Tricks, Tricksters and Corruption

When I first made it back to PR from Boston, MA I was quite naive as to the workings of the local economy. It did not take long for me to catch on. I quickly gave PR a new nickname; "El Pais de los trucos". Everyone had a hook to sell you something, get something, a hustle here and a hustle there. The cable guy show up and after he's done gives me a card "in the event I need anything on the cable system just call". Mind you he would show up in the cable truck to do private work and use parts from the cable company. Same for the telephone guy, and so on.
It's a hustle but it's also a very entrenched form of corruption. One which grows from the inefficiency of big business and a big lumbering government. Yesterday I caught a few minutes of Cucusa on her new show. She was very dismayed as to the showing of the END poll showing corruption at the very last rung of the ladder of preoccupations of the Puerto Rican People. We want to hold politicians at a very high level which is the correct attitude to take. Yet we in some way or another, participate in perpetuating the atmosphere of corruption.
The reason I believe, is very simple. To do things right in Puerto Rico is counterproductive. At every single facet. You want to renew your drivers license well be ready to waste, yes waste, two full days gathering bureaucratic crap. Now what if you could pay say $50.00, 75.00 or even a hundred dollars and have someone "take care of this" for you, would you do it. Damn right. Well take this same simple example and multiply it by everything on this island. You moved to a new house, try to see if you can 1. get the electric connection the same day from a phone line and disconnecting the old line. You can't. You need to spend a day a morning at AEE to see if it can be done.
One last example. And trust me after living in Boston, city of the meanest meter maids ever. San Juan takes the grand prize. But of course we had to up the ante, how do we accomplish this, simple. Make the challenging of a parking ticket so onerous no one in their right mind would waste the time to do it. I am sure, someone has a racket going on in getting these thing "taken care of", because it is ripe for the taking. The process goes something like this.
First, you put quarters in a machine whose clock or meter is just a tad faster then say your watch. So, an hour is really 45 minutes or less. Then you have the meter maid who like a peeping tom hides behind the bush to nail you on minute past plus one second. As you approach the this individual, you note he always finishes writing the ticket. Why? Once started he cannot by law destroy the ticket. So, these guys are the worlds fastest scribblers. Then you get all pissed off. He calmly tells you you have the absolute right to challenge the ticket which is: file an appeal before x number of days, then you are sent to a preliminary hearing, then if you have sufficient cause, you get to go to the hearing, then at the hearing you present your case, then you go back to another hearing and the guy who wrote the ticket goes and decides whether or not the ticket stays. All this or just pay 35.00 of which you NEED to keep a copy because they (DTOP) never have their records up to date and you end up paying twice.
You want eradicate corruption in PR. Make life easy. Respect our time, our money, we all have enough going on in our lives to have to add all the bureaucratic BS just to get a license, a birth certificate, a copy of whatever. I am the first to confess, I'll pay the 50. 60. or 100. Just resolve it. Just save me the aggravation of having to deal with government hacks who need to justify there place here on this planet by making life miserable for the rest of us. How you used the money is not my concern. My concern is you got it fixed.
Until then, we will have the tricksters, truqueros, making money by negotiating the labyrinth of our government agencies. And of course we will have corruption.