, a study by the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) showed that the number of Mexicans living in poverty increased from 49.5 million to 53.2 million between 2008 and 2012.

“Today the word is survive. Not live, but survive,” Alvarez said. “They say a lot of things, but the truth is that we don’t see any difference, nothing real … It’s very difficult for all who live day to day.”

“If we buy tortillas we can’t buy beans,” she added, metaphorically.

The oldest of nine, Alvarez grew up in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, a working-class area southeast of Mexico City. Her father was a bricklayer, and her mother took care of Victoria and her eight siblings. Her father made a modest income, but it was enough to occasionally take the family to lucha libre wrestling, soccer matches and Chapultepec park.

“We had fun,” she recalled. “In our own way, within our limits.”

After completing only a year of middle school, Alvarez started working at age 14. Over the next few decades she worked a variety of jobs, including stints at a Dr. Scholl’s factory, a bakery that made food for airlines, a bodega in Mexico City’s central market, and a laundromat. After four years of working for an abusive boss at the laundromat she left the job and spent the next two years doing whatever she could to survive and provide for her three children, whom she raised alone.

In 2003 Alvarez had an offer to work 12-hour overnight shifts selling tortas for 1,400 pesos ($128, adjusted for inflation) a month, but she turned it down. Instead, she took a job at a laundromat in the middle-class Mexico City neighborhood of La Escandón, where she worked until last month.