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Last Saturday night I was introduced to a cold, dark Mexican police cell. It was only a passing acquaintance, a mere 3 hours, but that was plenty of time to contemplate my own stupidity at refusing to pay a bribe of a measly 500 pesos. Especially since this was my second run in with corrupt coppers this month. I should have known better.
My crime? This time, urinating in public. Which is, fair enough, against the law. Even if you happen to be standing on a dark coastal path by the sea, pissing directly into the sea, several hundred metres away from the nearest building with nobody around – except, of course, for the squad of policeman who have followed you silently with the sole purpose of catching you with your pants down.
I had hoped to negotiate – at least, that is what I told myself I was doing. I hoped that by making it clear that I was prepared to make them go to the trouble of going down to the police station they would relent and ask for a lower bribe. Really, I was objecting to paying because I was annoyed; annoyed that it required six of them to pick me up for something so petty; annoyed because they were so obviously trying to intimidate me; annoyed because they sole motivation was not upholding the law but extorting money from a foreigner.
But being stubborn in this situation is not a good idea, unless you are very sure of your rights and your ability to uphold them. Otherwise, there is only ever going to be one winner. When I said no to their initial offer of 500 pesos, instead of negotiating they marched immediately back to their station, where they took my bag and my wallet and my shoes and sat me on a hard wooden bench in the corner. I would have to spend the night there, they told me, then pay in the morning.
I tried to backtrack, to pay the bribe then and there, but they were no longer interested in making life easy for me. The office staff at least were friendly, but they had no power to release me, and rather than responding to their attempted conversation I fell into a deep sulk, fixing my eyes steadfastly on the wall and refusing to talk. This was my second mistake.
On the seat next to me was a kid who had obviously been there before and understood the routine. When they cracked jokes he laughed and when they asked him questions he responded with an inane grin, as if they were best mates and it was just bad luck that they’d happened to bring him in. After half an hour they removed his cuffs and gave him a can of coke and a cigarette. I was shown to a dark cell that was little more than a concrete bunker with a hole to shit in, where I was left for the next 3 hours.
They finally released me around half past midnight, after I agreed to pay the ‘administration fee’ of 300 pesos. By this point I would have paid several times that much to be released. Being trapped had induced a horrible panicked feeling inside of me; it seems I have an irrational fear of Mexican police cells.
A couple of days later, however, I was able to take some comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one to have fallen foul of the Puerto Police. After returning to my hostel in Oaxaca, I struck up a conversation with a girl who had lived there for the best part of 6 months and who described the police there as “utter bastards – if you see them just walk the other way.”
She described how she had once been riding out to a party with a friend on the back of his motorbike. The friend had been a local but, seconds after coming out of his drive, they were stopped by a police squad who demanded that they dismount.
The policeman asked for the keys to the bike. Her friend refused. They asked to see his papers. He said they were in his house, which was right there, he could go and get them. They said no, just give us the keys. Again he refused. It had, apparently, gone on like this for some time until finally they had lost interest and given up. Afterwards, he told her that if he had given them the keys he would never have seen his bike again.
“They can do that?” I asked.
“They do it all the time.”
Another friend of hers had actually lost a car in this manner, having it impounded when she’d parked it a street away from her apartment because she hadn’t had the papers on her person. I was lucky, she told me, that they hadn’t sought to confiscate more of my belongings, as I’d had an expensive camera and lens on me when they’d picked me up.
I have to admit, I had been scared they might take it myself. Perhaps my belligerence paid off. Perhaps I made it clear enough to them that I would pursue the matter if they treated me any more unfairly than I already had.
Or perhaps I should just have paid the bribe.