Pubdate: Wed, 18 Apr 2001
Source: Yuma Daily Sun, The (AZ)
Copyright: 2001 The Yuma Daily Sun
Contact:  http://www.yumasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1258
Author: John Vaughn
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/traffic.htm (Traffic)

HONEST COP IN MEXICO UNBELIEVABLE

Whatever other reasons the Academy had for giving Benicio Del Toro an Oscar 
last month for his role in the anti-drug movie "Traffic," I thought he 
deserved the best supporting actor honor simply for managing to convince 
his audiences that a Mexican cop could be honest.

Without giving too much of the film away - in case you want to rent it - 
Del Toro, playing the role of Tijuana police officer Javier Rodriguez, 
cooperates with U.S. law enforcement officers to nail a drug kingpin who 
thinks he has bought off Rodriguez.

If you've ever had a bad experience with a police officer south of the 
border, or if you accept the stereotype of them, you may be thinking 
"Traffic" was pure fantasy.

Not that all Mexican cops are corrupt, not that they should all be painted 
with a broad brush stroke. But the fact is, there are enough bad apples 
among them to paint a not-so-pretty picture of them as a whole: On one 
hand, they have shaken tourists down for the slightest traffic violation, 
while on the other, crooks literally have gotten away with murder if they 
had enough money to buy them off.

Of late, every newly-elected public official in Mexico, from the president 
on down to the mayor of smallest municipality, pledges to "professionalize" 
the police agencies that answer to them. That's a euphemism for getting rid 
of the cops on the take. The fact that each succeeding administrations make 
that same promise would suggest that the previous one didn't keep it.

Most recently, a high-ranking officer of the Mexican army, which fights 
drug trafficking as one of its responsibilities, was sacked for being on 
the payroll of the very traffickers he was supposed to be putting away. And 
Mexican customs officers along the border who were thought to be dirty were 
relieved of duty.

Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, has vowed to press the war on 
corruption with renewed vigor. But making high-profile arrests of corrupt 
officialdom doesn't solve the problem, at least not over the long-term. Up 
to now, arrests have only created vacuums - filled by new corrupted officials.

The dilemma could not have been demonstrated to me any more clearly than 
that day more than a decade ago when I was invited over to a Mexican police 
officer's home for the afternoon meal. Having been covering the Mexico beat 
for The Yuma Daily Sun, I had bumped into this cop from time to time. I 
guess he took a liking to me, since he had me over for dinner at his house 
- - a dirt-floor, three-room shack made of scraps of lumber hammered together.

As a municipal police officer, he was paid barely enough to sustain 
himself, his wife and his two children. But he had a badge and a gun, and 
with those come power and authority. I won't say he took payoffs, because I 
don't know. But the fact is, he had a license to steal, if ever he chose to 
use it.

Underpaid officers are susceptible to drug traffickers who have more than 
enough money to buy them. Boosting salaries would help bring 
professionalism to police ranks, but that is only part of the equation.

La mordida, meaning "the bite" - another euphemism, this one meaning bribe 
paid - is a fact of life in Mexico, one that is miraculous in its power to 
unravel red tape. It doesn't just persuade the police to look the other 
way. La mordida can help merchants expedite the permits they need from 
government to do business. Builders pay it to eliminate the hassles that 
might otherwise deny them permits they need for construction.

La mordida has become a tradition, dating back not just decades, not 
generations, but literally centuries. It is entrenched. In "Distant 
Neighbors," his classic book about Mexico, Alan Riding describes la mordida 
as the goop that greases the machinery of the system. If la mordida were to 
disappear suddenly, he writes, the machine would come to a screeching halt. 
The reform-minded Fox can take initial steps to modernize the system, but 
his six-year, non-renewable term doesn't give him enough time to correct it 
altogether. It will be up to his successors to pick up where he left off.

If that happens, years from now, the thought of Javier Rodriguez collaring 
crooks won't be such an outlandish idea.
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