While birdwatching in an ecological preserve in Mazamitla, Jalisco I met a middle-aged gentleman from the Netherlands who is married to a woman from Mexico and who visits Mexico frequently. When I asked him if there was one stereotype he or other Europeans that he knew had of Mexico, he immediately replied “corruption.” Upon further conversation with him, it was apparent that the type of corruption that he was referring to is known as “la mordida,” a centuries-old form of bribery/unofficial payments which primarily occurs in the public arena that literally means “the bite.”

According to Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index which measured the perceived levels of public sector corruption, that gentleman’s stereotype indeed had a basis in reality. Worldwide, Mexico ranked 98th out of the 178 countries evaluated; on a scale of 0 (“highly corrupt”) to 10 (“very clean”) Mexico scored 3.1. As a basis of comparison, the “cleanest” countries were Denmark, New Zealand, and Singapore with scores of 9.3 while Somalia was the most “corrupt” with a ranking of 1.1; as for Mexico’s NAFTA partners, Canada ranked # 6 with a score of 8.9 and the U.S. was 22nd with a score of 7.1.

Moreover, as to the extent that “la mordida” is a “way and fact of life” and a social and economic problem in Mexico, the Mexican chapter of Transparency International estimates that in 2010 the Mexican public spent $2.75 billion in bribes. These so-called “negotiated payments” for government and bureaucratic services averaged in 2010 $14 per bribe (with some being considerably more) and that year there were over 200 million of these acts of corruption committed in Mexico. Astoundingly, average income citizens paid 14% of their income in bribes while it is estimated that households earning minimum wage paid up to 33% of their income to “la mordida.”- that is quite a bite! Previously, it had been determined that 85% of the bribe demands came from people associated with some level of the Mexican government and that prior to dying, 87% of the population will at one or more times in their lives fall victim to “la mordida.”

Although this institutionalized form of bribery dates back to the Spanish Colonial era (and wherever the Spanish colonized in the Americas), this insidious practice became entrenched in Mexico from 1929-2000 during the Partido Revolucionario Institucional’s (PRI) near monopolistic political control of the country. The PRI’s long, virtually unopposed reign created a national culture which allowed for and perpetuated a lack of oversight in public life which permitted the widespread corruption to become, at all levels of government, the traditional and customary way of getting things done. Every governmental agency became infected with this practice of the asking for and the acceptance of bribes, sometimes euphemistically referred to as “tips” or "soda money": the treasury; immigration; emigration, hospitals; customs; the myriad branches of the police; judges; lawyers; the military; planning departments; and school systems. Consequently, a cynical mentality developed in the country in which a great percentage of its people came to believe with no more than a shrug of the shoulder or a wink of an eye that “el que no tranza no avanza”/he who does not sell out, does not get ahead.”

Having lived in Mexico for many years now, my wife, Maria, and myself have never personally fallen prey to la mordida’s bite. However, we have seen or heard numerous examples of it; a bus driver being stopped by state police and forced to pay all the money that he had (about $16) although they had the gall to say to him that he actually had committed no crime or violation; another bus driver being stopped by the notorious “el transitos”/traffic police and requesting and receiving a bribe (in lieu of having to go to the police station to pay the actual fine) for the violation of the bus being in motion with its front door being open- once the bribe was paid the bus took off with, of course, the door open!; a local judge charging an exorbitant fee to personally arrange for the processing of paperwork in the state capital of Morelia; individuals having to pay the building department to grease the way to receive permits for housing modifications; and a hunter who had killed a pregnant deer out of season escaping going to prison by paying a substantial bribe to the authorities.

However, since 2000 the federal government and the state governments to varying degrees have attempted to institute changes in how their offices function that allows for greater transparency and accountability. An example of this is the emigration office that I go to in Morelia to get my FM-2 visa no longer allows its employees to handle cash (all payments are made by the applicants at authorized banks) and all applications are handled according to reasonable and stated fixed time frames. When Maria was in the border city of Mexicali in the far northwestern state of Baja California, she was told by relatives there that since all of the customs department employees were fired and replaced by workers from elsewhere and that they now only had to pay the legitimate and official fees and that crossing times to and from the U.S. had been drastically reduced. It has been reported that state governments such as Baja California Sur, Queretaro, and Guanajuato have made great inroads in their battle against institutionalized corruption.

Yet, it is highly unlikely that bribes will ever in the foreseeable future be fully (or even substantially) eradicated. Mexico’s low salaries for employees in the public sector, unequal distribution of wealth, history, and culture all portend the continuation of this multi-generational “tradition.” Particularly in its cities, the self-perpetuating trend is for the younger, better educated citizenry with more disposable income and less free time to pay (or even initiate) the bribes rather than to take the legal steps required to resolve the issue at hand.

No wonder then that a national survey concluded that 72% of Mexicans believed that the “bite’ and its accompanying wounds are of a permanent nature. Imagine having to pay “soda money” to have your "basura"/garbage removed. That is just unabashed and unconscionable garbage!