Field observation 006 - What if it's yes?
What I learned at the Diana roundabout about the one question that decides whether you build or give up.
Highlights
A million people in Reforma shouting “what if it’s yes?”. Not a chant. A question I have carried since I was eighteen.
I have lived twelve years outside Mexico. People criticize me for it. Last night I understood that being away is not abandoning, it is coming back carrying new things.
The first goal came from a Colombian who earns his living in Saudi Arabia, like my Colombian partner and like me. Borders are almost never where we think.
Every company and project I have built started with the same question: what if it’s yes? Hope was the first step, never the last.
Mexico had not won a match like this since 1986, the year I was born. I turn forty this year. I take it as a sign that it is always worth believing again.
👋 Hi, it’s Luisa Javier. Welcome to Aziul Connections ( 🌎🔬The Sustainable Systems Lab), where I study how sustainable systems are built for business, leadership, and life.
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The question a million people were shouting
Last night, at the Diana roundabout on Reforma, a million people were shouting the same phrase. It was not a chant. It was a question.
What if it’s yes?
Mexico had just beaten Ecuador two to nothing. The first knockout match the country has won in a World Cup in forty years. I watched it on one of the screens the government set up along Reforma. When the referee blew the final whistle, I could not stop crying. Not over football. Over what I was seeing around me.
What I saw when I stopped watching the match
I met people from Uganda, from China, from Canada, and from many more places. Foreigners welcoming Mexicans, Mexicans embracing foreigners. Everyone had warned me about the danger, about fear. And what was there was something else. A hospitality that did not fit inside any warning.
I have lived twelve years in Saudi Arabia. I come to Mexico about seven weeks a year, to give strength to my company here, to my people, to what I keep building from far away. Sometimes I get criticized for that. For living abroad. For not being in the day to day. Last night, crying in that crowd, I understood something I want to put in writing.
Being away is not abandoning. It is coming back carrying things.
The goal came from someone who lives in my other home
The first goal came from Julián Quiñones. He plays for Al-Qadsiah, in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. This season he was the Saudi league’s top scorer with thirty-three goals, above Cristiano Ronaldo. He was born in Colombia. He plays for Mexico. He earns his living in the same land where I earn mine.
And there, in that single goal, three people came together for me. Quiñones, a Colombian who bloomed in Mexico and in Arabia. Me, a Mexican who built her life in Arabia. And Sandra, my Colombian partner, cofounder of WAYAKIT, the one who believed in “what if it’s yes?” from day one, long before it became a country’s chant. She was not in Reforma last night. But she was in every question I dared to ask myself to get here.
None of the three of us chose a single home. It is the same question I explored with Fernanda Peñaherrera, when we talked about who you are when you do not fit anywhere. That was the part no one was looking at while they celebrated. The borders we believe separate cultures are almost never where we think.
Where the question really came from
The phrase the street was shouting is not mine. It became the whole country’s chant during this World Cup, in the stands, in the streets, on every screen. But when I heard it multiplied by a million voices, I recognized something I have carried much longer.
At eighteen I took my first leadership course. The game was simple. Every time you said, “it can’t be done,” they handed the question back to you: what if it can?
I have been asking it ever since. What if we can detox the world? What if we can save millions of liters of water while still creating impact? What if I can be a single mother and develop my intellectual capacity? What if we can bloom, as women, in a culture they say oppresses us? What if we, as Latin American women, can enter an industry as strict as aviation? What if we can connect cultures that seem to share nothing at all?
Every system I have built started with a question before it started with a plan.
Why the question comes first
Hope sometimes looks naive. As if believing something can go well were the same as refusing to see the real problems. But for a people like ours, one that has carried hard years, this hope is not denial. It is a window. A small light at the end of the tunnel that reminds us things can still change. It does not erase what hurts. It gives us strength to keep facing it.
England is next, an enormous rival, and no one doubts it. The question does not promise it will be easy. It only asks that it be worth trying before ruling it out.
Leaders who build something that lasts design first the internal system that dares to ask. Without that question, no external system starts. It is almost never the plan that is missing. It is the permission to believe the plan is possible.
Mexico had not won like this since 1986, the year I was born. This year I turn forty. I carry this same energy forty years later, and now I see it with new eyes. What is your “what if it’s yes?” this week? The one you have not yet dared to say out loud.
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Public lab studying sustainable systems across business, leadership, and life. Essays, experiments, field observations and case studies from a climate-tech founder (Dr. Luisa Javier) operating between LATAM and MENA. Aziul = Azul (the planet) + Luisa (backwards)
About the author - Dr. Luisa Javier
Dr. Luisa Javier is a scientist and climate-tech entrepreneur across LATAM & MENA, focused on designing sustainable systems for business and society. She is the Founder and CEO of WAYAKIT Group and the author of Aziul Connections.
Aziul Connections is the public lab where I study how sustainable systems are built.
“I build sustainable living through WAYAKIT and study the systems behind it through Aziul Connections.”
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References
El Imparcial (2026), “México vs Ecuador: goles, resumen y mejores momentos de los dieciseisavos del Mundial 2026,” El Imparcial, July 1, 2026.
Por Esto (2026), “¿De dónde salió el ‘Y si sí’? La frase viral que hoy ilusiona a México,” Por Esto, June 26, 2026.
Fox Sports (2026), “Mexico’s Julian Quiñones Beats Ivan Toney, Cristiano Ronaldo To Saudi’s Golden Boot,” Fox Sports, May 21, 2026.