Corruption

Corruption in the broadest sense involves immoral or illegal activity, but the term frequently refers to political corruption, or the abuse of public office for private gain. Political corruption takes many forms, including the acceptance of bribes in exchange for favors that violate government procedures, the refusal to perform one's governmental duties without an extralegal payment, and the misappropriation of public funds. Corrupt exchanges range from small bribes to larger kickback schemes, in which government officials responsible for assigning public works contracts receive a percentage of the value of the contract from the firm receiving that contract and, at times, to even larger embezzlement efforts.

Political corruption has a long history in Latin America and beyond. When Spanish and Portuguese colonizers established mercantilist restrictions on commerce, some businesspeople bribed colonial officials to avoid punishment for using internal trade routes not authorized by the crown and for trading outside the colonial empire. Both before and after Latin American countries gained independence, propertied citizens sometimes offered bribes in pursuit of favorable government decisions to acquire title to land or to avoid paying taxes. The emergence of electoral politics after independence paved the way for vote-buying as an additional form of corruption; many Latin American political parties gained a reputation for buying votes with public funds.

As public revenues and government activity expanded over the course of the twentieth century, the potential for larger corrupt exchanges also grew. In Cuba and elsewhere, government officials allegedly used the lottery to funnel public money to themselves, their relatives, and their supporters. Higher levels of taxation on income, sales, and property tempted more citizens to pay bribes if and when they were caught evading taxes. The expansion of public works projects increased the opportunities for kickback schemes involving contracts for public buildings and transportation links; to cite two examples from the 1950s, the elected government of Juscelino Kubitschek in Brazil and the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela faced widespread allegations of corruption in the awarding of public contracts. Throughout Latin America, many people spoke of an embedded culture of corruption and of a circle of impunity in which the executive, legislative, and judicial branches often protected one another from prosecution.

Whereas corruption occurs in both authoritarian and democratic settings, democratization from the 1980s through the early twenty-first century began to change the dynamics of political corruption in Latin America. Corruption scandals contributed to the premature end of several chief executives' mandates between 1992 and 2001, including Fernando Collor de Mello in Brazil, Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela, Jamil Mahuad in Ecuador, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina. Past presidents faced formal corruption investigations during the years 1993 into 2007 in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Contemporary anticorruption efforts include the creation of new government auditing agencies, the expansion of legislative oversight, the growth of investigative journalism, and the rise of nongovernmental watchdog groups such as Citizen Power (Poder Ciudadano) in Argentina, the Civic Alliance (Alianza Cívica) in Mexico, and a regional network of Transparency International chapters. These developments raise the question: Will the twenty-first century witness a decrease in corruption in Latin America?

See alsoNarcotráfrico.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Johnston, Michael. Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Peruzzotti, Enrique, and Catalina Smulovitz, eds. Controlando la política: Ciudadanos y medios en las nuevas democracias latinoamericanas. Buenos Aires: Temas, 2002.

Tulchin, Joseph S., and Ralph H. Espach, eds. Combating Corruption in Latin America. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2000.

                                      Charles H. Blake