Posted on 11/29/2002 9:43:16 AM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
Since we are rapidly becoming close neighbors with Mexico, I thought this would be an important topic. Here are a few quotes that might be worth taking a look at from three different web sites:
Corruption Continues [in Mexico]
[latinbusinesschronicle.com]
Two Mexicans are talking about corruption, when one tells the other "Hey, did you hear the news that Mexico came out second-worst on a survey of corruption in Latin America?"
"No," the other says. "But, I would have thought we would be worst." ]
"Oh, no. We took care of that," the other says, indicating a payoff.[snip.]...
...Case in point: One of the key reasons U.S. microchip giant Intel chose to set up a plant in Costa Rica instead of Mexico a couple of years ago was the former's higher degree of transparency compared with the latter. The choice led to billions of dollars in increased exports for Costa Rica, a significant expansion of GDP and more jobs. [snip]...
...However, despite his intentions - and plans to continue reforming the economy - we believe Fox will face the same challenge other well-intended leaders face: A massive cultural acceptance of bribes as a way to obtain favors or get things done. [snip]...
[npr.org]
Series Explores Lure of Money, Prestige Among U.S. Border Agents
...The potential for corruption is obvious: Along the southwest border, U.S. federal employees guard the gateways into the richest illegal drug market and the biggest undocumented labor pool in the world. [snip]...
...In recent years, officers from all three of these agencies have been prosecuted and jailed for allowing illegal drugs and immigrants to cross the border into the United States in return for bribes, sex and other rewards. Records from INS and the Customs Service show that both agencies combined open an average of 53 new corruption cases a year involving drug or alien smuggling and bribery. And those are only the most high-profile cases, because there are limited resources to investigate every allegation. [snip]...
...Easy money is an obvious factor. But Burnett reports that along the border, blood ties can be a factor, too. "(Border agents) may live half their life on one side and half their life on the other," Howard Campbell, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Texas-El Paso, tells Burnett. [snip]...
...America's new "war on terrorism" adds a national security dimension to the problem -- a corrupt agent may never know what's in the car or truck he waves across the border.
===
[also from latinbusinesschronicle.com]
..."It's safe to say that [corruption] affects [private enterprise] pretty significantly and is probably one of the largest issues on the plate in terms of ...making markets work better," says John Zemko, senior program officer for Latin America at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a Washington-based nonprofit organization that is helping the Colombian Confederation of Chambers of Commerce with training seminars on how to avoid public and private corruption.
Corruption runs deep at nearly all levels of government in Latin America, from police asking for a bribe to ignore a traffic ticket to government officials asking for a bribe to grant a major bid. Some of the corruption is simply aimed at letting public officials do what they're supposed to do - let cargo clear customs or process a routine approval - while others are aimed at illegally influencing a public procurement bid.
Since it is illegal, there are no reliable statistics on the exact damage to Latin America in economic terms, but it would be safe to say that corrupt countries lose billions of dollars in lost investment and productivity as a result. [snip]...
Please define cultural terrorism.
Loony Tunes.
There is a danger of overusing the word, 'terrorism'. Note that the war on terror could be redefined to include law abiding citizens, if the meaning is too warped. Something to consider.
I am not particularly fearful of ciestas, burritos, the Catholic faith, hard work, or anything else in the Mexican culter, with the exception of corruption and the cynicism that results from that corruption.
Note that the border is the most corrupt spot of all, the very place they enter the border from. What kind of voters would they be? Cynical and uninformed. Would they accept puny bribes to vote a certain way? Most likely, yes, since they don't believe in government. In fact, if I remember correctly, in Orange County, when Sanchez pretended to defeat B1 Bob Dornan, there was a lottery for a car. To get a ticket, you had to vote for Sanchez. They see massive corruption on both sides of the border. So from their point of view, why shouldn't they sell their votes?
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