The Art of the Bribe

Everyone seems to have their own “the time I bribed a cop in Mexico City” story, so I figured it was time to add my own to the fray. The culture around bribes and cops is so different here than it is in the United States, and, like other bloggers, I left the interaction feeling quite pleased with myself for engaging in this Mexico City tradition, much as I did after drinking pulque or after yelling at someone who groped me in the metro.

Anahí and I had just returned from a stressful drive from Satelite, a suburb to the north of Mexico City that was designed in the image of American suburban communities in the fifties but has since been swallowed up by the ever-expanding urban sprawl that is the Distrito Federal. Although it was well before rushhour, we got caught in horrible traffic on the highway back into the city, and by the time we were on the nightmare that is Avenida Insurgentes, I didn’t have the patience to make three right turns required to head west. Instead I followed the driver ahead of me, ignoring the no left turn sign and making my move during a safe gap in traffic.

Unlike the car ahead of me, however, we got pulled over by one of the many traffic cops that make their living extorting bribes from lazy drivers like myself. He pulled us over onto a street where several other cops were waiting. I panicked a little; we were in a friend’s borrowed car and if I ever knew where her proof of insurance was, I had forgotten by that moment. Did they even use proof of insurance in Mexico? What else might I need that I didn’t have?

The cop who came to the window showed us a lamenated piece of paper with poorly printed pictures of street signs with fines underneath them. It appeared for what I had done, I owed over 900 pesos. Not only that, he said, but they were going to impound the car right there on the spot and we would have to come get it from the impound lot. That sounded even more expensive, plus I was supposed to get my friend’s car back to her in forty-five minutes so she could drive to work.

“I can’t just pay the fine here?” I said, in broken Spanish, but the cop was busy inspecting my California driver’s license. I knew this was when I was supposed to bribe him, but I didn’t know how subtle I was supposed to be. What was the ettiquette of bribing someone? Fortunately, the cop saved me the trouble of figuring it out.

“You mean you’re from California?” he asked.

“Yes. Yes,” I assured him. “I’m from California and didn’t know you couldn’t make a left turn there.”

“And I don’t have a license,” chimed in Anahí, anticipating his question. “And this is not our car. You can’t impound it because our friend needs it. Can we please take care of this here?”

I was digging around in my purse for cash. All I had was a 500 peso bill and a 100 peso bill. Both gleamed up from my wallet, in plain view of the cop. Would I have to give him all of it?

“Can I please just give you this?” I said, offering up the 500 peso bill. “We need this extra 100 pesos to buy gas. We are going all the way to the south of the city.”

“Well,” he said, taking the bill, “on account of the fact that you are from California…”

“On account of your fucking mother,” Anahí said under her breath as we drove away.

I felt frustrated that I hadn’t had smaller bills in my wallet. Would he have taken 400 pesos? 300? I consoled myself by suggesting to Anahí that maybe he would take his wife out to a nice dinner with that money.

“He’ll probably spend it on prostitutes,” she replied.

She’s probably correct. Police corruption is rampant in Mexico City due, in part, to the woefully low wages policias are paid for what is a dangerous and almost uniformly resented job. Most police officers are uneducated, many are involved (voluntarily or not) in drug trafficking, and almost all are despised and distrusted by the rest of the city’s populace. (For accessible background reading on Mexico City’s police force, check out the chapter “Who’s Afraid of Mexico City?” in David Lida’s book First Stop in the New World.) Bribery, known in Mexican slang as a mordida (or “bite”), is not unique to the police force (since money talks on all levels of government…), but that is perhaps where it is most visible, despite recent efforts to curtail it.

I was certainly guilty of making a left hand turn off of Insurgentes (and was grateful to get out of it by paying), but I’ve also heard of police shaking down people (particularly gay people) who are not actually committing any crime. Some macha friends of mine were stopped and detained in the Zona Rosa for the supposed crime of handing out flyers for a gay event. At the local station house, one was allowed to go to her ATM in order to withdraw money to pay a “fine” so they would not be further incarcerated. Although this is not a common occurance, LGBT visitors should be aware that this kind of extortion has happened in the past, and although homophobia is obviously a motivating factor, money is at the root of the problem.

If, heaven forbid, a visitor should find themselves being detained for a crime in Mexico City (whether she is guilty or not), she shouldn’t panic immediately. Despite the indignity of it, a bribe (often described as “paying a fine”) is often a safer and easier alternative to being encarcerated in a local jail. An older, wiser, more experienced traveler once gave me a tip bribes, saying that the sooner you offer the bribe (and the lower the rank of the person receiving the bribe), the less you will have to pay. The deeper into the system you get, the more expensive things become. I pass this information on, not to condone corruption, but to make readers aware of what options are available to them in what can be a terrifying situation. Corruption is not unique to Mexico, but anyone spending time in the Distrito Federal should come with appreciation for a well-executed bribe.