page_title: Corruption in Mexico
section_title: Border Issues
hierarchical_section_title: Corruption in Mexico / Organized Crime / Border Issues
caption_attribution_description: Summary from http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/print.asp?URL=/cross-border/nafta-rules/new-mexrule.htm
context_page_description: Corruption in Mexico has permeated several segments of society – political, economic, and social – and has greatly affected the country's legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. Many of these dimensions have evolved as a product of Mexico's legacy of elite, oligarchic consolidation of power and authoritarian rule.
  Transparency International's 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index ranks the country 130th place out of 180 countries.
context_section_description: Mexico’s geographic location has played largely in the development of the country’s role in organized crime and drug trafficking. Not only is Mexico adjacent to the world’s largest illegal drug market – the United States – but it also borders Central and South America, the latter being a region of nations with a similarly high demand for drugs. This positions Mexican drug cartels at an advantage; demand for drugs is not simply confined to the Mexican state, but rather it extends to several other nearby countries. Because of this, Mexico’s borders are especially crucial to drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), which can exploit the borders as a passageway for contraband and as a method for consolidation of power.
  As drug cartels and TCOs have increasingly made use of these areas, the groups have become progressively more complex, violent, and diverse. Trafficking has been accompanied by other forms of illegal activity – such as extortion, kidnappings, and political corruption – as disparate factions compete for control over the same, lucrative areas.
  The Mexican government has historically accomplished very little in terms of effectively curbing the offenses of these TCOs and cartels, and has often actually been complicit in aiding their actions. Many of Mexico’s institutions – including those for law, policy, justice, and finance – function under a patron-client system in which officials receive money, political support, or other bribes from TCOs in exchange for minimal interference in, or impunity for, those criminal groups’ affairs. In these scenarios of narco-corruption, Mexico's power structure is defined by leaders who guide TCOs’ behaviors, receive payoffs, manipulate government resources, and align public policies with legislation that will further their personal and political objectives. These relationships have served as an impetus for new and problematic sources of violent, drug-related deaths, ineffective governance and policy implementation, terror-based TCO tactics, and a deepening drug market. Under this system, TCOs’ influence has extended beyond violent criminal activity or drug trade, and has reached into Mexico's institutional bases.
  These networks – alongside a lack of government transparency and checks and balances – have allowed corruption in government to flourish.
caption: US-Mexico border
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