The bigger the project, experts say, the more palms that are likely to spread open.

“Although you may have all your permits, they say you have to contribute something,” said Salvador Contreras, a contractor on an office building going up on a major boulevard. “If you do it the normal way or without paying, it can take double the normal time to do anything.”

As deep as the bribery, as well as the resulting frustration, is the acceptance. So the report in The New York Times over the weekend that Wal-Mart de México had paid bribes to speed up the expansion of its empire here and then sought to cover up the payments came as no surprise. What raised eyebrows were the amounts involved — more than $24 million — and that the surreptitious behavior, which Mexicans are confronted with on a much smaller scale in their everyday lives, was so publicly revealed.

“They learned all the bad tricks here,” Carlos Salas, a food stand vendor who himself admits to paying off municipal inspectors, said of the executives of Wal-Mart.

Fiscal watchdogs chafe at the way bribery and other forms of corruption are taken in stride here. Studies have found it costs the economy upward of $114 billion — 10 percent of its gross domestic product — and dampens potential investment.

The Mexican chapter of Transparency International said corruption over all was on the rise in Mexico and last year ranked it 100 out of 183 countries in its perception of corruption index, and last among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.