Corruption is deeply entrenched in Mexico and affects everything from its efficacy in battling violence to improving education and ultimately its growth. Examples are endless: Policemen were recently caught on tape kidnapping men in western Mexico who ended up dead the next day; a 2011 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report on Mexico shows the average household spends almost one-third of its budget on products that hail from “monopolistic or highly oligopolistic markets.”
“There needs to be a national crusade to clean up government at the federal and local levels,” says John Ackerman, a law expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. “This has been the real failure with Mexico’s transition to democracy.”
