How to Deal with Mexico's La Mordida: Pay the Bribe

You can find some of the world's worst advice in Internet Chat Rooms. If you are planning a trip to Mexico, maybe even planning on living there as an expatriate, you can go on chat rooms all over the net and find some of the most rousing discussions. Sometimes you will find advice that you do not want to follow in a million years when it comes to Mexico and paying the La Mordida.

For more than 400 years, everything in the Mexican government had a price. Need a small form to fill out? That would cost you some pesos. Need someone to process the form you bought that should have been free in the first place? That will cost you too. Basically, La Mordida, or "the bite" was for anything in the government that should be free. This included the police. If someone attacked your wife and you wanted it investigated, a small amount of money will get the process started. Everyone from the highest government official to the lowliest street sweeper would have a price for something you should have gotten for free by virtue of your citizenship in the country.

There was nothing you could do about it. The judge to whom you would appeal to squeal on the cop, who tried extorting money from you, is just as liable to be as crooked as the cop. There was no recourse, you paid up. If a cop, who had limitless discretion and a great imagination, said you were guilty of such and such, all you could do is say, "I wonder if I could pay you instead of going downtown to see the judge? You'll take care of this won't you?"-Wink, wink!

After the 1910 revolution, which ended in 1921, there was a lot of postulating that the government put an end to this sort of corruption. It was nothing but a ruse, a smoke screen, and cops are still pinching and rousting American tourists today as they did then. During the decades of the 70's and 80's, another attempt was made to curb La Mordida in the airports. What happened is the cops who did this went to the border crossings to ply their wicked trade. There, the Americans could be separated from their group and kept until they paid the Mordida. Or, the authorities, with limitless power, could throw your American Gringo Butt into jail and there you would sit.

Even today, this still goes on. Cultural Analyst Boyé Lafayette De Mente advises that if you meet with resistance anywhere and from any law enforcement official and you are clearly innocent, listen for that nasty official saying the magic words,

"I wish there was something we could do."

When you hear those words, be prepared to negotiate an amount, pay it, and run, run, run!

Here is what so dangerous for Americans to believe. If they think they can act like baboons, huff and puff, fart and belch, rant and rave, at the Mexican officials, or even more dangerously, a Mexican cop, they are seriously deluded.

What I heard on a chat forum on Yahoo is that this guy, traveling with his wife in Mexico City, got stopped and the cop offered him La Mordida. The American visitor paid up because the alternative was to sit in jail for three months until his case came up. He may have gotten the case dropped once he saw a judge, but he would have spent time in a Mexican jail.

I know an American to whom this happened. She had to spend three weeks with a roll of toilet paper for a pillow until her case came up. The case was, of course, thrown out, but she spent time in the can for her desire to stand on her American principles.

What Americans do when in Mexico is act like Americans. This is exactly what Mexican cops who are going to put the bite on you expect. The cops will not be intimidated with your threats to talk to supervisors, offer to go down to the station to talk with the chief, scream for a lawyer, wail and screech like a wild animal. First of all, this is exactly how they expect you to act.

The truth is that Mexicans, along with most of the world, do not regard Americans as very socially evolved or cultural beings. You will not be able to bully the cop, scare him, bluff him, or anything else. If you try acting like an American, I can just see you getting thrown into a jail cell shared by Jorge el Magnifico Jefe de las Nalgas and Mario la grand Chupa del Chorizo.

This is the advice Americans are giving in this chat room. They think they can get by with acting like, well, culturally inept Americans in Mexico. Acting like an American is what the creep trying to extort money from you will expect and it will not ruffle his feathers. Act like a Mexican, and this just might shock the cop into reconsidering his offer, "I wish there was something we could do."

Americans really do think that everyone thinks like they do. They think if they resort to bullying and bluffing, this will scare the cop into backing off. It is too sad to be laughable. The best you can hope to do is:

Act as humble as you know how to be. I realize this is not something in most Americans' repertoire of personality traits, but practice before you leave the States.

If you can, cry a little bit. Fumble, mumble, shake, even fake a heart attack if you can.

Tell the cop you are on medicines for your recent heart, double lung, and double kidney transplant. Though you would love to pay the sum the cop named as "that which would take care of this problem," would he please, for the sake of your saintly mother who is on the verge of dying in the back seat from sheer terror, and you need to survive in order to care for her, please take a lower sum-THEN YOU POP THE COUNTER OFFER!!

I mean this most sincerely. If you appeal to things which are important in this cop's culture: good health, self-improvement, family, God, mothers, and so on, you just might get a reduced Mordida or he might just send you on your way.

With all your American blustery principle, red face, doubled-up fists, and loud voice, you are not going to change this culture one iota. You will end up blustering and singing the Star Spangled Banner all the way to the jail where Jorge and Mario will be waiting for you with baited breath.

What will eventually change Mexico will be a more professionally TRAINED and PAID police force. The cops in Querétaro are shining examples of what can happen all over this country.

Until then, pay up La Mordida (pay the damned bribe), unless you really want to get to know Jorge and Mario on a very personal and intimate level (they will help you learn a little Spanish, maybe).

They'd love to see you.