Cate and I moved to Mexico in 2014. I had been before and we had made a trip together previously. By that point I had well over 10 years of experience living and traveling in foreign countries, but this was the first time that I was going to live in a country that had so much mystique around it.
Having grown up in the United States, Mexico was a place of legends. This is where you went if you wanted to buy M-80s (to blow up the school toilet with), switchblades, brass knuckles, or to see a donkey show.
I hadn’t grown up with these kinds of stories regarding Korea, Peru, Taiwan, or any of the other myriad places I traveled to or lived in prior to the move to Mexico.
In addition to the lore surrounding illicit sex acts, and all manner of drugs, the idea is popular amongst Americans that bribes, particularly paid to the police, are quite common. Having had the world travel experience I had up to this point, including not infrequent interactions with various law enforcement, I had never been shaken down for a bribe and had begun to believe that police bribery was some kind of urban legend. Just another of the lies that I was told in my youth.
Never having had first hand experience, I began to rely heavily on second-hand stories that were told within the travel community. Everyone had some sort of story similar to being taken off a bus by a corrupt police officer, being accused of some crime, sometimes even with the planting of evidence and having to bribe their way out of it.
We would end up living in Mexico for a total of 18 months. From time to time, we would rent a car and drive somewhere. This always involved police checkpoints so any time we would drive, we were guaranteed to interact with the police, and I would certainly think that at a glance we wouldn’t have looked any different from any other gringo tourist, i.e. the perfect target for any of the bribery schemes we had heard about.
We didn’t really leave Mexico after that 18 months was over, we just changed our lifestyle a bit. We ended up moving into a camper on the back of a pickup truck and drove from the U.S. to the eventual destination of Ushuaia, Argentina. We spent a good deal of the early part of the trip in Mexico. Driving, breaking laws, passing through police and military checkpoints, sometimes in remote outposts.
For the entire time we lived and traveled through Mexico, the one thing that never happened was getting shaken down for a bribe. This was it for me. I officially dismissed any stories of having to pay a bribe to the police for made-up charges.
Colombia changed all of that.
Colombia decriminalized drugs (marijuana and cocaine anyhow) in small amounts as a response to narco-violence in the country. I knew this and was confident that I would not be prosecuted for possession of a small amount or consumption.
Not being prosecuted, however, isn’t the same as not being evicted from a hotel room for use inside that room. For this logical reason, Cate insisted I not toke up in the hotel room, no matter how efficient the bathroom exhaust fan.
There was a park just across the street and in the dark of the post-sunset city of Cartagena, it was a very inviting smoke spot.
I no sooner lit up than I had three motorcycle cops on me.
Here are some lessons from that moment:
- Don’t carry all of your cash with you when doing illegal things.
- Don’t carry all of your weed with you when doing illegal things.
- Prosecution isn’t the only negative outcome of doing illegal things.
I made no effort to conceal or deny ownership of my weed, I took responsibility for my actions immediately and admitted my indiscretion. The police still made a big show of things. They told me that I would need to go to the station with them to fill out some paperwork so that a fine could be levied on me as I exited the country (lie).
On the way to the “station” was when I realized how fucked I was. One of the motorcycle cops had gone ahead of us earlier. I wouldn’t see him again until after we turned into the dark alley. He was at the other end of that alley, blocking it off. And, as I turned my head over my shoulder to look behind, of course the other one had blocked off the end of the alley that we had entered.
So, this was it. The cop who was escorting me suggested that perhaps a “collaboración” would smooth things over. It was clear to me at this point that I either collaborate or have it forcibly taken from me. I opted to collaborate.
So, that’s it, my first bribe (there have since been more attempts) but I still believe the vast majority of the stories you hear of “innocent backpackers” being shaken down are bullshit.
Oh..cool thing, they gave me my weed back. It’s like I bought the same weed twice.