The encounter is nearly always the same. The officer accepts. We have to accept. Anyway, we're not the ones asking.
Corruption comes from both sides.
Since ending 71 years of one-party rule in Mexico last year, President Vicente Fox has made battling Mexico's deeply entrenched corruption a top priority. In Mexico, anyone with a few dollars to spare pays for a driver's license, rather than taking the test and standing in line for most of a day. Mexican newspapers run almost daily headlines about police involved in kidnapping rings, drug traffickers bribing their way out of prison or state companies firing whistle-blowers. In the most recent Transparency International ranking, Mexicans themselves put their country nearly in the top third of corrupt nations worldwide, closer to Nigeria, the most corrupt, than Finland, the least. It's part of our mentality and it's hard for us to fight against it.