Abstract. – In this article I analyze how the conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades’ moneys bodily affect their recipients in a village of eastern Yucatán, Mexico. In a first instance, these government cash transfers are considered more as means of communication of economic values than as sources of unrest in its beneficiaries’ lives. I describe the qualities, conditions, and indexical marks the transferred money is leaving on the body of their managers, according to local semiotic ideologies. Finally, it is suggested that these cases promptly contradict one of the Western idealizations of money: it can be treated as perfect expression of a value (i.e., ratio of ratios) only if it is ascribed to certain semiotic ideology of marginal value. [México, Maya, Oportunidades, money, body, translation/changeover, redemption]