In the previous post, I gave you a rundown on how corruption looks different to visitors and expats. One further complicating factor here is the drug business.
Most people think that drug money is the root of corruption: it certainly does buy lenient judges, accommodating border guards, and friendly politicians. But the real root of corruption is drug violence. Recall this famous opening scene from the Godfather?
This scene captures a piece of the implicit threat posed by organized crime, but Bonasera is the supplicant: he has come to the Godfather seeking “justice.” In real life, cartels come to everyday people with the implied threat of violence.
They’ll send the new police inductee a note with a bullet and a coin: “¿Plato o plomo?” (“silver or lead?”) meaning accept a bribe or be killed. They’ll see a woman who works cleaning homes and they’ll say to her “You have a fine teenage son. You wouldn’t want him mixed up with a gang, would you? You tell us which houses have safes, and we’ll make sure he never joins up.” Or they tell a gate guard, “Let us know which houses are unoccupied next weekend. You’ll be alone at the gate at night, so don’t make any trouble.” We all like to think we’d be brave when faced with such threats, but the truth is these threats are not idle: people who don’t cooperate just end up dead. And there will be no trial for the perpetrators.
The overwhelming majority of corruption goes on quietly, on side streets and in back rooms. Threat are made, deals cut, money exchanged. Corruption is a fungus which thrives on the dark, fetid side of life. Yet there are still rules. Retribution against women and children is to be avoided. Never rat out anyone to the authorities, or worse yet, the federales NOB. And don’t kill gringos, unless they are involved in the drug business.
Except, as you recall from Part One, now is the season of institutional flux.
On February 1st, a local 78 year-old Canadian expat was shot to death, execution style, while walking on a path to the dentist’s office in the middle of the day. The authorities have provided little detail of the investigation, but the deceased’s friends are steadfast in ruling out any involvement in drugs. Someone tried to carjack a Gringa from a busy street, midday. There were three shootings last week of Mexicans apparently associated with the drug business, resulting in three dead and six wounded.
The last time similar levels of violence happened here was 2012 (notice, six years ago) during a flare up between the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas (again, around the federal election that year). This time it appears to be rival factions of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG). For the newbie expats who have come here since, the violence is something new and alarming. Mexicans and expats lakeside are quite right to speak out and demand better security, because a lack of response to such crime appears to condone it, and could lead to a changing set of norms about what is acceptable. Yet the crimes are not new: they are the inevitable result of long-standing corruption, which will on occasion erupt in very visible, very tragic violence.
So we should be active, vocal, and alert, but not fearful. The proper response to an inexplicable death is to mourn, for we are all lessened by it (cue John Donne):
Violent crime is always shocking. Sometimes it can be explained, sometimes it truly is random. It is understandable when several shocking crimes occur that people think there is a correlation, that something is different, something has changed. Think of all those days when no serious crime happens: do those days represent a correlation, too?
Where corruption thrives, there is always the possibility of violence, and it will break out in dramatic and unsettling ways. It’s not unusual or even a change. Every person must decide what level of violence they can tolerate. No one should be criticized for saying “¡bastante!” (“enough!”), but everyone should understand what is happening, and why, before acting.
