In Mexico, Corruption Rules

By Ian Jobling • 4/10/08

A couple of recent stories highlight the problem of government corruption in Mexico. Ruben Gil, mayor of the Mexican town of Izucar de Matamoros, was arrested last week for smuggling hundreds of pounds of cocaine into the US.

David Agren tells the harrowing story of Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, who was imprisoned and threatened with rape in 2005 for having exposed pedophile rings in Cancun. Her work named influential businessman Kamel Nacif as a protector of the rings. Nacif called Mario Marin, the governor of the Mexican state of Puebla, who sent police to capture and jail her on bogus charges of defaming Nacif.

The cops allegedly taunted and assaulted her during the overnight trip, threatening her life and sticking a gun in her mouth. Their two-car convoy stopped while passing the Campeche Sound, Cacho says, and one of the gunmen asked: “Can you swim?”

Cacho would spend half a day in jail, during which time she was subjected to more mistreatment and learned of plans to have her raped from a sympathetic prison employee, who had the journalist moved to the infirmary.

Though Mexico’s National Council on Human Rights and its Supreme Court investigated Marin, he remains free today, as does Nacif.

The Supreme Court investigation revealed a dense network of corruption in the Cacho case. As the journalist says,

The investigation is amazing. It could prove that 23 people were involved in my arrest by the order of the governor and how they chose a certain judge so she could give me time in jail and how they chose the policemen to pick me up in Cancún so they would be able to torture me without any moral problems.

There is no solid distinction between Mexico’s government and its criminal cartels; indeed, it’s arguable that the cartels are Mexico’s real government. Mexico has found it impossible to enforce the law against drug smugglers because so many of the police are in their pocket. As one policemen has said, “There is barely a Mexican police officer along the U.S. border who isn’t involved in the drug trade. Even if you try to resist, your superiors pressure you into it or sideline you.”

Mexico’s Attorney General recently said, “There are municipal police forces that have collapsed, that function more as an aid to organized crime than as protection for the public.” He also claimed that drug cartels were kidnapping and threatening candidates for public office who threatened to rock the boat.

Corruption is epidemic throughout Latin America. According to Transparency International, a non-profit group that investigates corruption, about one third of Latin Americans report having bribed a policeman.

Since it raises the costs of doing business in Mexico, corruption has a devastating effect on the country’s economy. An economist reports:

reducing the level of corruption from the Mexican level to that in Singapore [where corruption is rare] would have the same effect on foreign investment as reducing the tax on capital income by 50 percentage points. In other words, corruption reduces foreign investment as much as a tax that takes half of net income!

Mexicans remain corrupt even after they become US citizens. My 2005 American Renaissance article, “Betrayals of Office,” revealed dozens of instances of corruption among US officials of Hispanic descent.

The recent Inverted World article “What is the West?” argued that the rule of law was an essential trait of Western culture. The West’s ability to form societies in which no one is above the law is one of the major reasons for our success. The mass importation of Mexicans into the US thus threatens the very basis of our society.

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