Latin America: Andres Oppenheimer, Authoritarian leaders breed corruption

Miamiherald.com – What’s most amazing about the arrest in Miami of Bolivia’s top anti-corruption police official, caught on tape extorting a bribe from a well-known businessman, was that hardly anybody was surprised by the news. Corruption by top officials of Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina and other Latin American authoritarian populist countries has become so common in this part of the world that the media treated the story like a routine event. In Miami, where Bolivian National Police Col. Mario Fabricio Ormachea was arrested on Aug. 29 on charges of trying to extort former Bolivian airline owner Humberto Roca, The Miami Herald didn’t publish the story on its front page. It appeared in the Local and State section. Read Article