Glossary of graft lays bare Mexico's lexicon of corruption
Source: The Guardian
Glossary of graft lays bare Mexico's lexicon of corruption
Corruption is so endemic it has generated a vocabulary of its own.
A new book, the Corrupcionario Mexicano, hopes to make people
stop seeing it as normal
David Agren in Mexico City
Monday 7 November 2016 11.30 GMT
The word
chayote is a term originally from the Nahuatl language which denotes a greenish edible gourd. In Mexico, it also means a payment made by a politician to a journalist in exchange for favourable coverage.
Chapulín signifies grasshopper but can also mean a politician who changes party affiliation in search of financial benefit.
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So well-entrenched is corruption in Mexicos political life, that an entire lexicon has evolved to describe its intricacies. Now a group of activists has published a
compendium of corruption terms in an effort to highlight the countrys graft problem.
Those behind the
Corrupcionario Mexicano or Mexican Corruptionary argue that curbing corruption starts with changing the way criminal behaviour is described.
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Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/07/mexico-corruption-dictionary-corrupcionario-mexicano