Corruption of politicians, law enforcement, and the judiciary in Mexico and complicity across the border

Abstract

Mexico is a failing state, languishing under a deeply entrenched system of political corruption that undermines the three branches of government and compromises Mexico's law enforcement and national security capabilities. This article explores the culture of corruption that pervades the state and frustrates the rule of law in Mexico, examining how the political elites, the judiciary, and police officials embrace corruption as a primary means for career advancement and for acquiring personal wealth. It is an examination of a country overwhelmed by a system of government and commerce that has grown dependent on corruption in order to function. But such a system cannot sustain itself indefinitely, and the signs of the Mexican state's collapse are becoming more apparent in the wake of unprecedented political and social violence at the hands of corrupt actors and Mexican drug lords.

Keywords:

• border violence
• bribery
• drug trafficking
• Mexico
• political corruption
• security threats

Notes

  1. Author's note: I was once a judge in one of the most corrupt court systems in the world, the judiciary of Colombia. No matter how hard I strived to defend the rule of law and to dedicate my skills and energies to my job, I was often overwhelmed by a level of corruption and ineptitude ingrained in the system that rendered me powerless and discouraged. The police under my authority were paid off by the drug lords to tamper with or lose evidence. They would line up outside the gate of the local drug lord's estate on holidays to receive monetary gifts for their ‘service to the community’. Witnesses were routinely threatened into silence or disappeared all together. The cases against drug traffickers or corrupt influential members of the community that I did manage to adjudicate were often overturned when sent up to the higher court, or simply went away. When I refused efforts to bribe me, I was threatened and attempts were made on my life. When my family came under threat, I had no choice but to resign my judgeship and leave Colombia. As I have conducted my research for this article, I see so many startling parallels with what I experienced in Colombia in the 1980s. I notice the same methods of corruption and criminality at work and all the ingredients to fuel its proliferation: massive amounts of drug money available to pay bribes, political branches linked to drug traffickers and serving economic and political elite, poor compensation for police and civil servants, socio-economic conditions that encourage individuals to pursue criminal activities in order to survive and get ahead, and above all, hubris – imbued in all the corrupt politicians and officials who smugly believe they are above the law and untouchable. Mexico is so broken and damaged by corruption that no number of reform programs or re-engineering of the systems affected can fix Mexico unless the civil society willingly demands drastic changes and is ready itself to change the culture of corruption embedded in it. Fixing corruption entails taking measures that would be so disruptive to the political and cultural status quo that doing so would bring the Mexican state as we know it to its knees. Who knows if someone will be willing to commit political suicide to risk the fallout that would result with what would essentially be a draconian political revolution? Mexico is not a state afflicted with corruption, but rather a state of corruption ruling the fate and fortunes of a beleaguered nation.

  2. See Hamilton, ‘The Story of Narcocorridos’ at part 5, p. 1.

  3. Robinson, The Merger, 253.

  4. After the crash of the Mexican peso in 1994, drugs surpassed oil as the prime source of currency in Mexico. Ibid.

  5. See International Relations and Security Network, Guns Galore, and also Stewart and Burton, ‘A Counterintelligence Approach to Controlling Cartel Corruption’.

  6. See Samuels, ‘In Mexico, Culture of Corruption Runs Deep’ (quoting Eduardo A. Bohorquez of Transparencia Mexicana, the leading organization monitoring corruption in Mexico, who defined corruption as taking a mandate from a public group and acting on one's own behalf).

  7. Raul Salinas de Gortari gained immense wealth through corrupt means through his political connections with his brother, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The corruption scandals attached to the Salinas family still haunt Mexican politics. Among the many stories, one involves Raul's wife, Paulina Castanon de Salinas, who was arrested in Switzerland attempting to withdraw $84 million from an account in the name of one of Raul's aliases. When asked why she didn't withdraw a little at a time, her reply was, ‘I was taking a little at a time’. See Robinson, The Merger, 259.

  8. Ratified by Mexico on 20 July 2004, available at http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/signatories.html.

  9. Adopted 29 March 1996 and ratified by Mexico on 27 May 1997, available at http://www.oas.org/Juridico/english/treaties/b-58.html.

 10. Ratified by Mexico on 27 May 1999, available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/18/38028044.pdf.

 11. Morris, Corrupción y Política en México Contemporáneo, 62.

 12. One might recall the embarrassment of General Jose de Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's drug czar, arrested for accepting bribes from high level drug lords not ten weeks after his appointment to the post and not two weeks after United States Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey called him ‘an honest man’ and ‘a guy of absolute integrity’. See Meisler and Shogren, ‘Mexico Told U.S. Nothing of Probe into Drug Czar’, A20.

 13. For a comprehensive description of the programs and legislation implemented during the Fox administration, see Trejo, ‘El diseño de la política anti-corrupción del gobierno federal de México, 2000–2006’, and also Berrondo, Federal Law of Transparency and Access to Public Government Information.

 14. Ledo, ‘Mexico: La corrupción azul’, El Universal . Curiously enough, El Universal newspaper was owned at this time by Carlos Ahumada, a political opponent of Vicente Fox, who himself was charged in 2004 with corruption of government officials. Caciques were indigenous rulers and minor nobility of the cultures who occupied much of pre-colonial Mexico, whose system of loyalties were of a nature similar to the patron/client system of ancient Roman origin.

 15. For a comprehensive chronicle of events regarding corruption in Mexico since 1994, see Global Integrity's 2006 Country Reports Timeline for Mexico.

 16. See Mexico: 2007, at Global Integrity. Among the categories measured for which Mexico show a weak ranking were Media, Judicial Accountability, Whistle-blowing Measures, Privatization, Taxes and Customs, Business Licensing and Regulation, Anti-corruption Agency, Access to Justice, and Law Enforcement. The results were based on 290 integrity indicators tracked over a 10-year period and included peer review perspectives and on-the-ground journalist reports. Of 100 points possible in the index, the legal framework to fight corruption ranked a fairly strong 87 out of 100, but the actual implementation ranking was a dismal 39 out of 100, which suggests an all-too-familiar condition in weak and failing states that even when there may be laws on the books to combat corruption and crime, without a monitoring and law enforcement capability to give laws teeth, corruption will continue to flourish.

 17. See Transparency International, 2008 CPI Table. Mexico tied with Bulgaria, China, Macedonia, Peru, Suriname, Swaziland, and Trinidad and Tobago. Those Latin American states scoring better than Mexico in the Index were Chile (23rd), Uruguay (23rd), Costa Rica (47th), El Salvador (67th), and Colombia (70th). Denmark ranks first on the index for lowest perceived corruption, while the United States ranks eighteenth, tied with the UK, Belgium, and Japan.

 18. DePalma, ‘How a Tortilla Empire Was Built on Favoritism’.

 19. Morris, Corrupción y Política en México Contemporáneo, 63.

 20. Such a noteworthy example is the case of an Argentine industrialist, Carlos Ahumada, who emigrated to Mexico as a teenager in 1975. He started out washing car windows on the street and rose to riches through various business schemes and bribery networks among high ranking politicians. A newspaper account of his rise and downfall paint a picture of corruption typical of politics and business in Mexico. When he was charged with corruption, he produced a series of videotapes he had scrupulously made of his bribery transactions with government officials, and his ties to political notables, including the former mayor of Mexico City and presidential hopeful, Andres Manual Lopez Obrador, resulted in a number of politicians going underground and scrambling to concoct plausible denials of collusion in Ahumada's corruption activities. See O'Boyle, ‘Contracting trouble’, and Dellios, ‘Shots Add Twist to Race in Mexico’, C10.

 21. Samuels, ‘In Mexico, Culture of Corruption Runs Deep’.

 22. Samuels, ‘In Mexico, Culture of Corruption Runs Deep’, citing Dr. David Shirk at the University of California San Diego, who notes that, ‘Mexicans who go to another country behave the way the laws and rules of that country dictate. We have 20 million Mexicans in the U.S., and I don't think they're bribing the police’.

 23. Durazo was given this rank by López Portillo despite having never served in the military.

 24. Durazo then lived quietly in retirement and died in 2000.

 25. Other than bringing down Durazo's empire, De la Madrid, himself the subject of many accusations of corruption, could do little to break up the level of corruption among the powerful elite during the Portillo years because the excessiveness was so tied to the presidency and the central government that many individuals, including the head of Mexico's petroleum monopoly PEMEX, Jorge Diaz Serrano, escaped accountability for complicity in political corruption.

 26. Andreas, ‘The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico’, 160, 162.

 27. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’.

 28. Samuels, ‘In Mexico, Culture of Corruption Runs Deep’, citing John Bailey of Georgetown University, who posits that distrust of Mexican police officers, ‘is deeply learned sitting at the table listening to one's parents’.

 29. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’.

 30. Such realities of working in a corrupt system are made known to the police officers early on in their academy training, such as it is. Some police officers themselves have criminal backgrounds and view police work as a way to utilize their criminal skills for earning money through corrupt means. See generally Botello et al., Policía y Corrupción.

 31. Associated Press Worldstream, ‘Mexico Detains 93 Police in Corruption Probe’.

 32. Becker, ‘Mexico under Siege’, A1.

 33. Becker, ‘Mexico under Siege’, A1 The article also reports about the newly appointed police chief of La Junta who was offered cash and a new car by men who said the gifts came from an aide to the mayor. In exchange, he was expected to issue bogus calls for assistance from federal police in order to create a diversion so that drug shipments could cross the border. If he refused, he would be killed and his family harmed. He refused, and after his family was threatened, he took them to El Paso to request political asylum.

 34. See The Stray Dodger, ‘The Economic, Political, and Institutional Causes of Crime in Mexico’, citing Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 2006.

 35. See The Stray Dodger, ‘The Economic, Political, and Institutional Causes of Crime in Mexico’, citing Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook 2006 On the plus side, Mexicans are generally ahead of many other developing nations in terms of literacy and health.

 36. Black, ‘Mexico Raises 2009 Daily Minimum Wage Below Inflation Rate’, noting that the raise is still 1.7 percentage points below the current annual inflation rate.

 37. See US Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, ‘Minimum Wage Law in the States – July 1, 2009’.

 38. Andreas, ‘The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico’, 160, 162.

 39. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’.

 40. Andreas, ‘The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico’, 160, 162. Some postings have even been auctioned off to the highest bidder from within corrupt law enforcement agencies.

 41. Andreas, ‘The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico’, 160, 162. Some postings have even been auctioned off to the highest bidder from within corrupt law enforcement agencies, citing the case of Salinas de Gortari's top anti-drug prosecutor, Mario Ruiz Massieu, who in 1994 received a million dollars in kickbacks from federal police commanders and prosecutors to gain lucrative assignments.

 42. Samuels, ‘In Mexico, Culture of Corruption Runs Deep’.

 43. Frey, ‘The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery’, 317, 319.

 44. See Corchado, ‘Mexico Sees “Brain Drain” As the Brightest Go North’, citing a report by the International Organization for Migration.

 45. Isla, ‘Commentary: Bilingual is Better, Especially on Borders’.

 46. Pinkerton, ‘Drug Violence: Affluent Fleeing Crime in Mexico’, A1, according to Elvia Garcia, outreach coordinator for the Paso Del Norte Civil Rights Project in El Paso.

 47. Frey, ‘The Transfer of Core-Based Hazardous Production Processes to the Export Processing Zones of the Periphery’, 317, 324.

 48. London Daily Mail Online , ‘Half of My Country's Police Aren't Up to the Job, Says Mexican President Locked in Bloody Fight with Drug Cartels’ (in a written response to questions from legislators). The same article reported on the charging of a police commander and a drug cartel member in the kidnapping and murder of 24 men outside Mexico City, believed to have been rival drug traffickers.

 49. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’.

 50. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’

 51. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’

 52. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3.

 53. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3

 54. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3

 55. It is interesting to note that his predecessor as mayor presided over a notoriously corrupt administration and police force, and subsequently went to jail for corruption.

 56. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3.

 57. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3

 58. Ravelo, ‘Las policies: Improvisación, caos, desastre’, citing eminent legal scholar Eduardo Buscaglia.

 59. Ravelo, ‘Las policies: Improvisación, caos, desastre’, citing eminent legal scholar Eduardo Buscaglia

 60. Ravelo, ‘Las policies: Improvisación, caos, desastre’, citing eminent legal scholar Eduardo Buscaglia

 61. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3.

 62. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3

 63. Kraul, ‘Mexican Cops Get a Required Reading List’, A3

 64. Andreas, ‘The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico’, 160, 164.

 65. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Firearms Trafficking, 51. According to the report, ‘in late 2008, President Calderon's administration terminated around 500 officers on Tijuana's police force and brought in the military to fill the gap until new officers who had been sufficiently vetted could be hired and trained’.

 66. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’.

 67. Cevallos, ‘Police Caught between Low Wages, Threats and Bribes’

 68. US Department of State, 2008 Human Rights Report: Mexico.

 69. There are many honest and hard working judges, prosecutors, and judicial police officers who try their best to do their job. But they are often marginalized and overwhelmed and must preserve their own careers and livelihoods.

 70. See Transparency International , Global Corruption Report 2007, 15.

 71. An adversarial system alone cannot change a culture of corruption. Such a system can produce a more efficient, predictable and sometimes equitable process, but changes must occur in the Mexican political system and society as a whole.

 72. Menendez, Mexico: The Traffickers' Judges, Global Corruption Report 2007, 77.

 73. Trejo, ‘Inaceptable Reinstalen a Jueces Corruptos; Nazario’, Amparo is a constitutional remedy that allows judicial protection of constitutional rights against any government action, including judicial decisions. See Fix-Zamudio, Introduccion al Estudio de la Defensa de la Constitution en el Ordenamiento Mexicano.

 74. Menendez, Mexico: The Traffickers' Judges, Global Corruption Report 2007, 77.

 75. See Transparency International , Global Corruption Report 2007, 15.

 76. United Nations Special Rapporteur, Independence of Judges and Lawyers, published as a 52-page report challenging the independence and effectiveness of Mexican judges.

 77. El Universial, ‘Reconoce Suprema Corte corrupción en jueces’.

 78. Judges threatened by drug cartel tend to take the bribe instead of being killed. See Sullivan, ‘Mexican Judges’ Climate of Fear', A16.

 79. In November 2001, two federal judges were killed by an AK-47. Until then, the police officers, politicians, and informants were targeted while the judiciary remained largely untouched by organized crime. See Sullivan, ‘Mexican Judges’ Climate of Fear', A16.

 80. Menendez, Mexico: The Traffickers' Judges, Global Corruption Report 2007, 77.

 81. In April 2005, Judge Gómez Martínez presided over the case of Olga Patricia Gastelum Escobar and Felipe de Jesus Mendivil Ibarra, both accused of transporting $7 million in cash and $500,000 in jewelry and watches for the Sinaloa Cartel. The judge cleared Gastelum of wrongdoing, and the sentence was tarnished by many irregularities. Violations included notifying the prosecutor's office 24 hours after the defendant was freed from prison, when under article 102 of the Mexican Code of Criminal Procedure, such ‘decisions cannot be executed without first notifying the public prosecutor’. Ibid.

 82. In April 2005, Judge Gómez Martínez presided over the case of Olga Patricia Gastelum Escobar and Felipe de Jesus Mendivil Ibarra, both accused of transporting $7 million dollars in cash and $500,000 in jewelry and watches for the Sinaloa Cartel. The judge cleared Gastelum of wrongdoing, and the sentence was tarnished by many irregularities. Violations included notifying the prosecutor's office 24 hours after the defendant was freed from prison, when under article 102 of the Mexican Code of Criminal Procedure, such ‘decisions cannot be executed without first notifying the public prosecutor’. Ibid

 83. In April 2005, Judge Gómez Martínez presided over the case of Olga Patricia Gastelum Escobar and Felipe de Jesus Mendivil Ibarra, both accused of transporting $7 million dollars in cash and $500,000 in jewelry and watches for the Sinaloa Cartel. The judge cleared Gastelum of wrongdoing, and the sentence was tarnished by many irregularities. Violations included notifying the prosecutor's office 24 hours after the defendant was freed from prison, when under article 102 of the Mexican Code of Criminal Procedure, such ‘decisions cannot be executed without first notifying the public prosecutor’. Ibid

 84. The trial of Garcia Abrego, head of the Gulf Cartel, revealed the freedom he had to operate, due to the millions of dollars in bribes he paid to members of the Mexican Justice Department, to deputy attorneys general, and to law enforcement officials. According to a testifying witness, Luis Esteban Garcia Villalón, a Federal Ministry agent, and Javier Coello Trejos, a deputy attorney general in the General's office, obtained monthly installments of $1.5 million. See Thorpe, ‘Anatomy of a Drug Cartel’.

 85. The United States won a forfeiture judgment of $8 million claimed to be bribe money from narcottraffickers in Mexico and stashed in Texas banks by Mario Ruiz Massieu, who served twice as a Deputy Attorney General and who in 1994 supervised federal police and anti-drug operations. Swiss officials confiscated more than $132 million from drug traffickers' bribes deposited in banks by Raul Salinas de Gortari, brother of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. See Golden, ‘In Breakthrough, Mexican Official Testifies in Texas’.

 86. According to Thomas A. Constantine, the administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the Mexican cartels learned from the Colombian Cali Cartel that the only manner organized criminal syndicates prosper is by corrupting officials and intimidating citizens. See Constantine, Interviews.

 87. Trejo, ‘Inaceptable Reinstalen a Jueces Corruptos; Nazario’.

 88. The ex-employee accused of kidnapping and killing the victim went free. See Aviles, ‘Marti pide castigo para jueces corruptos’. Before the investigation was completed, Judge Gustavo Ramirez Avila freed a criminal accused of aggravated armed robbery. Trejo, ‘Inaceptable Reinstalen a Jueces Corruptos; Nazario’.

 89. Judge Maria Claudia Campuzano freed a man who killed US businessmen. According to the prosecutor's office, the judge described the killer as ‘a modern Robin Hood who doesn't only rob and distribute what he obtains in the robbery, but gives all the money to his sidekicks without any profit for himself’. See Sheridan, ‘Mexican Judge Frees Men Held in American's Killing’. See also Fix-Fierro, ‘La reforma judicial en Mexico, de donde viene? A donde va? Reforma Judicial’ (describing how two judges accepted money to free a murderer).

 90. In 1988 Supreme Court Justice, Ernesto Diaz Infante, after receiving $500,000 pressured Magistrate Judge Gilberto Arredondo to liberate a man who had raped a child. See Cacho, ‘El buen juez por casa empieza’. See also Hughes, ‘Law and Disorder’, 10.

 91. According to the Court, judges not only act corruptly but collude with organized crime. See also Fix-Fierro, ‘La reforma judicial en Mexico, de donde viene? A donde va? Reforma Judicial’. See also Allende, ‘Reconoce Suprema Corte corrupción en jueces’.

 92. Corruption by patronage limits more ‘the competitiveness of politics and responsiveness of government than to threaten their viability’. See Elliot, ‘Corruption as an International Policy Problem’.

 93. Menendez, Mexico: The Traffickers' Judges, Global Corruption Report 2007.

 94. Samuels, ‘In Mexico, Culture of Corruption Runs Deep’.

 95. See BBC interview, ‘U.S. Graft Adds to Mexico's Woes’.

 96. See BBC interview, ‘U.S. Graft Adds to Mexico's Woes’

 97. See PBS Frontline Report, ‘Mexico: Crimes at the Border’.

 98. See PBS Frontline Report, ‘Mexico: Crimes at the Border’

 99. The drug dealer shipped cocaine to Houston, and a Joe Polanco, a former INS officer, coordinated with friends in the INS to place the drugs on the bus. INS vehicles were always waved through checkpoint at Sarita. See Thorpe, ‘Anatomy of a Drug Cartel’. For an additional list of instances of border corruption in Texas, see Grits for Breakfast, ‘Border Corruption Runs Amok’.

100. Among the most notorious instances of near impunity is the case of Raul Salinas de Gortari, who salted away hundreds of millions of dollars during his brother's administration, and was arrested in connection with the 2004 murder of a rising politician, José Francisco Massieu. Despite significant evidence in the case, which was investigated by Massieu's brother, Raul Salinas was acquitted a year later. Massieu resigned and fled Mexico to be reunited with $7 million deposited in his bank account in Texas amid accusations that he had been bought off by the Salinas brothers to make the case go away. See Robinson, The Merger, 259.

101. Government Accountability Office (GAO), 51.

102. Castillo, ‘Mexico Detains 10 Mayors for Alleged Drug Ties’.

103. Robinson, The Merger, 260.

104. Robinson, The Merger.

105. Robinson, The Merger (quoting US Senator Charles Grassley, who expressed his frustration with Mexico's unwillingness to extradite drug traffickers). The remarks were in reaction to the Clinton administration caving into President Zedillo's indignation over the US-led anti money-laundering operation in Mexico which uncovered three of Mexico's largest banks laundering more than $157 million worth of drug profits – the largest anti-money laundering operation ever.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luz E. Nagle

1