Well, It's not just our darker skinned brothers (and sisters) who are getting slammed into the paddy wagon and sent to Palmyra these days.
While coming through immigration in the Cali airport yesterday this white boy (I refer to myself) made eye contact with one of the airport cops. I look away, he's still looking me up and down. Next we've got each other right in our sights and he gives me the "fifty yard stare". Big mistake looking back at him. Reaches down to his radio and in sixty seconds he and two more of these teenage looking cops have got me out of line and are questioning me in Spanish. Their sargent, a doddering old 25 year old, comes over and asks me in English about my trip, Why am I in Colombia? Where did I stay? Who was I with? How much money am I carrying? Next thing you know they've got me in the police station, going through my carry-on, searching me, asking more questions.
Inside the station they've got three more people, a Colombian guy around 25 or so, and a couple: he's around thirty and Colombian, his wife maybe a little younger and Spanish. They're on their way back to their home in England (following all this? :-). The poor woman is practically hysterical in tears, it's her first time in her husband's country, she's heard the horror stories and thinks her worst fears are being realized. I tell her in my gringo Spanish (not realizing she spoke English): "Tranquilo, no hacemos nada - no necisitamos preocupade" Hubby's furious and yelling at the cops between telling his wife "No llore" and hugging her. Asks me "Do you believe this sh%t in my country! This is why I f%%%ing leave!"
The cops are actually pretty polite about all this and tell us we're to be taken to the hospital in Palmyra to have our stomachs x-rayed to determine if we're smuggling drugs. The x-ray will cost 15K pesos -unless we'd like to wait til this afternoon at which time it will be free (Oh really? I can miss my flight and save 15K pesos! Cool!)
Obviously this was a ploy - an actual drug smuggler *would* probably elect to have the x-rays later. Anything to stall, right?
The four of us are packed into a police SUV and sent for our reluctant photo shoot. I agree about the comparison of the hospitals in Colombia with our own. Santa Vicente de Paul is built in the ever popular "open air" style of Cali. I actually saw a bird fly down the hall (!) and the radiology equipment was pretty ancient - the technician had never even heard of a CAT scan.
On this trip, my second to Cali, I took cabs all over the place but I tell you I never saw any cabbie drive more like a maniac than this cop did in getting us back to the airport. I've still got chunks of the dashboard under my fingernails. ;-)
In retrospect I realize his @ss probably would have been in a sling if we'd missed our flight, and thankfully we didn't.
If this happens to any of you, above all don't freak. I suspect the cops are stepping up security and may even have quotas. And yes, I think there is some profiling; racial, demographic, whatever. I look Italian so maybe they thought I was a mob guy or something, I don't know. I think it is done, more or less, randomly though.
The good news is if you're not carrying anything (which of course we're not) then it won't be too unpleasant an experience. Of course if you're stupid enough to actually try smuggling dope through customs, then as they say: Be afraid - be very afraid.
Jim L
