My Run-In With The Mexican Police

I wish they were my mom.

Back when I was barely out of high school, I took a trip with some friends down to Mexico. It wasn’t your typical college-age guy trip to Tijuana where we go to drink mountains of Corona, think we are invincible and get in some trouble. We were there to climb the biggest freefall pit in the world. I was super into rock climbing and caving at that time and all my friends were too. Sotano De Las Golondrinas, translated as the cave of the swallows, was the biggest freefall pit in the world(1200 ft) and it was worth the drive with eight of us packed in a van, towing a trailer. It was an amazing experience, and at the time most people had never heard about it. But that adventure has little to do with this story.

Sotano De Las Golondrinas

Since we were already deep in Mexico we decided to travel further south to check out some of the local historical sites, i.e. Mayan temples and pyramids. But being broke college kids, and feeling overly confident we never booked any hotels. Instead, we found places to camp along the road. On one particular night, we were about a hundred miles south of Mexico City when we started looking for a place to stop for the night. We pulled off the road into a large field lined with trees that looked inviting and decided it was as good as anywhere to camp.

We had been doing this for two weeks with no trouble so why not one more night. We unpacked our van started a fire and began cooking dinner. We loved roughing it. There was eight of us and we found it fun to cook food over a fire and eat granola bars like they were candy. We set up our sleeping bags around the fire and got settled just like every other night. It just got dark and everything seemed to be fine. We were laughing and talking and listening to crickets before we started drifted off for the night.

All of a sudden we heard loud engines revving all around us. There was a lot of lights flashing and yelling and we had no idea what was going on. Before we knew it we found ourselves completely surrounded about 15 Mexican police officers brandishing sawed-off shotguns and fully automatic rifles. I remember thinking, “they really use those?”. They were yelling at us in Spanish and we were standing there with our hands in the air and our sleeping bags up around our waists like we were a group of giant cocooned caterpillars that were about to s*** themselves.

I kept thinking, this is it, I’m going to die in Mexico, in some random field, still in my sleeping bag.

Like the prepared geniuses we were, only one of us spoke a little bit broken Spanish. So as our designated interpreter began to try and explain what was going on the rest of us just stared at the weapons around us. I kept thinking, this is it, I die in Mexico, in some random field, still in my sleeping bag. My friend that spoke broken Spanish explained who we were and where we came from and why we were there. He told them we didn't mean any harm.

They began going through all of our stuff and looking through our climbing gear. Most of them had never seen climbing gear apparently because they seem very confused by all the ropes and equipment we had. They kicked out our fire and began tearing through the rest of our van. We had all heard the stories about Mexican police. We knew that we were in trouble. If we were lucky they would take whatever cash and items that they wanted and leave us alone, but if we weren't we might not make it back to the US.

We had felt pretty confident about our skills being in a new country but now things had all changed. We were in some deep s***. All we could do was stand there with our hands in the air waiting for them to make a decision.

After looking at all of our passports and standing there talking for a few moments, the person in charge, who I assume was their chief of police turned to us and spoke in broken English. “You can no stay here”, his English was far better than our Spanish. He explained that we couldn’t stay in the field. We were trespassing and the owner of the field got scared and called the police. He thought that we must be smuggling drugs because we had a van and trailer and were white. So much for stereotypes, huh.

The police chief asked if we had somewhere else to stay and we said no. He nodded his head and said, “drive, follow… to police”. It didn’t sound like an invitation. It sounded like we’re going to jail. But what choice do we have? We grabbed our stuff, jumped in our van and began to follow them back to the police station. We all sat in stunned silence. Three police trucks were behind us and two were in front. This is exactly the wrong type of police escort you want in life, in case you’re wondering. After thirty minutes of snaking through back roads of a nearby town, we arrived at what appeared to be a large city square and on one side of the square was the police station.

I thought to myself, this is me, going to a Mexican jail.

He motioned for us to pull up our van and trailer along the side of the police station and get out. I thought to myself, this is me, going to a Mexican jail. The chief of police told us to grab our stuff and follow them. So we did, because who doesn’t follow the orders of someone who has automatic weapons and you don’t speak their language.

We follow him around the corner and stop in a covered area next to the station. He points at the ground and says, “sleep here, safe”. We looked at each other and then back at him and I say, “thank you”. We set our stuff down and he motions for us to follow him again. We follow him into the police station through to the very back and directly into the jail. Okay, I am in a Mexican jail. I’m going to die. My family is going to miss me. How did this happen? I just added my name to list somewhere for dumb ways the American privileged people die.

We follow through him through locked sections with bars all around us his officers still following us. Nowhere to go, I think. We walk past some cells and there are people sitting on the floor in their own filth and the stench is strong. That’s me I’m going to be sitting on the floor in a pile of my own filth soon. The chief opens a door behind the cells and says, “bano”. There were toilets and a shower in the room, he points at us, “for you”. Oh, I’m an idiot. He was showing where the bathroom was. Incidentally, I had already almost peed my pants from the whole ordeal.

He left us back out at the covered area to sleep. My heart was still racing. So I’m not going to jail. We passed out. Pure exhaustion and total confusion, mixed with a little fear equaled sleep.

I woke up early to the smell of food. There were the cops again, surrounding us. But instead of holding weapons they were handing us plates of food. They smiled and walked away. As we were finishing up breakfast they came back, carrying buckets of water and started washing our van and trailer. After 2 weeks of driving south of the border on dirt roads and with eight of us living in it, it was definitely a mess.

I wish I could adopt these guys as my mom.

Where are the police that everybody complains about in Mexico? These guys are not the ones they’re talking about, apparently. I wish I could adopt these guys as my mom. I wish my mom was like this. My friends come over to my house, we trash the yard and she brings us inside gives us a place to sleep and makes us breakfast in the morning. We felt like honored guests.

This was not the Mexico that I knew from stories. In fact, I’m pretty sure American police would have treated me much worse. Before we left, they lined us up against our van and took turns taking pictures with us. It felt as if they were our new best friends and I loved it.

Incidentally, we stopped camping in fields after that.