James M. Martin
May 9, 2014, 7:19 AM
Post #1 of 10
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Traffic Police Revive Ancient Practice of La Mordida
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With my brother and a friend, i just spent a week in San Luis Potosi. My brother and friend went on to Queretaro where, in the process of looking for a hotel, they parked at a poorly marked sidewalk only to return later and find the rear license plate missing. They were shown to a cop who said that he would return the plate when they paid a fine for the improper parking. I think it was $300M or something like that. When he returned to San Luis Potosi (we were there for the Procession de Silencio marking Good Friday), he had another run-in with a local cop. It was the morning after the big parade of penitents and civil leaders in pointy-headed sheets with slits for eye. There were no cars on the streets when my brother got his out of a garage to pick us up at the hotel. Unfortunately, the centro is a maze of one-way streets and he accidentally turned into one going the opposite direction. The cop pulled him over and said that what he had done was "very dangerous" so the fine would be $3,200M. My brother only had $3,000M on him, which the cop accepted.
I reminded my brother of our sister-in-law in Ajijic telling us that the police are routinely stopping autos with out-of-country plates, especially later model cars, which they assume belong to drivers with money. I had thought that la mordida was a thing of the past, but no. She and my other brother had set out from Ajijic to Guadalajara with about $700M to shop at Walmart. A roadblock was stopping vehicles heading north. When younger, my other brother would tell the traffic cops he refused to pay and wanted to talk to the juez. Almost always, the cop would bow out, saying, "Oh, senor, that's OK, andale" in an Alfonso Bedoya voice. My other brother would have his suspicions confirmed -- that the cop would be wasting his time taking them before a magistrate, better just let the gringo go. But we are all older now and I guess my younger brother thought it prudent to just pay the parking and wrong-way fines. Just that morning, I had read (in my middlin' Spanish) the headline of a story in a San Luis newspaper saying that there was rife corruption in police departments across the country. With cops like these we need robbers?
So let this be a warning to those who take cars into Mexico, which is the finest way to see the country: Be prepared to get hassled by traffic cops. La Mordida is alive and well south of the border.
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