In Texas’ largest city, construction workers are nearly all Hispanics, but not because building is job Americans won’t do. On the contrary, Mexicans have somehow taken over those jobs and keep citizens out while demanding bribes (mordida in Spanish) of their countrymen. A man who wants a job has to pay a bribe just to start, plus a weekly payoff to keep his position.

When Mexicans come to America in the millions, they bring their diverse culture of corruption with them. Crime permeates Mexican society. Kiddies learn to bribe by paying teachers for better grades. One survey found that 87 percent of Mexicans have paid a bribe sometime in their lives.

Mexican racism plays a part in keeping out blacks; whistleblower Ricardo Charles said, “Blacks are out of the question.” White Americans are not hired either, because Mexicans prefer to around others of their tribe.

The whistleblower says job-site bribery goes on across Texas, but it’s likely that the same sort of corruption occurs in other areas of high Mexican residence, based on cultural patterns of behavior.

This is job theft and corruption by Mexicans on an industrial scale. It directly harms American workers during a wretched recession in which accumulating years of unemployment has pushed some into poverty. Is there an official investigation, somewhere? Inquiring minds want to know.

Corrupt Mexican Construction Gangs Steal Millions in Texas: MyFoxHOUSTON.com

Corrupt Mexican Construction Gangs Steal Millions in Texas, Fox News Houston, September 19, 2011

HOUSTON – These days, it’s just something you rarely, if ever, see: African-Americans laboring within the largely Hispanic construction crews working the Gulf Coast’s heavy industrial projects. ??Ricardo Charles says he knows exactly why and after 33 years in the building trade, he’s blowing the whistle.

== Black and White ==

Charles says those who run organized, largely Hispanic crews almost never hire willing African-American laborers.

“Oh no, blacks they are out of the question. Blacks are out of the question. Nobody wants a black person in there,” Charles insisted, a Mexican-American man.

The practice of rejecting black labor is deeply entrenched discrimination which extends to white workers as well, Charles says.

These men and women are effectively cut off from decent-paying construction jobs by secretive Mexican labor gangs.

“They are afraid that white people are not going to put up with their unethical acts,” Charles explained.

== The Mordida ==

He’s talking about bribes. They call it “Mordida” in Mexico, the bite.

“This is actually just like in Mexico. It’s not how much you know, it’s who you know,” Charles said.

For years, on nearly every major industrial construction site in Texas, workers have been quietly forced to pay the leaders of Mexican labor gangs hundreds of dollars up front just to obtain a job.

With each weekly pay-check, the kick backs from workers to gang leaders continue.

“It’s not only how much you pay to go in. You pay anything from $50 to $70 a week while you are in the project,” Charles insisted.

Anyone who objects to paying the price is quickly isolated and almost as rapidly cut loose from the job without cause.

“They have these groups that are going to harass you, they want to insult you, degrade you. They want to make it very, very hard on you. They want to make false accusations about you: that you don’t know how to do the job, you don’t know how to talk to them, but they are all in the same conspiracy. It is a gang, like organized crime,” Charles said. 

== Bed of Rotten Money ==

Over dozens of years and hundreds of sites across Texas, including the giant petrochemical complex in Port Arthur, he says Mexican construction cliques have muscled honest workers out of millions of dollars.

Money that’s made gang bosses rich.

“Everybody knows. Yes, many people know that you have to belong to a clique in order to work. Mexicans exploiting Mexicans and contractors looking the other way,” he said.

There’s nothing casual about his allegations. Everything he’s witnessed:

– The “pay for play”
– The graft
– The enforced silence
– And the corrupt complicity of contractors

It’s all recorded in “Mexican Cliques in Construction”, the book he paid thousands of his own hard-earned dollars to publish.

He has also brought his allegations and evidence to the FBI.

“Many people are victims. Many of my friends who are honest are victims,” he insisted. “We are applying a system that didn’t work in Mexico for hundreds years and actually it’s working here in Houston, Texas.”

Copies of “Mexican Cliques in Construction” can be obtained by contacting Ricardo Charles through his email address: [email protected]

There is a more recent version of this story (September 26) with additional details: Union Backs Claim of Discrimination, Kickbacks.