Mexican Strawberry; La Mordida

[Jesse Sheidlower]

> --------------------------------------------------------
> LA MORDIDA
>
>    From THIS WEEK, NYHT, 12 December 1948, pg. 34, col. 1:
>
> _MEXICO'S WAR ON THE "BITE"_
> _That's the Mexicans' pet name for the tradition_
> _of bribery--but it no longer signifies affection._
> _Now press and government are swinging into action_
> (...)
>    That's the bribe--or, as the Mexicans call it, _la mordida_.  Springing from the perpetual pinch of poverty, the _mordida_ has been an age-old custom so generally accepted and so widely practiced that it long ago gained the orthodoxy of an institution.


1940 _Life_ 2 Dec. 102 In Mexico, and throughout Latin America, it is
next to impossible to make headway with petty officials without constant
applications of the _mordida,_ which literally translated means 'the bite',
or bribe.


Jesse Sheidlower
OED