Crystal City Spinach and Corruption Festival?
Sunday’s Washington Post had a feature about a small Texas town where nearly all the elected officials have been arrested for corruption. Crystal City, population 7190 (2010 Census), is located 35 miles from the Mexico border.
Another important statistic: the town is 97 percent Hispanic. The Mexican influence is strong there, given the cultural backgrounds of many, plus the proximity to the border with its well financed drug cartels who pay to have favors performed.
Polling shows that Mexicans dislike the level of everyday corruptionat home, but when they relocate to the United States they bring it enthusiastically as part of their treasured heritage. When foreign workers have to pay kickbacks to get a construction job in Houston, they say it is “just like in Mexico.”
Bribery — mordida in Spanish — is a cultural norm is Latin America. A 2013 poll asked residents of various countries whether they had been asked to pay a bribe within the past 12 months. In Mexico, the number was 31 percent.
Unfortunately, more than 11 million Mexicans resided in the US as of 2013, and Mexicans account for nearly half of the illegal aliens here.
We Americans are unlucky in geography, a fact that shows up in southwestern border towns. ...
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