What the Heck is Wrong................

with people? I see on TOB a whole bunch of bitching or complaining about being stopped at checkpoints and people claiming harassment! First of all, they aren't in Kansas anymore and they where the ones who made the choice to move to Mexico! If they thought that things were going to be the same as in the US or Canada, then they should have stayed there!

Get the message here folks! Mexico has a serious problem that has resulted in 40K to 50K deaths and they are also hosting the Pan American Games in Guadalajara. They have made a commitment not to have anything resembling a Munich! Just because it disrupts a few self centered Gringo lifestyles - who the hell cares? Don't they ever stop and think that these precautions are making things safer for everyone?

We lived in Oregon when the ACLU and other civil liberty advocates managed to get roadblocks or checkpoints outlawed, so being younger and dumber, I could drink and not deal with those aspects. When we moved to New Mexico and we saw local police, firemen, politicians, lawyers, State Policemen and such being busted in checkpoints, it got our attention! Now I won't even have one single drink if we got out to dinner and I am driving. What the hell is wrong with that?

Nothing is wrong with that. However, given the current situation in Mexico and the heightened security for the PanAm games it seems to me that stopping gray-haired gringos with foreign plated cars is a waste of the security forces time and indeed borders on harrassment. So many of us have been stopped it's becoming obvious that this is simply a form of entertainment for the visiting Federales who amazingly enough don't even know the rules for car permits, visas, and etc..

Well David it seems you do not get it. I do not know about Canada but this kind of thing is happening all over the place in the States so maybe it is pay back time.
Mexican Americans are being harrassed all over the US because of the color of their skin.
I witnessed TSAin Dallas scaring the heck out of a 12 year old Menonite girl because she took a picture of her parents going through the Security line.
At the same line I saw another TSA agent scream at a woman from India because she sat on the floor while we were in line.
An old lady in a wheeelchair had to remove a pad because TSA could not see if she was carrying who knows what.
Profiling and idiotic decisions are happening all over the world why do you think Mexico would or should be immune.d?
If being stopped and asked for papers is the worst harassement you ever are victim of, you should consider yourself lucky.
Brigitte

Umm, people have been stealing license plates so really how do you know those SD plates aren't stolen and that the gray haired dude is a gringo while driving 10 mph through the checkpoint?

These Feds are only stopping gringo's??? Doubtful. I'm sure they are stopping everyone and rightfully so given the state of affairs. Now it would be a bigger form of harrasment if they only stopped Mexicans IMO.

David wrote:Nothing is wrong with that. However, given the current situation in Mexico and the heightened security for the PanAm games it seems to me that stopping gray-haired gringos with foreign plated cars is a waste of the security forces time and indeed borders on harrassment.

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What guarantees do they have that you aren't pack'n 12lbs of C4 in your Depends??

What the heck indeed. This stuff IS everywhere. I was talking to a European friend, who mentioned that all kinds of nasties were happening over there. Sadly, I can't read the same papers.

The TSA is beyond anything one could imagine.

Britain has gotten so bad that everyone in London is photographed about 300 times a day.

So who cares about a traffic stop especially right now when it's so important.

Sometimes the naiveté here is appalling.

I think they are pulling anyone and everyone. It is just the gringos that we are reading about because there aren't a ton of Mexicans on the boards posting. Plus, many of us have tan skin...even with my blonde hair and blue eyes, I've been asked twice this week if I speak English.

We had checkpoints back in VA and I remember the security I had to go through when the Olympics were in Atlanta in 1996. It is temporary and bringing a lot of needed money into the state.

I don’t mean to make light of this issue, because it is really important, but I can only hope they check me for my credentials. Hahaha !!!

It's a troubled world. Waiting at a checkpoint is no great shakes. At least they're trying to keep the peace.

The comment about explosives hidden in the "Depends" was hilarious. Could happen, but if something went amok, it would be the fart to end all.

I for one welcome the checkpoints like they had back 8 or 10 years ago. It's really no problem for us and we wish they would continue.

I think you guys are experiencing the extra security involved with the Pan American Games. We drove down to Chiapas from Ajijic a couple of weeks ago with several detours through the mountains of Puebla State and along the Gulf Coast of Veracruz State passing many army and a few federal police checkpoints and were never stopped nor even slowed down beyond that point needed for them to observe our Jalisco plates and who was in the car. Keep in mind that, at time, they were finding bodies all over the place along the Gulf Coast route we took from Papantla to Veracruz City and we were practically the only tourists in that region where the tension is palpable.

The army convoy presence in Michoacan and, later in Veracruz State was something to see and, when we were leaving Ajijic, the Danza del Sol Hotel was filled with federal cops. We haven´t seen any of that in Chiapas but next week leave for the coast of Oaxaca, Oaxaca City and points northwest to the lake so we´ll see how things are going there.

I´m getting a big kick out of hearing about expats from the U.S. and Canada but especially the U.S. getting hassled at highway checkpoints. Just recently, I was reading in the Montgomery Advertiser about the fear and loathing among Alabama´s Hispanics since the passage of that draconian immigration bill in that state a short time ago. According to that newspaper, of Alabama´s 4,700,000 residents, about 150,000 are of Hispanic origin - many legal and many illegal. It seems that, based upon the fears of racial profiling to come as a result of this new law, not only are many illegal Hispanics leaving the state but so are many legal ones whose skills are in demand in other, nearby states and don´t want to put up with the hassle in Alabama on the roads, the streets, the schools and simply finding rental housing because they have a darker skin tone. Suddenly, tomatoes, okra, squash and other truck farm crops are rotting in the fields in Alabama because local farmers can´t find the skilled labor they need to pick these vegetables. The state is trying to induce unemployed Alabamians of other ethnic groups to pick crops but the farmers want nothing to do with that and are balking saying the folks being sent them are not competent for the job at hand. I have no idea if that is true but it seems the "law of unintended consequences" is working overtime. Serves those sumbitches right as far as I´m concerned.

The post I just made regarding the new Alabama law and some of its unintended consequences - a U.S. state not unique in its attempts to regulate locally what state authorities consider inept federal immigration enforcement practices - reminds me of a discussion my wife and I had a few years ago with the maestro on the construction job when we were reconstructing our new home in San Cristóbal de Las Casas which had been in ruins when we bought it in 2006. He was, by the way, an extraordinarily capable man at running a construction crew and, over time, my wife had come to admire his talents and obsessive drive in a very difficult industry.

One day he told her that,when he and his brother were youngsters growing up in desperately poor Chiapas , their parents deserted them and left them to fend for themselves. So, at the ages of 10 and 12 respectively, they set out to find work as the only option in Chiapas in those days was starvation or death from exposure to the elements. They finally landed jobs harvesting crops in rural Chiapas and reported to work on the first day of picking some unspecified vegetable and, after a long and arduous day in the fields harvesting crops, they met with the foreman who informed them that, as they were paid for productivity, not by the hour (as in tons of produce picked per day), they had, in fact, not picked sufficient tonnage for them to have earned their supper or a bed for the night. They were informed that unless they met certain minimum productivity standards the very next day, they would not have earned either food or shelter and would neither be fed nor provided a bed for the night nor would they be welcome back on a work crew ever again.. Of course, their alternative was unacceptable and, as a consequence, they never failed to at least meet their minimum quotas ever again no matter how long or hard they had to work to do so. That´s where the work ethic comes from in this desperately poor place. I´m not saying that´s good, just that understanding what a ten year old kid with no place to go from there learns his/her work ethic helps to explain why the immigrant farm workers from places like Chiapas where there is absolutely no fall-back position, kick ass over their unemployed competition in the U.S. There is nothing like the dark at the top of the stairs to spur ambition.

This guy was good and impressed the hell out of us. Anyone who failed to produce for him was history so fast it was like he had never showed up in the first place. He would doubtless have fired Dawg within my first five minutes on the job. Fortunately for me, he worked for me and my money, such as it was, did the talking. Whew!

The Dawgs stories remind me of the movie "A Day without a Mexican."

We have also been very lucky with our maestro, who after putting in years of excellent service with a local contractor, suffered a serious fall, and was left for dead by him. No severance, just nothing. After he recovered, he had lost his nerve about a couple of things, one was heights, and the other was being the boss again. Over the past couple of years after we really took this place on, determined to restore it completely, he is back in the saddle again, and now hiring assistants. Two of us share his services, and he is never without work. His work ethic goes way above and way beyond anything I've ever experienced.

hound dog wrote:Well David it seems you do not get it. I do not know about Canada but this kind of thing is happening all over the place in the States so maybe it is pay back time.
Mexican Americans are being harrassed all over the US because of the color of their skin.
I witnessed TSAin Dallas scaring the heck out of a 12 year old Menonite girl because she took a picture of her parents going through the Security line.
At the same line I saw another TSA agent scream at a woman from India because she sat on the floor while we were in line.
An old lady in a wheeelchair had to remove a pad because TSA could not see if she was carrying who knows what.
Profiling and idiotic decisions are happening all over the world why do you think Mexico would or should be immune.d?
If being stopped and asked for papers is the worst harassement you ever are victim of, you should consider yourself lucky.
Brigitte

I hear you but please tell me this; what profile does a 69 year-old, grey-haired gringo driving a 6 year-old VW fit? I've seen good security flying in and out of Tel Aviv. This aint it and the TSA ain't it. I simply suggested that pulling over gringo viejos was a waste of resources. Maybe yes maybe no. Sure like Hock says "how do they know you don't have a kilo of C4." But, I'll ask you Hock, how many terrorist act have been committed in Mexico by old gringos? When they suggested that I buy them a refresco and "we'll forget everything" I thought then and I think now that it "borders on harassment" which was my original assertion. I think they're doing it for the entertainment value. I'm glad to see the enhanced police forces here for the PanAm games. I'm not glad to "buy them a refresco" or to have to explain the law regarding Importada Temporal.

Maybe another option is they, as in the US, check every x vehicle???

Possible, but at least the US cops a) know the law and b) don't ask for treats. BTW, I wasn't stopped at a reten.

A friend of ours asked why is was picked and it was because he was the tenth person to go by...random pick of cars coming and going from Ajijic. Is that possible?,
Ask them why, like our friend did and let´s see if we get an answer .
Brigitte

well david... truth is U only get as much security as $15.00 an hour will buy... or in the case in mexico... it may well be $15.00 a day...

they spend more in PR than they do in actual security measures.... I remember one episode on 60 minutes where they showed some 400 or 500 airport employees.. mostly in the $15.00 per hour range.... who were allowed to come and go as they pleased, with zero security, on a lower level... employees area of the airport... meanwhile... upstairs... they are frisking grandma, strip searching all the gals and checking juniors diaper....

real security, is perceived security... make the bad guys think yer gonna catch em... most of those airport clowns couldn't catch a cold!!

[quote="David"]Possible, but at least the US cops a) know the law and b) don't ask for treats. BTW, I wasn't stopped at a reten.[/quote]

David:

(All) U.S. cops "know the law and don´t ask for treats"?

Are you from Canada? Would that be the RCMP´s Dudly Doright of whom you speak or Deputy Billy Bob up yonder in Yazoo City who ain´t done met Chief Johnson´s monthly traffic stop quota of Yankees or Canadians passing through on their way home from Mexico? Perhaps you are speaking of that cop in New York City who just admitted that he and his cohorts on the NYPD routinely planted drugs on innocent people to meet their departmental drug bust quotas and, when asked if he had no remorse for sending countless innocent people to the hoosegow replied, "What the hell, they are out of jail within 24 hours anyway."

Perhaps, neither of the above. When Dawg was a commercial banker in Downtown Oakland, California in the 1980s, the branch I worked in was near the police headquarters building so I had a lot of Oakland cops as customers there who used to get drunk in a nearby bar famous as a cop´s hangout (where non-cops never, ever went because every belligerent drunk in there had a gun and a badge) and they would come in to the bank three sheets to the wind before heading out to the West Oakland ghetto project known as The Acorn to, as they would phrase it, "...kick some ass." Maybe those are the guys of whom you write.

By the way, in ten years of having traveled extensively in much of Mexico and having been stopped by the army or federales conducting traffic checks on countless occasions we have never been asked for even one refresco and they have invariably been polite every time. Maybe its those Jalisco plates or is Dawg simply charming them with my sparkling personality?

YMMV.

Could you spell out, I am French don t know these words..

Brigitte