barriomulas.com - Corruption and Culture

The February 2nd issue of the Economist featured a story on Mexico's drug war and its government's difficulty in tackling the problem. Mention is made of an initiative from Mexico's Congress that would convert the "country's legal arrangements from a Napoleonic-style inquisitorial system to an Anglo-American-style adversial system." Despite such, one expert notes that "It is a problem of corruption, not of a lack of legal powers." I couldn't agree more; the Spanish system of complex (but detailed) civil codes can be as specific and detailed as they want; far from its arbitrary Anglo-American counter-part.

Puerto Rican legislators have in recent years boosted traffic violation fines, surpassing many stateside standards, only to see the islands chaotic driving culture remain untouched, as official lack the authority and tools to enforce these codes.

Corruption is rampant throughout Latin American politics. I admit that. Even if you were to sack the entire government bureaucracy and replaced them with honest public servants (even those with passionate ideological or religious motivations, such as revolutionaries and fundamentalists), it wouldn't take long for our old ways to creep back in. I attribute this cycle to our culture, for nepotism, favoritism, and paternalism are cultural traits of our everyday lives. All of the mentioned memes foment corruption and especially bureaucracy. As Plato said, our government is a representation of its people.

The solution? Obviously, legislation and checks and balances won't do the trick. These same laws will be difficult to implement and these traditions will always find a way to creep in. Every Governor Puerto Rico has had in previous decades has promised to govern more efficiently and re-invent government; always with no avail.

We hook up friends with jobs when we work in the private sector, only to scorn our leaders for hooking up theirs with contracts. This will always happen as long as we - in our private spheres - continue to hook up friends with jobs. So then why not eliminate the hook ups that a public sector could give out to his friends? Drastically minimize the need for the public sector to contract the private sector in the first place. I'm strongly opposed to Rossello's monolithic public works not because all of them are unnecessary, but because such large transfers of funds from the public to the private sector make it oh so easy for corruption to take place. Most of the corruption occurring during his administration, I must point out, took place during the realization of such contracts. Cut off a thief's hands and you impede his ability to steal. Take away the jobs, the contracts, and the favors that a public official can hand out, and you have neutralized him.

Aside from being natural nepotists, we are also natural paternalists. Max Weber, Samual Huntington, Lawrence Harrington, and were the most noted scholar to note the socio-economic and political effects of paternalism, often attributing it to our strong Catholic roots. Naturally, we will look towards our Mayors, Legislators, and Governors for hand outs and solutions to our personal problems. (I have had young men who have recently impregnated their girlfriends sit in front of my office desk, wining about how my Municipal government isn't doing anything to help him out of his bind. I laughed, considering the fact that only a few years before I was in the same bind. What did I do? I looked for a better paying job.) But what if we were to take away the power of our Mayors and Legislators? Not by creating new posts or passing their responsibilities to other government sectors, but by decentralizing their power by handing it over to their constituents. I have often spoken of popular neighborhood assemblies that would meet periodically to decide the fate of their proportion of public coffers. If it were not neighborhood assemblies that decided which of their roads are paved, which bridges are fixed, and how they will spend their public dollars, then why stand in line on a Friday morning at the Mayor's office in hopes to win him over to your cause? Do you feel that your tax dollars should be spent on new street posts? Do you want your tax dollars to be equally distributed among the tax payers? Do you want a free handout to pay for a lagging bill? Then present the proposal to your neighbors at your next town square assembly.

The state cannot be reformed. It can only be eliminated.