Anyone who knows the Mexican tax system is familiar with cases that would make the brashest British tabloid seem drab by comparison.

As they say here, in Mexico you can do anything.

It's true that scandals occur in Chicago, Naples, Stockholm and pretty much everywhere on earth. But the volume and brazenness of Mexicans' misdeeds are, well... scandalous. Or perhaps a better word would be boring... after 30 minutes listening to over-the-top exploits of the nation's leading citizens, you'd quickly lose interest. There's simply too much to tell.

The point is that once government goes wrong, it's not just corrupt, it's corrupting. The same thing reported by Michael Lewis in his October 2010 Vanity Fair article about the Greeks is also true about Mexicans: no success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. 

"Everyone is pretty sure everyone else is cheating on taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes; or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is reinforcing".

Everywhere rich people earn fortunes doing devious if not quite illicit things. We all know this. But in Mexico (and much of the developing world) there's a big difference: the extent of lying, cheating and stealing make any sort of civic life practically impossible. Mexican civil servants steal as a matter of course; it's almost expected. And the top civil servants, the governors, diputados and party bosses, are the biggest crooks of all.

The result is that civic life is merely a façade for a shadow state, a complex and deeply nuanced underworld that -- after all is said -- drives people to take refuge in themselves and their families.

Mexico's political system is based on collectivist principles that go back to the Revolution: ejidos (collective land owernship); the universal right to housing; strong trade unions; and a host of other communal features that form the bedrock of the Mexican state, give it legitimacy and - in a word - define the political benchmarks by which Mexicans measure the world. 

Yet in the hard light of day, it's just a façade; the real Mexican spirit is the opposite of collectivist. In real life, it's every family and tribe for itself. 

This is surely not the magic bullet that explains corruption a la mexicana but rather an essential feature, a contradiction if you will, that helps define it: 

In Mexico, mafias rule the roost.

The ascension of Enrique Peña Nieto, as an expression of pure democracy, shows the extent of the "mafia mind" in Mexican culture. It's one tribe attached to another attached to another -- a form of keiretsu where the tribal links are interlocked but the rules are as rigid as ever.

At least the underworld mafias -- the Zetas and Sinaloa cartels, among others -- allow anyone with guts and determination to join. The high priests of the Mexican political class guard the gates with uncommon vigilance.

The problem is that the extent and brazen nature of lawlessness by top state and federal officials has pushed the nation into moral chaos. How can impunity -- the expectation, if you will, that politicos can steal to their hearts' content -- be sustained in light of major bloodshed? 

Lack of transparency and accountability, fuero, nepotism, and corruption in all its myriad forms are diverse labels for what lies at the heart of Mexican political life: impunity.

Yet the headlines grow bolder each week. Questions about the legitimacy of the Mexican political class -- people who, in many cases, are aligned with the other mafias - remain unanswered. In some places, they hang in the air like the stench of napalm.

While in Veracruz and Juárez eight people are executed every other day, the federal deputies have just occupied new palatial ultra-quarters in the heart of downtown Mexico City and continue the same old, same old.

A license to steal is a sharp, double-edged sword.