How having your car stolen can ruin your life. A tale of everyday life in Latin America
Okay, this has nothing to do with Iraq, but its a story of such sordid corruption and dishonesty that I thought it worthy of discussion. To be honest I need to put it down in words to try and fathom out exactly what Im going to do to deliver an element of coherence to a deeply muddled and confusing situation.
I first went to El Salvador in the early spring of 2004, flying in from Australia, where I was working, to join a group of English mates on a project for Alcatel. Immediately I knew that everything about El Salvador agreed with me. It was a small nation of outstanding scenery with a string of volcanos linking the country from east to west. 350kms of untouched Pacific coastline formed the southern border, gradually developing into lush green pastures before its metamorphosis into jagged, dusty mountain ranges in the North at the border with Honduras.
It was full of beautiful women, great people, tasty food, excellent bars and restaurants and an energetic ambience that was spell binding. The streets were alive with Latin music, kids playing and street vendors cooking up all sorts of delicious delicacies. What better way is there than to spend an afternoon playing football on a deserted beach before retiring to a bamboo restaurant for tacos and cold beer? El Salvador, mi salvador! El Salvador, my savior! I felt there was no greater place on earth.
The flashing neon of the bars and clubs of San Salvador rapidly lured us into regular social activity in the Zona Rosa, the strip or tourist zone of San Salvador. We became good friends with the local platoon of U.S Marines that guarded the Yank Embassy, and quickly formed a bond that would regularly see them visit our colossal apartment; perched on the side of a volcano with panoramic city views and a fridge forever stocked with cold beer and chilled vodka.
On July 4th 2004 they invited us to the U.S Embassy in Santa Elena for Independence Day celebrations, which we gratefully accepted. It was here, on this night that I would meet Jasmine. She was a shining star, a religious girl, devout Catholic and a student of San Salvador University where she was studying Business and Marketing. Her amiable personality was warm and engaging and she had tremendous beauty (she would go onto be in the televised final of Miss El Salvador 2006). I asked her out and after 6 weeks of continuous dating we became one, boyfriend and girlfriend. I stayed in El Salvador on the Alcatel contract for a further 12 months and when I finally left for the shores of South America she came with me.
By the time I returned to El Salvador to work again it was late autumn 2006. By now Jasmine was heavily pregnant with our son, and I had purchased a nice apartment in the up-market district of San Benito, San Salvador. It was a top apartment, 130m2 with an unhindered view east across the city as far as the San Marcos hills, which provide a stunning reflection for the early evening sinking sun. Life was good, the money was coming in, work was rewarding and the sun was shining. Our social life was vibrant and there was never a dull moment in our busy schedules. Most of all, we were looking forward to the arrival of our son in late January.
It was when everything couldnt seem rosier that Jasmine was car-jacked for the second time (the previous time being 9 months earlier outside the World Gym near the U.S Embassy). She had been visiting her mother in the precarious district of Las Palmeras, Santa Tecla during the day while I was at work. As she backed out of the driveway beyond the safety of the wrought iron security gates, she paused and asked her mother to fetch something for her from the house before she left. As she sat in the car on the street waiting, it happened. She knew the drill by now, the tap tap tap of the Magnum .45 on the drivers window which is the signal to unlock the door and get the f**k out of the car. She did. As she exited the car one of the car-jackers noticed her state of heavy pregnancy and commented, Aye guapa! Si haba sabido que estuvo embarazada, que yo le habra pateado en el estmago!. which means Hey princess! If Id known you were pregnant Id have kicked you in the belly.
The most important outcome from that day was that Jasmine was unharmed and our unborn son was okay. The car was not significant, but it was dismaying to fall victim to car crime for the second time in a year. Material importance peter away to insignificance when you realize that a large percentage of car-jack victims are shot dead on the spot, and I salute her quick thinking to react in the way she did. It probably saved their lives.
Over the days and weeks that followed things got back to normal and the latest car-jacking became a distant memory. We would talk and even joke about it. I would kid on that Jasmine was part of an international car-ringing racket, and was storing cars somewhere for shipment to the U.S.A. We looked at buying a car defence system, which upon depressing a dashboard mounted button would trigger jet engine type flames to combust from the wings of your car, incinerating any would-be car-jacker instantly. We decided against it as the risk of scorching a friend or family member who was socially chatting at the windows was too great.
We had lost the car,
but we werent significantly perturbed. As it turned out we werent insured (dont ask), but we got a good deal on a rental and were happy to use that until my contract expired and we would be off to distant lands again. Marco was born on February 1st 2007 and again everything was rosier than ever. My contract finished in El Salvador and I was moved to Guatemala, but after a brief 2 months there the project collapsed as Digicel had not offered enough in the way of bribes to the telecoms regulators (Guatemala is undoubtedly the most corrupt country in Latin America). By June 2007 we left for Norway, as a family.
On one of our trips home we got a phone call out of the blue. It was a lawyer who said that our car had been recovered from Soyapango, a gangsters ghetto in East San Salvador and was now sitting in the car pound at Changayo. For a fee of $650 he could have it repatriated to us within 5 days. I was ecstatic at the recovery of the car, but appalled that this robbing lawyer thought he could charge us this sum to give us back our own property. I refused his offer (big mistake) and set about recovering the vehicle myself. I recruited the help of my old mate Phil, a Welsh ex-pat who had been living in El Salvador for the last 10 years. Phil is an ex Royal Marine with, lets just call it a presence. He has the look of a bulldog that could rip your throat out on a whim, but is also as articulate as a politician. I had worked with Phil all over the world and he was happy to take me to Changayo to negotiate the recovery.
I first became suspicious when Phil started to prepare his arsenal, holstering a loaded desert eagle under his shirt by his armpit, and offering me a glock which he instructed me to conceal in my waistband. When I asked why this was necessary he told me about Changayo, and when we got there I found out why. On the way we stopped at a military checkpoint and asked how to get to the entrance. A soldier directed us, but before we departed he commented, Este lugar no es seguro para gringos! Peligroso peligroso which means This place isnt safe for gringos. Its dangerous.
We drove down a dusty snake pass into the bowl of Changayo. A car pound holding around 5000 vehicles recovered by the police and military. Many have been used for drug trafficking and will never be claimed, but the majority belong to average Joe and should be returned to their rightful owners. Somewhere in this lot was our car. We were being eyed suspiciously by a small group of men who were congregated under a wooden veranda, playing cards and sipping cold beer.
One stood up and approached us; he was a tall man wearing levi jeans and white cowboy boots. He had a white shirt encrusted with some shiny regalia, and a sheriffs badge. On his head he wore a large white Stetson and his aviator sunglasses and Mexican style handlebar moustache gave him the look of a stereotypical Latin gangster. On each hip he had a holstered revolver and he stood bandy armed as if about to make a quick draw. After explaining that we were here to search for our car he gestured for us to begin our search and he sauntered back to his poker game and pilsner.
We found the car. It had a front end fender bender and dented bonnet. One tyre was flat and the inside was a wreck. It wouldnt be possible to drive out but I was anxious to begin the recovery process as soon as possible. Here began the start of 9 months of wrangling with the local authority which would ultimately end up in me having to pay several bribes to the officials in charge of releasing vehicles.
On one of our trips home we got a phone call out of the blue. It was a lawyer who said that our car had been recovered from Soyapango, a gangsters ghetto in East San Salvador and was now sitting in the car pound at Changayo. For a fee of $650 he could have it repatriated to us within 5 days. I was ecstatic at the recovery of the car, but appalled that this robbing lawyer thought he could charge us this sum to give us back our own property. I refused his offer (big mistake) and set about recovering the vehicle myself. I recruited the help of my old mate Phil, a Welsh ex-pat who had been living in El Salvador for the last 10 years. Phil is an ex Royal Marine with, lets just call it a presence. He has the look of a bulldog that could rip your throat out on a whim, but is also as articulate as a politician. I had worked with Phil all over the world and he was happy to take me to Changayo to negotiate the recovery.
I first became suspicious when Phil started to prepare his arsenal, holstering a loaded desert eagle under his shirt by his armpit, and offering me a glock which he instructed me to conceal in my waistband. When I asked why this was necessary he told me about Changayo, and when we got there I found out why. On the way we stopped at a military checkpoint and asked how to get to the entrance. A soldier directed us, but before we departed he commented, Este lugar no es seguro para gringos! Peligroso peligroso which means This place isnt safe for gringos. Its dangerous.
We drove down a dusty snake pass into the bowl of Changayo. A car pound holding around 5000 vehicles recovered by the police and military. Many have been used for drug trafficking and will never be claimed, but the majority belong to average Joe and should be returned to their rightful owners. Somewhere in this lot was our car. We were being eyed suspiciously by a small group of men who were congregated under a wooden veranda, playing cards and sipping cold beer.
One stood up and approached us; he was a tall man wearing levi jeans and white cowboy boots. He had a white shirt encrusted with some shiny regalia, and a sheriffs badge. On his head he wore a large white Stetson and his aviator sunglasses and Mexican style handlebar moustache gave him the look of a stereotypical Latin gangster. On each hip he had a holstered revolver and he stood bandy armed as if about to make a quick draw. After explaining that we were here to search for our car he gestured for us to begin our search and he sauntered back to his poker game and pilsner.
We found the car. It had a front end fender bender and dented bonnet. One tyre was flat and the inside was a wreck. It wouldnt be possible to drive out but I was anxious to begin the recovery process as soon as possible. Here began the start of 9 months of wrangling with the local authority which would ultimately end up in me having to pay several bribes to the officials in charge of releasing vehicles.
Apparently Changayo is considered a lawless zone and the regular police dont have much jurisdiction over what negotiations happen there.
Now I realize why there are 5000 odd cars festering in the intensive heat, as many of the car owners will simply give up on the process of continuous dishonesty and bribe paying, or simply cant afford to feed the corruption of these crooked bureaucrats. All in all, after calculation I ended up paying in excess of $2000 to recover my stolen vehicle, all of it bribes. So who exactly is the thief here and why does the recovery of a vehicle by the police make the victim an injured party for a second time. I started to wonder if the police were actually involved in these car-jacking rings, using it as a secondary source of income as they deliberately turn a blind eye on the streets and inform their mates in traffic to expect a shiny new car with alloy wheels and leather interior in the pound in the next few days. Must be worth a few dollars eh? So we had the car, but our problems didnt end there.
Last week, almost 2 and a half years after the car-jacking Jasmine received a letter delivered by courier to our apartment. It was from the Judiciary, and it was telling her that she was required to attend court and testify against the people that robbed the car. Sounds great! Theyve found the bastards and they will hopefully be put away for a long time. As it panned out it wasnt nearly as simple as that. Jasmine was one of approximately 90 victims of a car-jacking racket known in El Salvador as the Bandas. They are an organized group of bandits whose crimes include, as well as car-jacking, murder, extortion, kidnap, armed robbery and gang rape. The last time the police attempted to bring them to justice the chief witnesses were shot dead days before trial, money exchanged hands somewhere and the elements of the gang who were on trial, were freed.
This time the higher echelons of the police are determined not to let the same happen again. Of all the victims they have singled out Jasmine to go to court, stand in front of the 20 defendants (this is thought to represent about 33% of the entire gang) and testify that it was they who were responsible for her car-jacking, and send them to prison for 20 years on 90 counts of grand theft auto with a weapon.
This act alone will result in certain death by assassination, but even if she was to fail to identify them and deny their involvement, she would still be a target as the gang consider her to be in the claws of the police, and a certain liability that needs to be eradicated.
In light of this I was forced to hire a lawyer (the same one I used to get the car out of Changayo in the end), and send him to court on behalf of Jasmine with the message that she was out of the country and unable to attend court, and that an alternative witness would be forced to testify in her place. Meanwhile I had to put Jasmine in hiding, from the police and from the Bandas (the police will force her to go to court if they find her. The Bandas seek out witnesses prior to a trial to intimidate or erase them), and my son is gated to the apartment with his grandmother and cant go to kindergarten.
The lower ranks of the El Salvador police are infiltrated with dishonest officers, who will collaborate with the street gangs in return for protection or financial reward, so seeking help from the authorities is not an option as they hold no regard for your personal security in a situation like this. The objective of the higher stratums of the police service is to put these bandas away for good, and they dont care if they have to sacrifice the lives of some innocent victims along the way.
The trial was deferred for a week, meaning that Jasmine is still in hiding. So what do I do? Do I tell her to keep her head down around a friends house, or get her and Marco on the next plane to London? Its a sad situation when a victim of crime is forced to lead a life sanctuary, forever frightened, their lives influenced by who or what could be waiting around the next corner.
Until the government of El Salvador manage to purge this cancer from the streets, the country will never develop into the beautiful, prosperous nation which it so often threatens to be. June heralds the arrival of a new communist government, the FMLN. They were the guerillas of the 1980-92 civil war, and are considered the voice of the people, or more specifically, the voice of the nations poor, from which these street gangs are fatally cultivated.
What hope is there for El Salvador now?
Now I realize why there are 5000 odd cars festering in the intensive heat, as many of the car owners will simply give up on the process of continuous dishonesty and bribe paying, or simply cant afford to feed the corruption of these crooked bureaucrats. All in all, after calculation I ended up paying in excess of $2000 to recover my stolen vehicle, all of it bribes. So who exactly is the thief here and why does the recovery of a vehicle by the police make the victim an injured party for a second time. I started to wonder if the police were actually involved in these car-jacking rings, using it as a secondary source of income as they deliberately turn a blind eye on the streets and inform their mates in traffic to expect a shiny new car with alloy wheels and leather interior in the pound in the next few days. Must be worth a few dollars eh? So we had the car, but our problems didnt end there.
Last week, almost 2 and a half years after the car-jacking Jasmine received a letter delivered by courier to our apartment. It was from the Judiciary, and it was telling her that she was required to attend court and testify against the people that robbed the car. Sounds great! Theyve found the bastards and they will hopefully be put away for a long time. As it panned out it wasnt nearly as simple as that. Jasmine was one of approximately 90 victims of a car-jacking racket known in El Salvador as the Bandas. They are an organized group of bandits whose crimes include, as well as car-jacking, murder, extortion, kidnap, armed robbery and gang rape. The last time the police attempted to bring them to justice the chief witnesses were shot dead days before trial, money exchanged hands somewhere and the elements of the gang who were on trial, were freed.
This time the higher echelons of the police are determined not to let the same happen again. Of all the victims they have singled out Jasmine to go to court, stand in front of the 20 defendants (this is thought to represent about 33% of the entire gang) and testify that it was they who were responsible for her car-jacking, and send them to prison for 20 years on 90 counts of grand theft auto with a weapon.
This act alone will result in certain death by assassination, but even if she was to fail to identify them and deny their involvement, she would still be a target as the gang consider her to be in the claws of the police, and a certain liability that needs to be eradicated.
In light of this I was forced to hire a lawyer (the same one I used to get the car out of Changayo in the end), and send him to court on behalf of Jasmine with the message that she was out of the country and unable to attend court, and that an alternative witness would be forced to testify in her place. Meanwhile I had to put Jasmine in hiding, from the police and from the Bandas (the police will force her to go to court if they find her. The Bandas seek out witnesses prior to a trial to intimidate or erase them), and my son is gated to the apartment with his grandmother and cant go to kindergarten.
The lower ranks of the El Salvador police are infiltrated with dishonest officers, who will collaborate with the street gangs in return for protection or financial reward, so seeking help from the authorities is not an option as they hold no regard for your personal security in a situation like this. The objective of the higher stratums of the police service is to put these bandas away for good, and they dont care if they have to sacrifice the lives of some innocent victims along the way.
The trial was deferred for a week, meaning that Jasmine is still in hiding. So what do I do? Do I tell her to keep her head down around a friends house, or get her and Marco on the next plane to London? Its a sad situation when a victim of crime is forced to lead a life sanctuary, forever frightened, their lives influenced by who or what could be waiting around the next corner.
Until the government of El Salvador manage to purge this cancer from the streets, the country will never develop into the beautiful, prosperous nation which it so often threatens to be. June heralds the arrival of a new communist government, the FMLN. They were the guerillas of the 1980-92 civil war, and are considered the voice of the people, or more specifically, the voice of the nations poor, from which these street gangs are fatally cultivated.
What hope is there for El Salvador now?
REACTIONSAscending | Descending
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Maybe the Rosenberg shit storm in Guatemala will lead to something positive throughout the region but I ain't holding my breath. The rule of law, they come north for that as much as anything else. Hard to romanticize gangsterism. Great piece.
Monday, 25 May 2009
who submitted this story? good one-would like to know from whom it came....
Monday, 25 May 2009
Watch those loaded Glocks in the waistband. Easiest way to shoot yourself that I know of.
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