Tales of Corruption
MY FIRST TIME.
Wouldn’t it be great if I remembered the first bribe I ever gave? I’d love to shine a light on its romantic aspect, the shameful complicity between the briber and the bribed, the shy smiles exchanged. Maybe I’d write something like, It was a first kiss: loss of innocence paired with the excitement of getting away with something. Unfortunately, I don’t remember my first time even vaguely. It came and went as naturally as the first time I used deodorant or drank a beer.
EXTRA, EXTRA.
In “The Sun, the Moon and Walmart,” Homero Aridjis writes, “A child in Mexico soon learns that corruption is a way of life, and that to get ahead in school, work and politics, El que no transa no avanza—loosely, You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t cheat.”
Published as an op-ed in The New York Times (April 30, 2012), “The Sun, the Moon and Walmart” immediately struck me as a rare specimen not because of the severe indictment with which it begins, but because we Mexicans—who love trashing Mexico while in Mexico—rarely speak a word of criticism about our Mexiquito lindo to foreigners, let alone gringos. Aridjis goes on to tell tales of once being asked for a bribe by a teacher and years later being offered one by a government official.
WHEN IN ROME.
a scandal had popped up in the news recently about Walmart having paid more than $20 million in bribes in Mexico to get permits for their stores, so corruption in Mexico was—momentarily, because Americans were involved—news.
Corruption in Mexico is as surprising as kidnappings or the national soccer team losing in the last minute. Why would the Times publish a piece on the obvious? Well, a scandal had popped up in the news recently about Walmart having paid more than $20 million in bribes in Mexico to get permits for their stores, so corruption in Mexico was—momentarily, because Americans were involved—news. People were talking about it. Aridjis’s argument was that Mexicans can’t be outraged at Walmart for taking advantage of our corrupt system. “According to a recent study,” writes Aridjis, “companies shell out approximately 10 percent of their earnings to corrupt officials. In the last 30 years, the Mexican economy has lost more than $870 billion to corruption, crime and tax evasion.”
INTRO TO BRIBES.
If a Mexican tells you they’ve never bribed someone, they’re lying. Bribing, in Mexico, is part of The System. Dealing with the Mexican government means dealing with poorly paid bureaucrats with no accountability who will do anything for an extra peso. A lot of the times the bureaucrat you’re dealing with has to move a certain amount of money up to his boss in order to keep his job. Guess where that money’s coming from. I remember once reading somewhere that police officers, who earned a little over a couple of hundred dollars a month, had to “rent” their guns and bulletproof vests from their superiors. I remember an architect complaining to me a few years ago that since the Left had taken over Mexico City the bribes had more than doubled for people in the construction business. I could go on and on. And I will.
IT MIGHT’VE BEEN A STUFFED FROG.
I do remember the most expensive bribe I’ve given. I was still a teenager, driving to my girlfriend’s house one night with some sort of a tacky gift in the trunk of the car. Let’s say it was a stuffed something or other. I ran a red light and immediately heard the siren. “Pull over,” said the bullhorn.
I was a weak and frightful—frankly, childish—teenager. Cops scared the shit out of me.
I plucked my driver’s license from my wallet as the officer’s belly stared at the side of my head. A knot formed in my stomach: the face of Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martínez was smiling at me like the reflection from a tiny, distorted mirror. A few weeks earlier, thinking it would be something amusing to show people, I’d cut out a little headshot of the Dominican All-Star from Sports Illustrated and taped it over my own picture on the upper left hand corner of the license. I liked to look at it every now and again: Pedro’s face with my name next to it. (Unfortunately, I’m sad to report, I seemed to be the only person who found the switcheroo amusing.)
I was a weak and frightful—frankly, childish—teenager. Cops scared the shit out of me.
“Wait a second, please,” I said to the officer. Then I proceeded to carefully unpeel Pedro’s face from mine. I handed him the license. After looking at it for a second, the cop said:
“Watcha got in that hand?”
“What? This?” I responded, holding up the little headshot as innocently as possible.
The cop took the picture from my hand and carefully covered my own headshot with it. He shook his head.
In order to get as much money from you as possible, I learned with experience, Mexican
cops try to convince you that you’re in way more trouble than you actually are. For example, say you run a red light and the fine for running a red light is $10. The policeman will tell you that the fine is $50 and that you have to pay it personally in an office on the other side of town and that, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but with this new rule they came up with to stop people from running red lights, you’ll probably get your license suspended, so why don’t you just give him $35? This officer told me that I’d defiled my official government identification and that it was, of course, a big deal. Millions or billions (possibly trillions) of pesos of fines were headed my way.
“But officer,” I said, “it was only a joke.”
“Please step out of the car.”
I did.
“Open the trunk,” he said.
I did.
He stared at a colorful little paper bag with a gift-wrapped something or other sticking out.
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to my girlfriend’s house,” I said in a shaky voice. “It’s a gift for her.”
The second officer appeared. “What’s that?”
“Says it’s a gift for his girlfriend.”
Then Officer #1 showed Officer #2 how I’d sullied my sacrosanct driver’s license and Officer #2 shook his head. He knew the drill. Said something like, “Oh boy. Tsk, tsk. This is bad.”
They asked me for money. I told them I didn’t have much cash.
“So you want to go to the Public Ministry?” said Officer #2.1 “Find out what the judge has to say about your little joke?” (I’ve been threatened with seeing “the judge” dozens of times, but I’ve never actually come across him.)
“No, officer, please. It’s just that I only have two hundred pesos.”2
“Well,” said Officer #1, “I noticed you had a couple of cards in your wallet.”
Long story short, Officer #1 gets in the passenger seat of my car and we follow Officer #2 to an ATM. Officer #1 goes into the ATM with me. I withdraw 2,500 pesos. I hand him the money. Then I ask him for directions to my girlfriend’s house.
WALMEX: A BRIEF TIMELINE.3
The practice of an employer paying its employees with vouchers only accepted by the employer hits a special nerve with Mexicans, since it used to be common during the reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz.
Walmart paired up with Mexican magnate Jerónimo Arango in the early 90s. In 1997, Walmart bought 51% of Arango’s Cifra and renamed it Walmart de México. Controversy then erupted when, in 2004, Walmart built a 71,900-square-foot store next to the archeological site of Teotihuacan (north of Mexico City), on what was thought to be protected land.4 The alleged bribes doled out by Walmart to Mexican officials—of which we know, thanks to a 2012 Times article—happened in 2005. Then, in 2008, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that Walmart could not continue to pay part of its employees’ salaries in vouchers that could only be redeemed in Walmart stores. (The practice of an employer paying its employees with vouchers only accepted by the employer hits a special nerve with Mexicans, since it used to be common during the reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz.) According to Enrique Bonilla, the leader of something called the National Front Against Walmart, Walmart México pays 1.60 pesos in taxes for every 100 pesos of sales. In the first trimester of 2012, Walmart México reported utilities of 4,710,000,000 pesos (roughly 339,590,000 dollars). Currently, Walmart operates more than 2,000 stores and restaurants in Mexico.
MORDELÓN.
The slang term for a bribe in Mexico City is “mordida,” literally meaning “bite.” As in:
“I got stopped by the police for speeding.”
“Did they give you a ticket?”5
“Nah, I gave him a bite.”
That’s how Mexico City traffic cops earned the nickname “mordelones,” “biters.”
“I got pulled over by a biter.”
EN LA VERDAD HAY VICTORIA.
Of course Pedro Martínez was a phenomenal baseball superstar. The Dominican Republic (pop. ~9.5 million) basically exists to provide Major League Baseball with great players. Twenty-eight of the MLB’s 30 teams have “academies” in the DR. The DR supplies more players to the majors (103 in 2012) than any other country outside the U.S.6 (It reminds me of that city Henry Ford tried to build in the Amazon to provide him with an unlimited supply of rubber for his cars.) Every Dominican kid wants to go to the majors. Can you blame them? The DR’s per capita GDP in 2011 was $9,286;7 In his 16 seasons in the MLB, Pedro Martínez earned on average over $9 million a year. The reward for catching the eye of a big league team is being, literally, a thousand times richer than your average compatriot.
When the stakes are so high and there’s so much money involved, there’s going to be corruption. A common practice for Dominican aspiring MLBers is to lie about their age. There was, for example, Roberto Hernández Heredia, a pitcher who played for the Cleveland Indians as Fausto Carmona. When the Indians signed Roberto/Fausto they thought he was 17 when he was actually 20. He was caught and arrested. Now he travels up and down the DR talking to kids about his “mistakes” and at the end of the talks he hands them t-shirts that read In Truth, There is Triumph.
WHY I HAVE TO LIE.
Cheating worked for Dominican infielder Miguel Tejada. He played 15 seasons in the majors and earned over $95 million in salaries.8 In 2008, while Tejada played for Houston, an ESPN reporter pulled an ambush interview on him:9
ESPN: How old are you?
MT: Thirty-two.
ESPN: Born in?
MT: Dominican Republic.
ESPN: In which year?
MT: Seventy-six.
ESPN: You sure?
MT: Why I have to lie?
ESPN: We acquired the…birth certificate that your father filed when you were a boy and…I want you to explain this to me, OK?
MT: [Holding the document. Confused.] What is that?
ESPN: This is a birth certificate. Your birth certificate, right?
MT: Who give you that?
Tejada, whose last name was originally Tejeda, walked out of the interview. The documents revealed that he was not born in 1976 as he claimed, but in 1974.
AUTHORITY MEANS DIFFERENT THINGS FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE.
I once read somewhere that authoritarian regimes breed rule breakers. While citizens of countries with democratic governments know that rules are there for a reason, people who’ve suffered dictatorial governments think that rules are absurd tricks designed to fuck them over.
I once read somewhere that authoritarian regimes breed rule breakers. While citizens of countries with democratic governments know that rules are there for a reason, people who’ve suffered dictatorial governments think that rules are absurd tricks designed to fuck them over. (Think of your craziest high school friends. Weren’t they the ones with the most authoritarian parents?) Mexico hasn’t had a dictatorship proper in a long time, but we Mexicans did live for 80+ years under the unopposed rule—disguised as a democratic system—of the cleverly named Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), something that Mario Vargas Llosa called “the perfect dictatorship.”10 Rules for us mean hurdles, potholes.
I JUST DRANK A FIFTH OF VODKA—DARE ME TO DRIVE?
I regret almost everything I did in my youth. For example, there was that hip-hop phase I went through, in which I wore expensive white t-shirts, baggy white sweats, white “sneaks,” a silver wristwatch, and listened to Eminem. There were plenty of times when I could’ve been nicer to my sister who’s always been, by all measures, a saint. One of the things I regret the most is how often I drove drunk during my late teens/early twenties. It’s a true miracle I never hurt myself or others. It still gives me the chills to think about it.
For example, one time I was driving drunk at two or three in the morning when I suddenly realized I was completely, desperately lost.11 Then, suddenly, from the heavens appeared one of those ugly green signs with white lettering that abound in the confusing metropolis: TURN RIGHT AND YOU WILL BE LESS LOST. The right turn was only a few feet in front of me and I was in the middle lane. I turned the steering wheel and almost crashed into the car to my right—which happened to be a police car. Siren. Bullhorn.
Cut to: me parked in a dark alley in front of the police car. I get out of the car. One of the cops joins me.
“You almost crashed into us.”
“Sorry, officer.”
“You’re drunk.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Of course you are. You can barely walk. We’re taking you to the Public Ministry.”
With the courage that comes from a night of drinking, I took my wallet out and laid a fifty-peso bill on the hood of my car. The officer took the money and left.
APOLOGY EXPECTED.
In 2009, Tejada admitted to lying to congressional investigators about steroid use in the majors and to having taken steroids himself. He held a teary-eyed press conference regarding the issue:
I’m sorry to my family, to the Congress, to the Houston Astros, to the Orioles, to the Major Leagues, and [struggling to hold back the tears] to all the fans in baseball. And I really apologize because I don’t want to be in this situation. And I apologize to the whole United States because this country gave me the opportunity to be who I am and the last thing I want to do is let this country down.12 I hope they forgive me.
MY 10,000 HOURS.
As with anything, experience in being extorted makes one better at handling extortions.
This next tale takes place when I was in my mid-twenties and had already had a considerable number of run-ins with the cops. I ran a red light. It was a red light that made no sense. An absurd red light. A red light that would serve as the inciting incident of a hypothetical preachy Ionesco one-act titled Job and the Red Light that served as a parable on dictatorial regimes. Anyway, this stoplight was in the middle of a slow, narrow street, no exits, no incoming traffic, just a narrow, slow street. Someone must’ve put the stoplight there by accident. Or maybe someone needed to fill a stoplight quota. It could’ve been someone’s way to steal a little money. In the surreal labyrinth that is Mexico City there are stoplights where there should be none, stop signs that mean nothing, speed bumps at traffic lights, cul-de-sacs that lead into the freeway, freeways that take you to dead ends.
So I ran the red light. Guess who was waiting on the other side. Yes, a cop was stationed there, his back on the side of his car, waiting for someone to run the red light that made no sense. He stepped in front of my car and directed me to pull over. This was how the man made his living. He probably bribed one of his superiors to get that sweet spot.
Officer, looking at my license: “I’m going to have to take this with me. You can pick it up in [whatever number of] days over at [government office that is one hour from my house].”13
“What? No. I have to work, officer. I can’t just take a day off and go to [government office that is one hour from my house]. I wouldn’t even know how to get there. Besides, how am I going to drive there without my license?” I was now a jaded young man.
“What do you want me to do? It’s my job to protect the people in this city. What if you pass a red light and you get into an accident? You might not like being stopped, but we do it to protect you.”
“I know, officer. I apologize.”
Interactions with Mexican cops are also taken from Ionesco’s playbook: both parties say exactly the opposite of what they mean and the truth is taboo. Then someone brings up the bribe. But the word bribe, of course, is never mentioned. (I guess that would make it a David Mamet play.) The police officer can say something like, “Dame algo pa’l refresco,” loosely translated as, “Give me something so I can buy myself a soda.” Or the driver will offer to help the officer out if only the officer could find it in his heart to help the driver out. Sometimes the officer volunteers, if given the money, to “pay the fine” so the driver doesn’t have to go all the way to [government office in Who Knows Where].
I don’t remember who did the offering in this particular situation, but I do remember I had no cash on me. And I was driving to a coffee shop on my day off from my dead-end job so I could spend the day writing. That I remember.
“Look,” I said to the officer, showing him the sad inside of my wallet.
“What do you want me to do? I have no option but to take your license.”
“Listen, there’s an ATM over there. I’ll just go over and get some money.”
He looked at me, trying to size me up. Was I trustworthy? He didn’t really have much of an option. “OK,” he said. “I trust you.”
“The ATM’s right there! How could I even—”
“It’ll be on your conscience if you don’t follow through.” The Morals of Bribery, by That Police Officer Who Stands Next to the Useless Traffic Light.
I drove on, seeing the officer shrink in my rearview mirror.
BRIBE OR DIE.
A good friend of mine was driving home late one night, drunk out of his mind, when he destroyed his car against a truck. Nothing happened to the truck or the truck driver, who calmly went on his way, but my friend was left sitting on the curb, face bleeding, a chunk of one of his ears dangling from his head, straddling the line between consciousness and unconsciousness.
A young couple stopped to help him. They were also on their way back from a night out but they were sober. A police car arrived. Then an ambulance. The first thing the police did was steal my friend’s iPod. They would’ve also taken his phone and wallet, but the couple who’d stopped to help him, knowing what was coming, had hid them in their car. “Where’s his wallet?” one of the policemen kept asking. “Where’s this man’s wallet?”
The good Samaritans were talking to the paramedics about which hospital to take my friend to when the other policeman intervened. “This man’s not going anywhere,” he said. At least not until someone gave the cops some money.
So there they were, paramedics, Samaritans and police all arguing under the pre-dawn darkness while my friend sat on the curb with a stupid smile on his face. Then another good Samaritan stopped. This one was a doctor. He told the police that if my friend wasn’t taken to a hospital soon there would be dire consequences to his health. The police didn’t give a fuck about dire consequences to anyone’s health, but at some point they got tired of arguing and just left.
YOU LIVED THE DREAM, MIGUEL.
As I’m writing this I read that Miguel Tejada just asked for his release from the Baltimore Orioles. Tejada—who as a kid allegedly idolized Orioles great (and Mr. Hard Work & Honesty) Cal Ripken, Jr.14— had already played for Baltimore in 2004-07, and again in 2010. According to the CBS Sports blog, “Tejada had been working his way back to the majors at [Orioles AAA farm team] Norfolk, where, in 36 games, he had been slugging a meager .296 and…showing diminished range at third base. As such, it’s hard to imagine that Tejada is going to find many takers out there.”
COKED-UP COP & SLEEPY COP.
The stakes with the Mexican police get higher late at night because cocaine enters the picture. I’m not about to sit here (in bed) and pretend that all Mexican police on the graveyard shift are coked up, but every once in a while you do run into one.
EXAMPLE #1: A young lady and I go to a party. The young lady leaves her car at a supermarket parking lot from where we take my car. The party’s kind of shitty. Also, either she didn’t like how I acted at the party, or vice versa (or both). I park in the supermarket parking lot and turn off the engine. Before she leaves we decide to argue a little. Am I an asshole? Is she being unreasonable? Suddenly, a police car parks next to us. Coked-Up Cop opens my door and sticks his coked-up head in the car.
“Don’t try to cover yourself!” says Coked-Up Cop to the young lady, who was, of course, fully clothed. “I saw you!”
“Saw what?” I say, panicking.
We get out of the car. Coked-Up Cop is maniacally screaming at me about Public Ministries and judges while his partner, Sleepy Cop, looks at me with a hey-I-have-to-work-with-this-guy face.
EXAMPLE #2: I’m driving late one night when suddenly I hear the staticky words of a bullhorn. I look at my rearview mirror and see a police jeep tailing me. I pull over. As I see Coked-Up Cop and Sleepy Cop walk to my car I open the window just a crack.
The first words out of Coked-Up Cop are, “You drunk?”
I’m driving a shiny, small sedan, so he probably stopped me thinking I was a sixteen-year-old driving drunk in his new car. (Which is, to be fair, an earlier version of me.)
“No,” I say.
Coked-Up Cop: “Your license.”
I hand him my license.
The date of birth on my license and my somewhat calm demeanor let Coked-Up Cop know that I’m not the target he was hoping for. But he still gives it another shot: “You fucked up? Coming from a bar?”
Sleepy Cop yawns.
“No sir, just driving home.”
Coked-Up Cop leaves to harass someone else. I feel a cold emptiness in my stomach.
DENOUEMENT.
I almost finished this piece without tying the loose ends of the Walmart bribery case. You’re probably wondering what happened with all that. If you are wondering that you know nothing of how the Mexican justice system works. It doesn’t. It’s no coincidence that there’s no word in Spanish for “justice.”15
President Felipe Calderón said he was outraged by the Walmart corruption case. Please, this coming from the guy who—maybe—stole the 2006 elections and then proceeded to start a nationwide drug war. Any Mexican knows that nothing will happen to Walmart México. The U.S. Department of Justice is holding its own investigation. Time will tell if that is also a sham.
WHEN IN ROME, II.
I’ve been pulled over a couple of times since I moved to the U.S. I’ve had a couple of little accidents too. Look, I’m not a good driver. (My psychiatrist says it’s one of the many symptoms of my ADHD.)
The first time I got pulled over in the U.S., it was because I’d forgotten to turn on my headlights. As the officer walked to my car I opened the door. Force of habit.
“Get back in the car!” said the officer.
I did.
1: Public Ministries are hell on Earth. They’re basically concrete, windowless boxes filled with judges, lawyers, scriveners, typewriters, files, cells, doctors, policemen, criminals, etc. back
2: Listen, the peso’s relative value to the dollar is something that’s always changing. These days, for example, one dollar can be worth anywhere from 12 to 15 pesos. Back then, let’s say, one dollar=10 pesos. back
3: Information for this brief timeline was gathered from Marta Lamas’s “Wal-Mart: lo barato sale caro” in Proceso, Roberto González Amador’s “Se privilegia a Wal-Mart desde el poder público, acusa ONG” in La Jornada, James C. McKinley Jr.’s “No, the Conquistadors Are Not Back. It’s Just Wal-Mart” in The New York Times, and Silvia Otero’s “Anula Corte sistema de ´tienda de raya´ de Wal-Mart” in El Universal. And Wikipedia. back
4: The store they built was not actually a Walmart, but a Bodega Aurrerá, which is a subsidiary of Walmart. back
5: No denizen of Mexico City would ever ask that. Police there don’t “give tickets.” back
6: baseball-almanac.com. back
7: International Monetary Fund. back
8: baseball-reference.com back
9: I’ve slightly edited the transcript for space. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube scored with blink-182’s “What’s My Age Again?” back
10: Mexico has just elected the PRI back into power only 12 years after their ousting. back
11: Mexico City is a monster. It feels like I spent half my time there completely lost. back
12: But Miguel, please, how can you think you let this country down? You did everything in your power to succeed. Nothing more American than that. back
13: This happened in the Estado de México, Mexico State, which horseshoes Mexico City and has no Public Ministries. back
14: Ripken, Jr. broke Lou Gherig’s record for most consecutive games played: 2,632. He has a slightly different background than Tejada. His dad, Carl Ripken, Sr., spent most of his professional life with the Baltimore Orioles organization. At one point Ripken, Jr., was coached by his father while playing alongside his brother, Billy. back
15: Of course there’s a word in Spanish for “justice.” How dare you. back
