Violence in Mexico

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Bambi Vincent

Acapulco: violence in paradise

A few days ago, a foreigner arrived at Mexico City’s international airport and exchanged money there. What he didn’t know was that he was being observed by lookouts. When he left the airport, his car was followed by two others. He was forced off the road and approached by gunmen, who simply shot him in the head when he resisted their demand for the cash.

By now everyone knows that Mexico has become a risky destination, thanks to drug gangs and their brutal operations. Police officers have been steadily targeted by the gangs, and are being killed from the top ranks to the bottom in scary numbers I can’t quote.

Last year, the director of the federal police division monitoring trafficking and contraband was killed, along with his bodyguard. So were other top police officials, including the head of Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping unit, and the director of national police operations against drug traffickers.

Little girls in Mexico playing with bottle caps.

All of Mexico is dangerous now, from the capital city to the most popular resort towns. Acapulco (the city in which Bob and I met), is now called a “violent Mexican resort.”

Tourists to Mexico are in the middle of it all. They are perceived to have cash: either on them, accessible by ATM, or available as ransom.

Mexican police say that the drug gangs now post lookouts at the airport money-exchange booths. The lookouts phone their colleagues outside the airport, who rob the visitors as they leave.

Among its many warnings about Mexico (updated 8/13/08), the U.S. State Department says:

If an ATM must be used, it should be accessed only during the business day at large protected facilities (preferably inside commercial establishments, rather than at glass-enclosed, highly visible ATMs on streets).

About Mexico City specifically, the State Department suggests:

Arriving travelers who need to obtain pesos at the airport should use the exchange counters or ATMs in the arrival/departure gate area, where access is restricted, rather than changing money after passing through Customs, where they can be observed by criminals.

It’s easy and common for criminal gangs to recruit low-level airport employees as conspirators. I wouldn’t feel much safer in the “secure” arrival/departure gate areas.

Mexican citizens have long been the targets of express kidnapping and carjacking, along with the usual burglaries and robberies. Tourists have had to be alert to pickpockets, drink-druggers, taxi-robberies, and psuedo-cops.

Things are getting worse now.

Street crime in Rome

Bob Arno on thiefhunting

Dead zone

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Bambi Vincent

Seeking answers, or shared experiences: On a first class cross-country flight last weekend, the trackpad of Bob’s MacBook Air refused to work. His cursor moved erratically or not at all, or opened contextual menus unasked. He turned off his wifi antenna and made sure bluetooth was off. He restarted. He checked his trackpad prefs. No help.

What worked was raising the laptop 24 or so inches into the air. There, the trackpad worked normally. It also functioned well about a foot below laplevel. Meanwhile, the trackpad on my four-year-old PowerBook was fine in any position, including in Bob’s dead zone.

We were on a Boing 737, row 4, Bob in the aisle seat, if that matters. There was a/c power in the seats, and we were plugged in. We’ve used laptops on airplanes for decades, with and without power, in all cabin classes. This MacBook Air has worked flawlessly on about 30 previous flights.

On the return trip two days later, we had aisle and window seats in row 1 on another B737. Same issue. Bob’s troublesome area ranged from laplevel to tray-table height, with a bad buffer of a foot or so above and below. Again, he was on the aisle.

The Air’s cursor moved normally while on my lap in the window seat, and my machine worked fine in all of Bob’s territory. We did not get up and change seats in order to complete experimentation—perhaps the cause was a combination of Bob’s body on the aisle.

A magnetic field? Or what?

Unrelated posts:

Midnight sun in Stockholm

Rome train station

On touring

Suckers, high and dry

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Bambi Vincent

A beheaded octopus drying in the Greek sun.

I can’t remember ever having eaten dried octopus, but I’m not saying I wouldn’t. There they were, looking festive, a row of fresh ones dangling decoratively from a boat’s rigging, like signal flags spelling out a message for dinner.

In Mykonos recently, on a long stroll along the shore, I saw these plump babies strung up, baking in the Greek sun. They had clearly protested their ignoble attachment to a laundry line, given that more than a few had clutched a lifeline with defiant fists.

A boat flies signal flags that spell out dinner.

Octoperson

The sticky-fingered cephalopods had received the ultimate capital punishment—beheading—and for what? Stealing bait? Like a lowlife pickpocket going for our prop wallets, except we throw them back.

Maybe they weren’t destined for food, I don’t know. I’m not one to look at tentacles and think mmm, succulent. There was no one to ask.

Me, I’d put light bulbs in them.

Airport danger and the strategist thief

Theft in South Africa

Cash or credit card?

Posted on January 21, 2009 by Bambi Vincent

Don’t be self-ripped

That means: do your research. Besides knowing the tricks and scams prevalent in your destination, you should be up-to-date on currency. Look up the exchange rate, get familiar with the denominations of the foreign currency and what each note is worth in dollars. Low-value currency can be baffling. Menus and price tags can blind you with zeros in Istanbul, for example, with the Turkish lira at six hundred thousand some to the dollar. Will you pay 21,875,000 lira for your dinner, or 218,750,000? It’s easy to make a mistake. We got so many Zambian kwachas for our $10 once, we kept them and stuck thick wads inside our prop wallets. (That was before we realized that cut paper thickened a wallet just as temptingly.)

So, know the currency; also consider how much cash you need to carry. Bob and I recommend carrying as little as possible. We’re great proponents of credit cards. Sure, you need enough local currency for small purchases. Taxis, delightful sidewalk coffee and exotic streetfood, craft markets, tips, and all those expensive luxury items you want to buy without a papertrail, all require cash. But for the rest of it, credit cards are a better deal.

When you buy foreign currency, the money dealer makes a profit. You may be charged a poor rate of exchange, a fixed fee, a commission, or all three. Believe it or not, many money changers will Continue reading →

Unrelated posts:

My 2008 travel stats

Observations of Japan

Japan's complicated shoe rules

Bob Arno in Swedish press

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Bambi Vincent

First spread of Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's photo essay on Bob Arno.

Way back on July 7, 2008, I wrote that the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet interviewed Bob Arno, and I promised a link when available.

The interview was on June 30, 2008. The article was finally published in Aftonbladet on December 7, 2008. It hasn’t been uploaded to Aftonbladet’s website, so I’m posting a pdf file. The article has lots of photos, but is written in Swedish, of course.

The pdf file is here: 081207-aftonbladet

Stolen purse leads to worse

A pickpocket party begins

Requiem for a tree

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Bambi Vincent

My brother-in-law in a treebone.

It was a mesquite, 35 or so feet tall, graceful in an awkward way. Craving light, the poor thing crooked its trunk this way and that, having been stupidly planted under a roof and beside a wall. I’ve liked the tree a lot all these years, for its lush green foliage and shade—rare commodities in Las Vegas.

For various reasons, it had to go. And there was only one man for the job.

My brother-in-law, the self-proclaimed Swedish Okie and country bumpkin whom I’ve written about before, single-handedly brought the tree down.

Now you can’t just take a buzz saw to the trunk of a tree in close quarters and yell “timber!” There’s no safe place for the tree to fall, and it’s weight is enormous, full of life juices and wearing a lush canopy of green. There are windows in the proximity, fences, landscapes, tiles, other trees, all of which would suffer damage.

Half the canopy, bundled, bones behind.

Brother-in-law started with the canopy, removing all the light branches and a great deal of weight, using a hand saw. He did this while standing on a 10-foot ladder he had strapped onto a 16-foot ladder. Each branch was tied, cut, and lowered to the ground. Bob threw them over the wall. I bundled. When I began, the mound of branches was taller than I am. When I’d tied up a dozen bundles, the mountain of branches was just as high.

The pulley system: easy with the small limbs.

When it came to the hefty limbs, the lumberjack needed an assistant. The tree was to be dismantled from the top down in bite-sized chunks. A limb was tied, and its rope wound around a lower piece of trunk, pulley-fashion, and Bob was to keep pressure on the rope until it was cut through. When the new log was free, Bob lowered it gently to the ground with the rope. Brilliant system.

Brother-in-law's country house, still under construction.

My brother-in-law knows all this because, like any good Swede who has the time and money, he has a country house. That is, he built a house in the forest outside of Stockholm. After clearing the land. Most of it he did himself. He’s still working on it, bit by bit, every summer.

Former mesquite. Future fire.

The trunk of the mesquite was sawn into 23 gorgeous logs.

Something seems a little missing from my front courtyard now, but only a little. Other than the trunk, the tree’s glory was above the roof. I miss it anyway.