Mexico City, Mex. 8/03
I've just been robbed. Three hours have passed since my wallet was pinched and my hand is still shaking, making it difficult to scribble these words down. Not because I was cleared out wholesale -- relieved of my money, passport, return ticket -- and must now resort to purse-snatching myself to get home, but because I anticipated a bout of Murphy's Law, had prepared for the worst, and still lost.
If it hasn't already happened to you stateside, on a Manhattan train or a Hyde Street trolley car, odds are you know of someone who was robbed while browsing postcards at Rome's Spanish Steps or cruising Barcelona's Barri Gotic for a Miro poster.
Having logged months without a hitch in third-world backwaters where a lot more was at stake than my wallet, I know better than to assume that petty crime is synonymous with poor places. These days pickpockets are nearly impossible to distinguish. Right at home on the sleek streets and subways of modern cities, thieves have more in common with theatrical troupes than street urchins (though a beat-up pair of shoes still is a dead giveaway). I've heard of every slick trick:
Bob from Des Moines is walking to a museum when a dapper man approaches briskly, warning Bob that the two women standing at the entrance are in fact a pair of gypsy thieves, and then walks away. As Bob tries to pay his admission at the door, the two gypsies turn out to be museum employees on a cigarette break, Bob's Velcro wallet is missing and the cad is long gone.
Alternately, take an often used group hustle in which you suddenly are burnt by a cigarette butt in the thick of a busy market. As the wallet/purse/camera quickly is swiped, two accomplices turn around with a mother's concern to check if everything is okay, frisking you on the sly for any loose goodies their point man may have missed. Even if you do realize what has happened and go after the culprit immediately, a crew of extras will run interference, bumping you left and right until you start running back in the direction you came from.
I also recall hearing -- with an eyebrow raised -- the story of a man who was clenching his wallet inside of his pocket, only to have it miraculously slip from his grip. This is what happened to me.
Mexico City is a smog-soaked megalopolis of over 20 million people where the air will kick you to the curb and the crush of human traffic will keep you there. There is no place worse than the central Metro station at 4:30. Efficient and cheap at two pesos (20 cents) a ride, the train platforms become mobbed with commuters anxious to get home before 5:00, when a subterranean bottleneck a million strong reaches fever pitch. Things get so hairy about this time that women and children are re-routed by police barricade to the latter half of the train, leaving the men to fight it out upfront.
If and when you reach your intended platform -- and that itself is no small feat -- you are only a third of the way there. Getting on board is another matter.
Picture this: Two sides of NFL linebackers at 4th and Goal, chests puffed and elbows out, poised to plough into each other. The train doors are a de facto line of scrimmage. When they pop open, a forced osmosis occurs within seconds that defies probability.
As luck would have it, I found myself at the Pino Suarez station a little after 4:00, transferring trains to the TAPO Oriente bus terminal where I´d catch my ride to Oaxaca -- to personal space, fresh air and cheap chocolate.
Common sense told me I was the perfect target: A lanky gringo with awkward baggage. But in my haste to get out of the city, I'd decided to skip a cab and take my chances going public. That and the fact that catching a cab in Mexico City is like paying for your own hearse to Hell's Gates (home of the infamous green and white Volkswagen beetle taxis, tourists are routinely trapped and mugged in these eyesores before they can say "punch buggy").
As the lights began to swell in the dark of the tunnel, I inched up to the edge of the platform, a bag on each shoulder and my left hand in pocket gripping my black wallet. Knowing full well that if you wait for the incoming passengers to disembark you don't stand a chance of getting on board, I boldly lurched forward, my bags smacking slap, thud into exiting passengers.
Out of nowhere, I felt the torque of three or four people at my back sling shot me forward towards a helpless five-foot old woman in front of me. Instinctively, I removed my hand from my pocket to prevent a nasty collision. At that exact second, I knew something was up. When I put my hand back in my pocket, nothing.
"Rateros!"¨ (thieves), I boomed out, as I struggled towards the door, only to see the bastards slip from my sight. Next thing I know, the doors slam in my face. I'd been had. I'd also done nearly everything I could.
As I filed a police report, I received a stroke of good news from the presiding officer. Thieves were in it for hard cash alone, invariably discarding credit cards onto the tracks due to the statistical impossibility of striking the right pin number at an ATM, and the attendant liability in carrying them on their person. Chances were my wallet was lying around somewhere.
I had transferred the $200 in cash I had from by wallet to my courier bag beforehand, so I returned to the scene of the crime with a shred of hope. Truth was, I should have had my crotch bashing money belt all along.
For two hours, I scanned the tracks and those of the next two stations in each direction. Everyone seemed to know what I was looking for and why. And I hated it -- being thought of as anotherdumbtourist. I'm not the chump in striped tube socks with a video camera for an eye. I wanted to grab the guy next to me and tell him all I knew about Villa and Zapata and my penchant for mole negro. I'm a friend of Mexico, damn it. I shouldn't have to pay for NAFTA. My teeth were grinding.
During my five-station tour, prowling the coal black tracks for an equally black wallet, I spotted no less than six (!) other wallets. None of them were mine. I also found a dozen or so plastic cards, some with picture IDs staring face up. I imagined these people wore the same pitiful expressions of their ID photos when they reached to pay for a ticket, hotel room or bar tab and hit coinage. Not even enough to buy a stiff drink to numb the sting.
Bottom Line: Buy yourself an internal money belt before heading abroad. that annoying bulge in your nether-regions is a small price to pay for real security. Standard hip pouches are of course out of the question. In addition to making a thief's job easier, they scream unspeakably lame tourist who deserves to be robbed.
Note: By now, another hapless person is sure to be peering out over a set of train tracks, hot, bothered and without concern for the steel behemoths streaking by just inches from his or her head. Chances are they could be looking at my Virginia driver's license, fading away in the graveyard below. If that picture could talk, it would say: ¨Rest assured friend, you're in good company down here.¨
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