Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on September 13, 2006.
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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Alert! Alert! Someone’s asking for a bribe!
The one place where Mexicans should be free from fear of the dreaded “mordida,� or bribe, is the Mexico City suburb of Atizapan, where officials recently installed big red panic buttons in various government offices.
“If you are a victim of corruption, press this button,� signs read at the customer service windows of the municipal water offices.
Should Mexicans with an overdue bill or dispute with a neighbor be shaken down, they need only slap the button and an anti-corruption alarm will sound throughout the office. The unscrupulous employee will then be handed over to the authorities, the idea goes.
“Hopefully we’ll all have the courage to ring the alarm,� resident Victor Garcia told the Mexico City daily Reforma.
Although Mexico has taken big strides toward fortifying its electoral democracy (at least we all thought so before the contested July 2 presidential election), the culture of corruption remains deeply embedded.
According to the well-regarded nonprofit Transparencia Mexicana, corruption in Mexico actually rose between 2003 and 2005, despite the hope that things would change once the “perfect dictatorship� of the PRI was run out in 2000.
The poll recorded a mind-boggling 115 million acts of corruption in 2005, translating to nearly $19 million in bribes.
The states with the lowest incidence of corruption were Baja California Sur, Chiapas, Sonora, Guanajuato and Queretaro. The highest rates of corruption were registered in Guerrero, Hidalgo, Tabasco, the state of Mexico and, no surprise, Mexico City, which led the nation.
The most common bribe? Paying a traffic cop to avoid getting your car towed.
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Shoe shopping in the megalopolis
My wife had quite a shopping problem back in the States — namely her small feet. Her size 5½ tootsies, though delicate and elegantly shaped, were nevertheless too tiny to fit into most shoes sold in Austin. At shoe stores she was consigned to a selection as small as her feet.
As a somewhat average and regular 10½, I observed her footwear woes with detached pity — a shake of the head and a “can you believe that?� It wasn’t until I moved to Mexico City that I would learn to truly empathize with her plight.
My introduction into the world of size discrimination occurred on a quick trip to the megalopolis to set up the Cox Newspapers office. I like to travel light and was loathe to pack sneakers. But our home/office sits near one of the few green spaces in the city — Los Viveros, a prime area for runners and walkers — and I decided to buy a pair of running shoes.
For my first attempt I hit the local mall. I found a sporting goods store with a variety of newfangled shoes with air pockets and air jets and, after getting over the shock of their price — well more than $130 for most — I found a reasonably priced, workmanlike pair. The salesman went in the back and said he didn’t have anything remotely that big that didn’t cost more than the average Mexican’s weekly salary.
A tad alarmed I left the mall and hit a mom-and-pop shoe store I had seen. I found about a dozen running shoes with good prices to match — about $30. Once again, however, the sales clerk could find nothing in the back. The only shoe approaching my size was bright florescent orange with a vaguely Nike-like stripe and Spider-Man-type webbing. Desperate, and despite the sales clerk’s obvious revulsion, I bought them.
A day later I wedged my feet into the monstrosities and hit the street. Maybe, I thought, they won’t stand out too much — they were sort of European backpacker chic. And our new neighborhood, Coyoacan, is perhaps Mexico City’s most colorful. Frida Kahlo’s famous blue house is here and vibrant yellows and reds color many of the homes.
But bright orange running shoes are another matter. As I ran, from my peripheral vision I could see what looked like a pair of overripe tangerines dogging my every step. My lungs strained against the Mexico City altitude and cramps appeared in places they never had before, like my neck. But what hurt the most was not the strain, but the looks of my fellow joggers. Eyes darted from my face to my shoes, grew wide and settled into an expression of distress or pity. I tried to block it out, but in a sea of respectable blacks and whites, I was the course clown, bouncing up and down in my obscenely orange freakshoes.
Since then I’ve had to adjust to life with oversized feet. Shoe shopping takes a while, but at least my wife can find her size anywhere we go.