Mexico possibly has one of the best governments anyone could buy. And cheap, too.
In the 1840`s, the then Mexican president tried to sell what is now most of the southern US. ( Mexicans love to forget that fact). In the 1960's another Mexican president bought Acapulco, or at least the part worthwhile having. A later one, turned out to be one of the richest men in the world.
That's the big stuff.
The little stuff is that many municipal employees or their mothers buying two cars and a nice house within a year of their getting a municipal job, on a usually considerably less than 25,000 pesos a month salary. Of course, everyone knows that they skipped their lunches.
Corruption is so ingrained in small town politics in this part of Mexico that it is usually shrugged off by locals as "asi es." (that's the way it is)
Both Mexico and the state of Veracruz are working hard to establish a system of government transparency. Equally, there are just as many local computer programmers working hard to circumvent the system.
The proverbial "asi es" conditions affect monetary shortages in every level of government, from so called paracaidistas, (parachutists who only drop in for kicked back paychecks), to the traditional under the table 10% rebate for any municipal construction work.
Officially (there is no officially, just a transparency.org estimate) Mexico loses 10% of its possible government expenditures to bribery. On a local level I would venture a guess of a lot closer to 20%.
Considering this theft of money, multiplied by a dozen of previous administrations, can anyone imagine how much better many of the affected communities could be, without of course the former municipal president's castles in town or Cancun, Huatulco or wherever they hide their money?
