Which corrupts more, power or powerlessness?

“No temo la evaluación, temo la corrupción.” I don’t fear evaluation, I fear corruption, a sign reads, draped askew below the highway toll booth window. I avert my eyes as a man clutching a baseball bat, half of his face concealed by a red bandanna, approaches the car. My heart pounds against my chest. My dad drops the given amount of pesos, above the normal tariff rate, in the man’s hand, and two other bandanna-ed men, one carrying a knife and the other an AK-47, raise the boom barrier, allowing us to pass. I breathe a sigh of relief as we continue to Acapulco.

It’s the kind of stuff I used to only read about on the news. But I’ve learned that living in Mexico City, as exciting as it is, means living in the heart of it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The message on the toll booth sign represents the sentiments of much of the country right now, as unions of teachers go on strike, calling on President Peña Nieto to repeal an education reform requiring public school teachers to undergo evaluation tests every three years. The reform, intended to improve the standard of teaching, is believed by some to be penalizing teaching staff in rural areas, as they’re poorly designed and don’t reflect teaching methods accurately. In protest, highways have been shut down, roadblocks have caused food shortages, violent clashes with police have cost people their lives, and hundreds of children have been left teacher-less.

While some believe the teachers have a right to fight for their jobs and their rights, others argue the strike is as wrong as the government they’re fighting against. I think that it’s just another cog on the wheel that turns Mexico’s vicious cycle of corruption. Although Mexico’s infamous reputation for degeneracy is often blamed on the highest rung of the proverbial ladder–in other words, a puppeteered president and his business cohorts–I believe fingers should be equally pointed a few rungs below: at the people complaining. While power does indeed breed corruption, sometimes powerlessness can breed its much more dangerous cousin: a corruption founded on a loss of faith in the system under which one lives, causing bitter feelings of resentment and reproach to build up. It isn’t so much that the defenseless are inherently as corrupt as those in power, rather, those in power have corrupted the defenseless as much, if not more so, than they’ve corrupted themselves.

And I see it every day. I see the way in which we, the people of Mexico, constantly live in a state of hypocritical irony. Though we lash out against the money laundering and suborning of our government, we see no problem in bribing the police with 100 pesos to get out of paying a larger speeding fine. Televisa, Mexico’s biggest media outlet, sees no problem in striking a deal with the PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, agreeing to only broadcast favourable coverage in order to avoid a costly scandal. The country’s legendary mafiosos have no qualms about robbing the rich and providing that money to the poor. It is a deep-seated issue of a corruption that seeps through political party lines and into the most poverty-stricken streets, but one that we’re ashamed to admit has skewed our view on morality and allowed us to turn a blind eye to what we know is wrong but we convince ourselves is justifiable. So yes, power can turn even the most righteous politician nefarious, but it is the powerless that are most dangerous, as resentment often cuts deeper than greed ever could.