Viva Mexico - Corruption

 

Viva Mexico - Corrupciόn

        The year is 1968.  I am living in Mexico, Acapulco to be exact.  I have come to Mexico City to take some courses.  This is an Olympic year, and Mexico is hosting.  Things romantically are not going well for me, and in my depth of despair, I look for a gun to end my problems.  The underground buzz is that there is a crackdown on firearms.  A broad coalition of students have congregated in Mexico City, where the universal eye of the media is currently focused brightly.  Each day, the students come out of their apartments in a large apartment complex, into the square there, to protest for more political freedom from the authoritarian government then in power, the PRI party.

            The tension is rising day by day.  The government is feeling growing embarrassment as the world begins to learn that its democratic facade has failed.  The national guard is called out once again to control the mass demonstration; this time, their orders are to shoot.  Thousands are injured, hundreds die, including women and children. 

            Now I am retired, and once again living in Mexico.  Fifty years later, I am eager to see how this colorful, intelligent population with a huge heart has grown and evolved.

            The city buildings are big, modern, digitally wired. The city roads and highways are wide and well paved.    Up and down the Pacific edge Developments have grown; hotels, condos, eateries and overpriced souvenir shops sprawl along the sandy coast.   Only the wealthy can afford to have easy access to the precious white-sand Pacific beaches. The lovely open markets of Acapulco and the mixing of the classes no longer exist.  It, too, has been clearly divided between haves and have-nots.  Yet inland, In the countryside, such as Acapulco was in that distant time, time has stood still.

In that long ago year in Acapulco, there was a hillside as-yet underdeveloped.  The people had taken it as their own, their native land, and built houses there.  The city government, and the corrupt politicians who owned the government, prevented the people access to water and electricity.  The enterprising community had illicitly supplied water and power themselves.  An idealistic politician saw the injustice, and ran for mayor under the principle that the land belongs to the people.  In the course of his campaigning, he was shot down in the streets.  The land developers succeeded in chasing off the people, and slicing the pie for themselves.  Expensive homes were built, and the privileged few claimed exclusive rights to the God-created lofty vistas of the Pacific Ocean and magnificent sunsets.

            Here I am again, living in this blessed nation, still under the spell of an authoritarian system disguised as democracy.  People have the right to vote, but the elected officials have no power to change the status quo.  What changes have been made, such as empowering women’s rights to not be beaten and abused by their husbands, and a system of scholarships for students for higher education, are clearly on display when one looks for progress.  Much of the country is still rural and agricultural.  Away from urban sprawl, time has stood still. 

            In rural areas, children still do not have access to basic education because there is no rural system of school buses.  A family must still provide money for uniforms, and homemade foods for their midday meal.  This situation has greatly diminished over the years, as the extended families leave the farms to have homes in the towns, where they can board their country cousins during the school year.  The mindset, however, has changed little.

            One that has plagued me since I retired here is the mindset that says, if you have it and I want it, I can take it when you are not looking.  Theft is not a sin to these seemingly religious people who faithfully attend Mass on Sundays.  Dishonesty has always been a part of this Latin culture, where it is distasteful to abuse a person with the truth if a lie or half-truth would go down easier.  For a non-native to enter this society, picking your way through daily activities and official passages, not knowing whom to trust and where truth lies is not just maddening, it is disheartening.

            Bureaucrats are given narrow guidelines for carrying out their duties.  Paying taxes? Getting a drivers license? Registering a car? The legalities behind these operations are complex.  The average Mexican twists himself into a pretzel, or so it seems to me, to avoid paying taxes.  For example, I sold my house.  I wanted to keep my meager proceeds in the bank until I understood the lay of the financial land well enough to know how and where to protect it and grow it.  I was told by numerous people that a bank account was a bad option.  Why?  Won’t the bank protect my money?  The answer surprised me.  I, being American, expect to pay my taxes where they are due.  I understand that taxes are an economic necessity for the government to be run efficiently.  Government salaries must be paid.  Someone must pay for all the ink and printer paper that is consumed, the ink in the stamp pads that are universal.  But I was warned against placing my money in an institution licensed by the government, such as a bank or investment company.  I would be taxed on the sale of my property when deposited in the bank, perhaps as much as 25%.  If I could not falsify the amount paid and received, then the ‘right’ course of action is to keep the money under wraps.  The sale price, if recorded properly in the County Property registry, should be allowed to disappear in ledgers on dusty shelves, never being exposed to the bright light of the Revenue department.  

            I went to the Transit office to renew my drivers license.  I was given a list of documents needed.  I waited on a long, slow-moving line until my arthritic knees were screaming.  As I finally got to the door of the office, the guard at the door took a perfunctory look at my fistful of documents and identified ones that did not satisfy the requirements.  I returned home, made more copies, and added them to the stack for the next-day’s try.  The second day, long line, knees screaming, I got to the door and this time the guard realized that I was not just renewing my license, but transferring it from one state to another.  This called for an additional document.  Back home again, I found the document, added it to the stack, and waited for the next day.  I checked, of course, to see what the hours of operation were, on my first day there.  Here, on my third day I arrived on the line more than an hour before closing. About 45 minutes before closing, the guard came around to us standing on the line and said, go home.  There won’t be time to see you all before the office closes.  I had been so confident that this time, at last, as I had all the necessary documents and photocopies of them, I could not fail.  Me and all of that confidence turned tail and returned home for the weekend.

            My passport was among those documents I carried with me, even though it was not on the list.  Just in case it, though not identified as required, it was somehow implied.  When I got home, rather than putting the passport back into the home safe, I tucked it into a more accessible spot in my new house, where routines and ‘safe spots’ were not yet established. 

            Now, a couple of weeks later, I need to bring that bundle of documents plus some back into a different transit office to register a car.  This time a passport is on the list of requirements.  But I don’t know where it is.  I think, surely a birth certificate and a ‘green card’ (permanent residency) should qualify equally to achieve the purpose of showing a passport.  But here we are, dealing with a bureaucrat who does not need to read the fine print of the legality behind his job.  He is not interested in the spirit of the law, but only the letter, to the extent that he has read it.

            The police force is another area that is deeply entrenched in red tape, and corruption.  A Canadian lady was living with me for a few winter months.  We went to the hot springs for some relaxation.  On the way, in a lightly-trafficked four-lane road, a motorcycle police man pulled us over.  He informed us that she had driven through an orange traffic light.  He routinely asked us for our documents.  She said she has an international drivers license, but had nothing to show.  Even her Canadian drivers license had been left back at my ranch.  I offered him mine, which he took and attached to his clipboard.  His opening salvo, with my drivers license in hand, was to demand 4000 pesos from us.  An infraction for driving through a red light would be, probably, a couple hundred pesos.  Driving without a license might be a bit more.  It was in no way near 4000 pesos.  We negotiated for some time.  My companion did not understand the conversation being held in Spanish.  I was trying to negotiate down to 500 pesos, although I was not thinking about the driving without a license.  He escalated the situation, threatening to withhold my rear license plate until the fine was paid.  She was very nervous with the escalation of the conversation, and finally just took out 2000 pesos and gave it to him.  He returned my license to me and we drove off.  He never once offered to write a ticket.

            I can only imagine the chaos that must be traffic court.  I doubt it is anything like the process in the States.  I imagine you simply queue up at a window and pay the amount stated on the ticket, with no opportunity to challenge the justice of it. 

            I have fallen victim to a motorcycle cop who sits in wait, watching for an unsecured seat belt; plenty of people are casual about the seat belt law—and usually not a reason to stop a vehicle.  When I was victimized by such a vampire, who held my license in his clipboard, I shamed him for his obvious victimization.  He was not interested in writing a ticket, but only of securing a bribe.  I was willing to drive off without my license, rather to succumb to his thuggery.

Another example is this.  Instead of traffic lights controlling intersections, gloriettas, or roundabouts, are common here. In front of a heavily trafficked WalMart there is a glorietta, but there is also what would appear to be a turn lane.  That is, two lanes facing the glorietta, and one lane carved out of the meridian for a left-hand turn.  If you are in that lane, you cannot go forward to the glorietta without being forced to merge, which is not anywhere else a normal feature for a glorietta intersection.  It is logical to assume it is for the many shoppers who are approaching WalMart from the opposite directions, and just need to do the U to get into the parking lot.  There is no signage.

            I carefully made that choice, while there was no other car approaching the glorietta in the five lanes that existed there.  I was immediately pulled over and put into the position of negotiating for how much of a bribe I was willing to pay.  The policeman did not agree with my interpretation of the lay of the land.  In Mexico, if you get a ticket your rear license plate is removed, and to get it back you must queue up at a cashier’s window in a busy transit office.  This will eat up many hours of the next day, and is to be avoided at all costs.  Again, at that traffic office, there is no judge or opportunity to explain extenuating circumstances.  The cop rules supreme, his word is never questioned.

            So I question what is his impetus for extortion?  Is he underpaid, and need the extra money to put food on his table?  No, in fact, here in the city of Mazatlan his salary is above average, and well above the salary of, say, an English teacher, a career from which I am retired.  Again, how is the government paying his ample salary if the revenue from traffic stops is a fraction of what it would be, if all traffic stops were duly processed?

            I find myself, in theory, in the same position of those students in Mexico City on that Olympiad day decades ago.  I want to question the status quo.  I want to shake you up when you answer my question, Why do you put up with this?  “That’s the way it is.”  Shrugged shoulders.

            In the tiny rural village where I lived on my farm, I attended the State senate candidate rallies, to listen to the stump speech and ask questions, and express the community needs.  One hot issue that seems to garner popular support is, access to internet in rural areas.  Our village is in a slight depression of land.  A valley seems too noble a label, but in truth we are surrounded by mountains.  The highway connecting the population centers skirts the edge of the west hillside.

Common sense seems to point to the solution for lack of signal as being an additional tower in the valley to serve these depressed terrain.  The senate candidate came to us to garner our support, our votes.  We brought up to him the delinquency of the TelCel company in claiming our monthly fees for telephone and internet service, while not providing us with the same.  In our little hamlet it is common to see the residents strolling up and down in front of their houses, in the dirt road, talking on the telephone.  It is not for privacy.  Inside the houses are dead zones; no signal.  A call cannot be received while inside the house.  Yet everyone dutifully pays the TelCel company for service, every month.  Yes, the candidate earnestly responds.  Better internet access in rural communities is a definite need.  Undeniable.  Widely acknowledged.  Ask TelCel why they do not offer an additional tower, they will say it is not cost effective.  Yet, over the years, they have earned through unearned fees more than enough money to build such a tower.

I had a heart-to-heart conversation about this lawlessness with the pastor of my parish.  We saw the endemic nature of this mindset.  Homilies on the topic of a more fastidious examination of conscience were useless; each listener thinking of their neighbor’s guilt, but not acknowledging their own.

I was visiting Oaxaca one year when there was a mass demonstration lasting weeks, of educators, filling the streets around the center of the capital with tent-cities.

We think of the Bible verse, ‘train up your children in the way they should go, and they will not stray from it’.  Where to begin?  Where to get a fingerhold to pry open the mass delusion?  In the primary classrooms?  In teachers’ college?  In State education boards?  Who will finally not accept the response, “That’s the way it is.”

Can we expect the teaching professionals to be on the cutting edge of societal change?  While they are required to earn a higher education degree, they earn less than the police profession, which only requires a high school diploma.  Male teachers earn more than female teachers, regardless of excellence or lack thereof.  Mexican culture still puts the majority of household responsibilities on the female, whether employed or not.  Imagine the household of a policeman and a primary school teacher.  He comes home, sits on the recliner, opens a beer and waits for his meal.  She rushes home from class, maybe with a bundle of papers to review and correct, and struggles to put the meal on the table while attending to the physical and emotional needs of their two children.  Of course, in the traditional household there might be a grandma available to do the household chores.  However, there are not enough of those to go around in the average family, unless the family occupies a large compound housing family units in separate spaces.  That, too, is a dying dynamic.  This scenario used to be far more widespread in rural Mexico.

One feature of modern Mexico might be an instrument of pot-stirring.  Since World War II brought about major shifts in labor markets, when blacks no longer felt limited to farm work, Mexicans have picked up the slack.  The Brazero movement made it attractive for Mexicans to cross the northern border for agricultural work, and return each year with earnings.  This trend has seen many evolutions over the years, and has had a lasting effect on Mexican culture.  It is a very slow-moving change factor, more like lava flow than tidal wave.  For those for whom family obligation requires them to return to Mexico, or retirement, or are forced to through conflicts with the US law, they try to reestablish themselves back into their communities.  While in private conversations with the casual ex pat they might meet and indulge their longing for a better way, they are quickly swallowed up into the quagmire of the surrounding complacency.  “That’s the way it’s always been.”

            To conclude this essay I will recount what has happened in the past 24 hours. This morning just before noon my friend Oscaar walked through my front door, with Damian.  Oscar had brought Damian, a worker on his Durango ranch, down to Mazatlan to help out for a few days, to fulfill the promise Oscar had made to the landlord.  For reduced rent, Oscar would paint the house.  Meanwhile, on Sunday at church I connected with some local members who would look for a worker or two in the community to do the work at a slower, more considered pace.  During the previous day’s phone conversation I had told Oscar he need not bring this worker.  But once Oscar sets his mind, he is not easily persuaded.  Damian was in my house for a few days then, so I may as well put him to work.  It was late in the day now.  Oscar had left us to attend to a nephew in a rehab program.  Damian and I were awkwardly alone; so I put him to work.   I gave him a pair of wire strippers to fix a burned out outlet.

            Although it was late in the day, Oscar returned and the two of them set out for Durango.  On the way out of town they passed through the ‘Gold Zone’, a heavily touristed area.  Damian jumped out of the car to go to an Oxxo and buy a coke, while Oscar parked and dealt with a phone call.  Some twenty minutes passed, and Damian had not returned.  Oscar went to look for him.  The clerk at Oxxo said the police took Damian away in handcuffs.

            Oscar rushed to the police station, but he could not get Damian out; it was passed the hour for that.  He asked why the boy had been taken.  He was clean; no drugs, no booze, nothing offensive about him.  The police said they found a wire stripper in his pockets, which could be used as a lethal weapon. 

            Oscar was told to return in the morning at 8 a.m. to speak with the judge.  He arrived at 7:30, not wanting to be late.  He was made to sit unattended for an hour.  He asked, what is the holdup?  The judge was having breakfast, he was told.  He waited more.  Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock.  Eventaully he was told the charges, and what it would cost in fines.  He was told $1,800 pesos.  No, he said. The boy did nothing to warrant arrest.  Each party postured; this was the negotiation.  Finally, a whisper in his ear said all could be resolved with a bribe of 1,000 pesos.  And so the boy was set free.

            Both he and Damian counted the number of people that passed through the jail cells that night.  The station was busy with mostly this sort of nuisance arrest. They calculated that the police were earning about 70,000 pesos in one hour.  This is the real danger in the tourist area, not the drug traffickers like the media would have the public believe.

There was never a formal charge filed.  Nothing was put in writing.  It was a high stakes game played by the police, who had all the power.

            I am left with my unresolved question.  A large ocean liner has a proportionately small rudder.  Turning it around is a slow process; it cannot turn on a dime, like a speed boat.  Where is that rudder?