CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

148 Syndromes of Corruption
gangs collaborated with police forces and military officers and undermined
PRI governments in several states (Jordan, 1999), and offered paths to
wealth and power outside of the PRI’s direct control. International
responses made matters worse in some ways: interdiction of drug shipments
may ironically aid major traffickers by driving out smaller competitors
and lifting market prices (Toro, 1998), and can raise the ante in terms of
violence. The ‘‘internationalization’’ of US drug law enforcement via
interdiction actions in Mexico undermined the autonomy and credibility
of Mexican police and drug policy, as both were effectively annexed by
the US (Toro, 1998). By the end of the 1990s it was an open question
whether the federal government, the military, or drug lords actually
governed some areas of the country (Bailey and Godson, 2000).
Mexico in that era had many formal attributes of democracy: elections
hadbeenheldsincethelate1920s,opposition parties offered candidates,
and there was some criticism of the government in the press (although often
answered with official harassment). Repression could be violent – notably in
the massacre of student protesters in 1968, and in the regime’s dealings with
some indigenous peoples and local opposition groups – but Mexican presidents
hardly fit the stereotypical image of Latin American dictators, and
the military generally stayed out of the politics. Mexico was, and is, a rapidly
modernizing society in many ways: particularly after 1982 skilled technocrats
became increasingly influential in government. The economic picture,
too, has been hopeful at many points: a long economic expansion took place
between the 1950s and 1970s, in the early 1980s after the oil boom a rapid
takeoff seemed imminent, and such hopes arose again in the early 1990s.
Still, corruption and crime add to a pervasive sense of insecurity in
society (Levy and Bruhn, 2001: 15–20); late in 2004 a mob in a poor
district of Mexico City lynched two police officers and burned them alive,
a scene shown live on television (McKinley, 2004). Elite Cartel-style
abuses, while extensive, had generally stayed under PRI control for
years. But beginning in the 1980s more disruptive, higher-stakes varieties
and a sense of impunity spread through sections of the hierarchy and
outward into the states, particularly as regards law enforcement. Those
changes had a number of causes – notably, rapid economic liberalization
and a significant if slower opening-up of politics in the context of weak
state institutions and, later, decaying PRI hegemony. The result has been
a shift toward a more disruptive Oligarchs and Clans pattern.
Mexico’s corruption, old and new
PRI leaders used corruption both for self-enrichment and to sustain the
party’s dominance and internal hierarchy. Election fraud, extortion and