San Antonio Express-News
Not once do I remember somebody attributing the heartless corporate greed of Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling to some cultural defect in the white male-dominated energy community.
So why rely on a cultural explanation for the results of a two-year FBI investigation in El Paso?
The editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, which, like the Express-News, is owned by the Hearst Corp., had the following to say about the probe, which has netted one guilty plea involving payoffs for county contracts:
"Mexican culture has many admirable facets that Americans might wish to import or assimilate, but official bribery is not among them. The idea that slipping cash to a policeman can make a ticket go away isn't unique to Mexico.
"But in some parts of that country, bribery is endemic."
Not sure why we're so focused on Mexico, but no major problems so far. Then the editorial goes on to say:
"What appears to be happening in El Paso, though, is a widespread culture of bribery that has penetrated many arenas of the city's legitimate government activity ...
"Cities on the border with Mexico have a flavor all their own, unique to the blending of cultures, families and economies that cross a shared boundary.
"That flavor cannot be allowed to take on the bitter aftertaste of the mordida."
Mordida is the Spanish word for "bite," which is often used south of the border to describe the greasing of palms to get authorities to look the other way or to get bureaucracy to move a little quicker.
In his guilty plea to four counts of conspiracy and fraud, John Travis Ketner, the former chief of staff to El Paso County Judge Anthony Cobos, fingered 17 unnamed co-conspirators.
They are believed to include well-known Anglos and Hispanics, including Cobos and former state Rep. Luther Jones, reportedly described as "Co-conspirator One."
But even if the co-conspirators, who have denied wrongdoing, are eventually convicted, isn't it enough to say that those who sell their offices and influence are greedy, overly ambitious crooks?
Must there be a reason beyond human frailty?
I ask these questions knowing that my background as a Latino from El Paso will invite criticism that I'm an apologist.
So I'll refer to the sage words of a former colleague, Rick Casey, who interestingly enough now works for the Houston Chronicle.
Casey is often at his incisive best when he's punching holes in stereotypes about corruption. He once wrote about speaking to a service club that he found to be underrepresented by women or Latinos.
"You know why we have so much corruption here in San Antonio, don't you?" a man asked before his speech.
Without waiting for an answer, the man said: "It's because the city is so Hispanic."
After being asked the same question by a different man following his speech, Casey said he gave the same answer he gave his tablemates a short while earlier.
"I told him that not only did I disagree, but I was offended by the notion," Casey wrote.
"I reminded the audience that six of my eight great-grandparents escaped to the United States from the potato famine, and that they and their Irish American descendants would be appalled at the notion that Mexican Americans were getting credit for corrupting American politics.
"What about Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed in New York?"
Could it be that the alleged crooks in El Paso are part Irish? Or were the Enron boys a little bit Mexican?
