Finally: an attempt to lock the safe that is always open
In a turn of events that no one saw coming (or rather, that everyone had expected for a decade), the honorable deputies in Mexico decided that maybe, just maybe, it would be a good idea to try to control the nation’s favorite clandestine passageway: customs. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s initiative to, pay attention to the euphemism, “strengthen and modernize customs”, managed to advance. This happens, of course, just after fuel smuggling scandals reminded us that our public treasury is leaking more than a sieve at the bottom of the sea.
It seems that the political class finally realized that letting goods and fuel pass through your house like Pedro, without paying a single peso, might not be the most brilliant fiscal strategy. Who would have thought? The news comes with the righteous aroma of a pending bill, although many of us speculate, with quite black humor, if it is not another paper patch on a wound that requires major surgery.
The changes: or how to try to get the fox to guard the chicken coop with an instruction manual
The jewel in the crown of this reform is the treatment that will be given to customs agents, those mysterious figures often linked to the most creative cases of embezzlement and corruption. The patent, which previously seemed to have the validity of a rock, will now be 20 years. But surprise! must be certified every 3 years. That is, they will now have to periodically prove that they still remember how the job is supposed to be done legally. A revolutionary concept, without a doubt.
And to give it a touch of solemnity (or extreme bureaucracy), the brand new Customs Council will be born, chaired by none other than the Secretary of the Treasury. This new body will have the divine power to grant, suspend and cancel patents, as well as disqualify agents or agencies that are too clever. Basically, it is creating a committee to monitor those who should be monitoring. Because if something works in Mexico, it is adding more layers of supervision.
For courier and parcel companies, a simplified procedure is established. Which translates to: “we want the legal packages to pass quickly, so we can focus on the ones that are not.” And like any reform worth its salt, it includes more severe sanctions for those who try to remove merchandise without meeting the requirements. I mean, now, seriously, next time we’ll get really angry.
Opposition and harsh reality: when optimism collides with skepticism
While the ruling party celebrates, the opposition parties, in a burst of overflowing joy, warn that these measures could reduce Mexico’s competitiveness. Their argument is that they do not attack the underlying problem: structural corruption in customs that, let us not forget, are currently in the hands of the military. It’s a valid complaint. It’s like changing the locks on a house whose main problem is that the security guards leave the front door open on purpose.
One cannot help but ask sarcastically: do we really believe that the problem is the procedures and not the network of complicities that allows the fuel to disappear as if by magic? The Fiscal Attorney’s Office, in a report that seems like the script for a series of drug trafficking, revealed that in the last two years it has filed more than 100 complaints for more than 800 million dollars related to illicit operations in the hydrocarbon sector. To this we must add 59 complaints for almost 3,000 million dollars against networks of billing companies. These are figures so large that they hurt, the kind of money with which several of the country’s problems could be solved, but which instead feed opacity and impunity.
The real challenge, which no one seems to want to delve into, is how all this will be implemented. What good is an impeccable law if there is no real political will to apply it, or if the institutions designated to enforce it are undermined by the very vices it is intended to eradicate. It is the eternal Mexican dilemma: we have the laws, we lack the mechanisms and, above all, the consistency to enforce them.
Deep down, this reform is a symptom of a larger illness: institutional distrust. It is legislated out of desperation, reactively, after each scandal. It is a step, without a doubt, but on a path so long and winding that one wonders if something more radical, more daring, would not be needed. Meanwhile, corrupt customs agents, colluding officials and unscrupulous businessmen are probably already looking for the next crack to slip through. Because in the art of smuggling and evasion, human creativity is infinite.
So let’s celebrate this progress, with the irony it deserves. It’s a good headline, a necessary gesture, but the real work—that of changing a culture of corruption—remains pending. And that, dear readers, cannot be resolved with a single legal reform.
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