Shakedown

The bus is stopping. Now what? I was just dozing off, finally. It must be around 1 in the morning…couldn’t be a food stop. Maybe refueling. Now the lights are coming on and people are starting to bustle, waking up, sitting up.
Through the door in the front comes a woman and a big guy that doesn’t look Brazilian, more like a big Austrian. The woman is wearing black pleather pants and a dark vest with some emblems on it. Serious faces, Uniforms. Now they’re rummaging through people’s bags…..

Oh, a Shakedown.

I remember a shakedown on my way out of the jungle in Peru. Before the bus took off, a man had made a speech about taking animals out of their habitat. Then he’d done the sneaky, hand-you-a-piece-of-candy-like-a-gift-now and charge-you-for-it-in-a-minute trick. That night, as we crossed the state line, I’d seen a woman get hauled off in handcuffs for illegally transporting a little jungle monkey. Big risk to take, just to hear your friends say “cool monkey”.

But these guys are thorough. They’re not just rummaging now, they’re searching. Like a 1 a.m. adult Easter egg hunt on a deserted inland Brazilian highway. The first two pass me without noticing the shoulder bag I have stashed under my feet. Of course there’s nothing illegal or even scandalous in my bag. Books, journals, my camera bag. All very benign. Yet I feel nervous. I don’t want them to notice it and think I’ve been hiding it, so I’m acting as touristically oblivious as possible.

Now a third guy is getting on the bus. He looks like the guy you’d expect to be waiting for you on the other side of the interrogation table when you get “taken downtown”. He’s gruff, brusque and prickly. He is here to find what the other two tenderfoots didn’t. And he does. On his second sweep he makes me pull out my bag. Shit. But why am I nervous? I’ve got nothing to hide, my papers are in order, I’m legit; however, past experience has taught me that being legit isn’t really any guarantee. A corrupt official can sometimes see a foreigner just like a thief sees them, as a target. Their tactics are different, but the results are usually the same, loss of property.

He´s pulling out the camera from my bag.

Seu Nota?? “Your receipt?”

Oh man, here it goes. I’m on a 2 day bus across Brazil, and at 1 a.m. in the middle of nowhere this guys is eyeballing my Mom’s 35 mm camera and asking me if I have a receipt. He’s found his plastic egg with the special prize inside. My digital camera was stolen a week earlier by a conniving, sneaky Argentine, and now my back-up film camera was about to be “confiscated” by this Brazilian cop.

Earlier, I read about a man's experience visiting silverback mountain gorillas in their natural habitat. Now it occurs to me that dealing with authority figures in Latin America is unsettlingly similar. When they charge, you have to hold your ground without challenging their position. Keep your eyes and head down, don’t question too much, remain docile, try not to stick out of the group. Hope for mercy; it’s usually a bluff to let you know who’s in charge.

In my worst possible Portuguese;

nota? -stammer- eh..nao…nao sei.

My mouth says “Reciept, I….I don’t know”. But my face is saying “Please officer, my Mom will kill me if I don’t bring her camera home. I’m just a nice, innocent tourist trying to enjoy your friendly, famously fun-loving country. Please, I have no idea what’s going on here, I won’t be any trouble. Just act like I’m not here.” And gratefully that’s what he does. He plops my camera down as if to say “stupid American, doesn’t have his receipt.” Apparently, he’s got bigger fish to fry.

During my camera scare, some other guys had been popping their heads onto the bus and calling out numbers for the unlucky lottery. If your seat number is called, you get to get off the bus and unpack your baggage from the storage departments underneath, then they send you on a cruise with a giant cardboard check…but only after they unpack your bags to look for pastel painted chicken ovum.

Now it seems the officials feel that one of our unlucky winners was being less than cooperative, so, peeved, they force all the passengers off the bus and inform us that thanks to her everyone gets searched!! The Silverback Male delivers a hard blow. By now, I’ve realized that these apes aren’t looking for eggs…it’s contraband they’re after. We step off into the Brazilian night and I realize we’re not alone in this situation. Several other buses are being searched, and a camera crew is shining a blinding light all around while filming, giving the scene a hectic, rather unnerving feeling. Our bus pulls around next to a truck full of boxes. Boxes full of other boxes. Other boxes that have electronics inside. Plastic Egg, Foil Wrapping, Hershey’s Chocolate. These guys had been busy, and are still busy packing and loading confiscated equipment.

They begin to pull out my bus-mates bags. Mostly they are brightly colored, plaid tarpaulin bags. Bags you’d want to pack a picnic in, only your picnic would easily last an entire summer pulling sandwiches from these bags. They are gigantic. I’d seen them loading these bags between two and three people at the station, and now I’m amazed that I hadn’t even wondered what was in those huge bags. Clearly, my co bus-riders hadn’t gone across the border into Paraguay to visit long lost cousins. Electronics are 1 quarter the Brazilian price in Paraguay, and they had stocked up to ship some back for sale. In my broken Portuguese I find out that things such as CD players, car stereos and any computer related electronics are considered contraband. (Side Note: I like that word contraband…would be a good name for a rock band, Contra – band…get it?? “Contraband rocks a million stadiums!!”)

In a short time, one of the officials takes a razorblade to the side of a big picnic bag and we all find out why the girl on our bus hadn’t been cooperative. She has 2 giant bags full of the new Contraband CD. Now I’m having a flashback…This girl was seated right behind me. Before the bus had taken off from Foz do Iguazu, she and her brother had taken great trouble to stuff a hard box underneath my seat, making it a little uncomfortable. I’d thought for a while about what words to say to ask them to move it. I’d thought “why don’t they just put it in an open seat? There’s plenty of space.” I never once thought it might be something illegal they didn’t want found. Then my butt went numb and I’d forgotten about it. Until now.

Do I say something? I know they’re hiding something illegal under MY seat…and that makes me uncomfortable in more than one way. Could I get busted for something here???...

Chief Gorilla: “What in the world is an American backpacker doing smuggling a car stereo under his seat?”

Young Male “I don’t know chief, but we’ll sure as hell beat the confession out of him!”

Dubious. A much more likely scenario is that if I say something, I make a few vehement enemies on a bus ride that still has 40 hours to go. Sleep with one eye open, if you dare sleep at all. So I decide to keep my mouth shut. After all, these people were just trying to make a buck, not necessarily an honest buck, but a buck nonetheless. What’s more is that they’re going to need that stereo under my seat to help recoup a miniscule portion of the approximately $5,000 worth of Easter eggs confiscated by the Customs goons.

Now it seems that the drama is close to over for our bus, and we’re going to go. My backpack was ignored and not searched…because what insane backpacker would carry around a bunch of hard drives? No eggs in there.

I’d have to say that through all this I’ve learned something. The moral of this Brazilian shakedown story is this: If, in the night, some big Brazilian gorillas come looking through your picnic bag for Easter eggs, make sure you have the receipt for your Mom’s camera and you hide your Contraband CDs well.

Ok, there’s no moral to the story really, but that’s my shakedown story anyways.