He ended up with some 400 hours of videotape–evidence, he says, of a scam whose audacity exceeds even Mexico City’s appalling standards. According to aus den Ruthen, staff members routinely issued new licenses, then discarded the official paperwork and shared the fees among themselves. “Look at him passing out the money!” says aus den Ruthen, his voice rising in excitement as he shows one of the tapes. On the screen, in slow motion, a boss counts out a fistful of pesos under his desk as underlings pass by, each receiving a share. Another scene shows a stack of license plates apparently being sold after-hours. Aus den Ruthen filed a complaint with Mexico City prosecutors more than a year ago. Nothing happened. Now he’s afraid he may be the one who ends up in court, charged with illegally installing the cameras.
What happened to the Mexican miracle? When Vicente Fox was elected president two years ago, defeating the once unbeatable Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), he was greeted as an international hero, the man who would clean up Mexico. The PRI had stayed in power more than seven decades by fostering a pervasive culture of bribery, fraud and backroom deals at every level of society. Fox compared his triumph to the fall of the Berlin wall–and millions of Mexicans agreed. Like the free-market marvels of the former East bloc, Mexico was ready to soar.
The euphoria is gone. Fox’s grand promises of reform have gotten nowhere, sunk in budget problems, partisan politics and a failure of political will. Ordinary Mexicans see the results every day: the futility of trying to report a crime, the inevitability that a traffic cop will offer to take care of a ticket himself, the near impossibility of getting a small loan. The press and TV news are filled with exposes of corrupt officials. The scandals could be viewed as cause for optimism, evidence that the government is finally being held accountable. Instead, most people conclude that nothing has changed: an easy justification to go on dodging taxes, running red lights, stealing electricity and paying bribes. Three factors help explain how the rot has defied Fox’s most determined efforts to eradicate it:
The PRI’s enduring influence. The party’s leaders used fear and repression only as last resorts in maintaining power. Payoffs–and the withholding of them–were usually far more effective. Presidents once toured the countryside with suitcases of money, granting the wishes of any peasant group that proved its loyalty to the PRI. Mexico became a land of opportunism, a place where grab-what-you-can became a survival strategy. The moral devastation persists to this day. Tom Nichols, a political scientist at the U.S. Naval War College, says the transition in Mexico is in some ways tougher than what the Soviet Union faced. “Apathy is harder to overcome than fear,” says Nichols. “There came a day in Russia when people stopped being afraid.” Somehow Fox has to break the PRI’s spell.
The lack of a clean break. Despite Fox’s rhetoric, he had no wall to knock down. Too bad. He desperately needs to set himself apart from the past. Mexico has been reforming since the 1970s, gradually accepting privatization, liberal economics and a growing number of opposition victories in local and state elections. Unfortunately, the improvements have been accompanied by a widening gulf between rich and poor, the growing influence of drug traffickers and several massive corruption scandals. Those problems–along with the PRI’s own election reforms–cost the PRI the presidency. They also left Mexicans bitterly divided. “Mexico suffers from all the problems of a very gradual transition,” says Anders Aslund, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow who has advised several Eastern European countries in transition. “People do not trust the politicians, because they are not sure that the system has really changed.”
Fredo Arias King, an expert on Eastern Europe and onetime Fox supporter, says the president moved too timidly. Arias King thinks every democratic transition has a pivotal moment–and Fox has missed his. “The euphoria of the people is such that you can pass almost any reform. The nomenklatura is fractured and demoralized,” says Arias King. “When you lose that window of opportunity, it is never going to come back.”
The illusion of compromise. Candidate Fox courted conservatives, former Marxists, union leaders and rich and poor alike with his promises of change. The strategy brought him victory, but left him with only a vague mandate to somehow make things better. Worse yet, the PRI was able to keep its majority role in Congress. Hoping to win their help in passing his agenda, Fox included PRI members in his cabinet, left the old bureaucracy in place and for his first year in office refrained from actions that would alienate the former ruling party. The PRI has blocked nearly every Fox initiative, from an indigenous-rights bill to a tax-reform plan. Russia similarly tried to appease its communists, and they derailed reform. Fox might have done better to emulate Vaclav Havel, the Czech president, who banned 15,000 former Communist Party members from government posts for five years. “I prefer temporary inexperience to permanent sabotage,” he said. Academics who study the former East bloc say such housecleaning was the most important distinction between countries that made the transition successfully, like the Czech Republic, and those that failed, like Russia.
The PRI’s vindictiveness has become downright shocking. Earlier this month, for the first time ever Mexico’s Senate voted along party lines to bar Fox from leaving the country for scheduled meetings with U.S. business leaders. When Fox was elected, one opinion poll found that 55 percent of Mexicans thought their country was on the “right road.” By this February that figure had sunk to 35 percent. The recession certainly hasn’t helped Fox’s popularity. But neither has the lack of progress in cleaning up Mexican society. Reluctant taxpayers continue to give Mexico one of the most dismal collection rates in Latin America. Survey after survey finds that Mexicans trust no one outside their families–not the police, not other government institutions, not any of the major political parties and not each other.
One problem is the public’s expectations. Fox’s campaign raised enormous hopes. But even the most vibrant successes of Eastern Europe endured severe bouts of the post-transition blues. And the recession hasn’t helped. “A radical, top-to-bottom change is not possible in a government after 70 years of one-party rule,” says Fox’s spokesman, Rodolfo Elizondo. “This is a wish that may be in the minds of many Mexicans, but in practice it is difficult.” At this point Fox’s proudest achievement is merely that his term didn’t begin with an economic meltdown–a problem that has plagued most Mexican presidents over the past 30 years. Fox can thank the inflation-targeting economic policies of his predecessor. And he can define success as the absence of crisis for only so long.
There’s little else to cheer about. The government does seem to have dismantled the notorious Arellano Felix family drug mob, and the Fox administration was crowing over the death of Ramon Arellano Felix in a shoot-out with police. But even that success turns out to be tainted: U.S. officials say the drug lord was gunned down execution style by crooked cops working for a rival drug gang. That awkward revelation made headlines a couple of weeks ago but was soon overshadowed by a U.N. report that between 50 and 70 percent of Mexico’s federal judges are corrupt. And if that news hasn’t left Mexicans depressed enough, there’s the small-town mayor, a member of Fox’s own National Action Party, who was arrested for allegedly arranging the killing of a city councilman who was delving into protection rackets and rigged contracts. (The mayor has denied any wrongdoing.)
Mexico practically runs on bribes. Transparency International published a survey last October suggesting that all told, Mexico’s 100 million people are subjected to 214 million shakedowns a year. The total bite is estimated at $2.5 billion, most of it as payoffs from motorists to traffic police to avoid being towed or ticketed. Mexicans know better: more than 82 percent of the poll’s respondents said it’s always wrong to pay a bribe instead of a fine. Yet 54.5 percent of traffic stops nationwide culminate in a bribe.
Fox preaches tirelessly against the evils of demon graft. “The attitude that should be abandoned is indifference,” he sermonized last week. “A mobilized and active society that doesn’t tolerate corruption is the basis of an ethical government.” His message is echoed by a chorus of public-service spots urging people to show more social responsibility. One print ad features a photo of a baby with the caption: “A good Mexican was born. It’s up to you to keep him that way.” Nevertheless, there are few incentives to follow the rules, and hardly anyone believes things will get better.
Some novel solutions are being tried. Most rely not on making public officials more honest but on reducing their opportunities to take payoffs. Mexico City once had a rule that only female traffic cops could write tickets. They were supposed to be less corruptible than male officers. Last month the state of Puebla, hoping to give drivers less incentive to cough up bribes, eliminated all fines for routine traffic violations. It’s too soon to say whether the cops have gone honest, but driving habits have certainly not improved. The state of Colima, in western Mexico, has tried another approach. The administration there has installed ATM-like computer kiosks to issue forms and allow users to pay fees without talking to a potentially extortionate human being. With great fanfare, the Fox administration recently announced a similar initiative, making it possible for people to request forms over the Internet, avoiding not only the temptations of bribery, but countless hours standing in line.
Machines can’t fix everything. “If you could ever improve the quality of the police, the institution that people come in contact with most often, it would improve trust in other institutions,” says Roderic Camp, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California. “There are no honest cops here,” says one top Mexican law enforcer. Paying a living wage to police might be a step in the right direction.
Still, no one says it’s easy. Back in Mexico City, Borough President aus den Ruthen says he can’t confront the motor-vehicles clerks directly with his accusations. “I can only handle administrative questions,” he says. “If somebody arrives for work late, I can fire him. But if somebody is stealing, the police have to handle that.” Instead he’s talking about opening a new motor-vehicles office in competition with the old one. Drivers could pay their renewal fees at the local bank, stopping by the office just to pick up new licenses.
Jose Luis Duenas, the official seen distributing money on the videotape, denies any wrongdoing. “Perhaps there was corruption in the past,” he says. “But not now–not since I’ve been here.” Viewing the tape with a NEWSWEEK reporter, he insists it shows no crime. “I can have money in my wallet,” he says. “Sometimes I lend money to co-workers.” Public employees say the borough chief is inventing accusations against them. They say he only wants an excuse to eliminate their jobs. Others, taking a shot at his German ancestry, are comparing him to Hitler.
Anger is growing against Fox as well. “The PRI is the party that supported us the most,” says Antonio Ramirez, who has worked in the borough for 25 years and is now in the motor-vehicles department. “People made a mistake voting for other parties. They thought we would see a change, a more modern Mexico. But we are going backward.” The view of a threatened worker in a bloated bureaucracy is on the extreme end of Mexican public opinion. But his words do carry an important truth for Mexico’s new generation of leaders. Winning the people’s votes is not enough. What you really need are their consciences.
