Alamos, Sonora
Myself, and members of my family have traveled and lived in various locales in Mexico off and on since 1963 or so. Probably before most all gringoes living there now even thought about it. None of us have had any bad experiences of a serious sort in that time. But that all changed this year. I got involved with the wrong group of people when I moved from San Miguel Allende to Alamos: not just with Mexican people, but smug, holier-than-thou Americans too! What to say, wish I had it do over again.
LADRONES (thieves)
I'd been living for close to 4 months on a gringa lady's large property, in a "casita" as she called it, in exchange for some gardening, watering, and handyman chores. Actually a converted, backend of a storage/shop/garage would be a better description. It was high-ceilinged, cold, mostly cement, unclean and painted an ugly yellow inside including industrial gray floors, and was "furnished" with nothing more than a rickety kitchen table, 3 chairs, and a chest of drawers in which rodents had been living, but I gracefully accepted it.
Unfortunately, I learned some weeks following my arrival and hopes to settle there awhile, that this lady's property had been burglarized numerous times prior. Previous housesitters had apparently lost their business computers and another time the prior mentioned tool shop had been broken into via the roof. Yet another instance her jewelry was stolen, someone apparently had to have dropped their kid/s down through the small skylights. Worse, once while having guests over, she was accosted at gunpoint by two guys in ski masks, her boyfriend shot and killed and she was grazed by bullets in the fracas. I should have f---ing beat it at that point, realizing the place had truly bad vibes, and particularly after I caught a young man sneaking around outside my door one afternoon, not long thereafter.
The so-called "casita" sits on the edge of the large property, once an old, crumbling tequila/bacanora factory and hacienda from the 1800's (the possible reason for the bad energy?) a ways out north/east of Alamos town. The lady calls it "Casa Aurora." Beyond the walls of my abode there was really "nothing" just nature, trees, cow paths and the meeting of two arroyos. A perfect location for burglars really. Aimless, vagrant, thieving young mexican men who "happen to pass by" can look up and see the "casita" from below, and without any problem, sneak up and peek over the walls or through the useless iron gate under the big strangler fig trees at the place--and in no time flat figure out if anyone's at home or not.
Of course, this particular day, I wasn't. I had just gone to town that afternoon for a bite and some groceries. According to the police, the thief was supposedly just-walking-by down below on the arroyo and had become thirsty, so he was looking for a faucet to drink from. Instead, the SOB kicked in my door and helped himself to my money, jewelry, computers, cameras, a flashlight, hardrives, memory sticks, a recorder, locks with keys, and tried but failed to cut a cabled-to-a-pole table saw. He contemplated taking bottles of wine he left fingerprints on but left those.
Just walking by? How the hell was he going to carry all that stuff? I believe he had an accomplice, possibly waiting in a car. Someone left tire tracks in the dirt headed right to my place. They did find and arrest the culprit and they returned some stolen goods to me. This included a digital camera. In the camera returned to me were 58 "interesting" photos of the thief and his girlfriend or prostitute -- actually a man, a sort of transvestite sort. There are stolen things of mine seen in the photos. Some that were never returned to me. The woman/man is free apparently. The thief claimed to police she/he had nothing to do with it, yet the photos were taken in her/his house. That makes her/him an accomplice in my mind either way.
LANDLADY WITCH and her BOYFRIEND
Some days later post-burglary, plans already made, I was to be paid a visit by my partner. She would be traveling from Florida to visit me in Alamos for a few days. She would arrive in Alamos via the bus from Tucson. I would be driving her back to Tucson and delivering her to the airport a few days thereafter. It had been a couple months since I was in Tucson and I had made a few plans to take care of a few loose ends in my storage and buy another laptop, etc. while I was there. I had announced to the Gringa and her BF that I would be departing "Casa Bad Vibes." after returning from Tucson.
My things taken from my place and strewn out on the ground.
While in Tucson, the Witch sent me an email telling me that I must be out of her casita by such and such date. She said her friends told her that they had heard me talking of "suing" her for my losses in the burglary. I don't recall using the sue word, I did use "seeking recompense." This angered her none the less so she sends me an email that I must be out and off her property in a few days with threats to put everything outside her gates for all to steal or whatever. I responded that would not be a good idea and I would not be able to get back to Alamos in so short a notice, and I reminded her of the fact that she and her BF had agreed already before I left that I would be out by the 15th of the month, some 10 days or so still available. I really didn't need all that time to scram, but I did ask for one more day to get back to remove my things.
The Wicked Witch from Washington
But she turned mean and nasty and spiteful: she and her BF went into my recently invaded home, invading my space yet again, and actually removed all my belongings, furniture and all and placed them outside for me to retrieve. You heard it right, she took advantage of my being OUT of town, 450 miles away, to go into my space and fuck with my personal things just days after I was burglarized. And so the lady I had been working for and helping the past 4 months or so does the dirty deed of throwing me out while I'm in absentia, all in speculation of something I said while at a party she had not attended.
LANDLADY STEALS TOO!
So I arrive at my residence, and I'm barred from entering past second gate, locked out of home I had just left about 4 days earlier. "All" my things are outside now, some in the dirt, some on a tarp. No care was used whatsoever in packing up my stuff it appears. I find my dishes thrown into my old Mexican shopping bags, mixed in with pots and pans, asking to be broken. An electric drum set is laying sideways. My best piece of luggage is upside down in the dirt. A metal toolbox lies on the wooden antique headboard. My sheets of photographic slides are thrown any which way into bag or box.
And then I realize, things are missing: 2 bars of silver I had hidden the night prior to leaving to Tucson. Two large Zapotec rugs. A shovel, two bambu curtains, some towels, cloth napkins, a thermos, a brass towel rack, an antique pulley, an old gold picture frame I had purchased from her. An old wooden door from the Hotel Colonial I had made a bench from. A couple old horse bits. No doubt other things too I haven't missed yet.
I emailed the pinche gringa asking for the silver first, obviously the most valuable of my things. She tells me she "didn't see" any silver bars. Yeah, right. "And my rugs?" "I'm keeping them until we can agree on a day for you to return, to fill the holes in the walls you left. I also have an estimate here for $500. dollars (!) of paint and cleaning the place up after you.
"Well OK Ma'am, I'll be right over and fill those holes for sure and I'll be happy to go right along with your senile self and your planned form of extortion. And naturally since you and your boyfriend threw my stuff out on the ground when I wasn't there and pulled the shelves of the walls I had put up and created the hole in the walls, I should be the one to step foot back on your property and repair everything!"
There's never been any solid evidence as to how the thief/thieves got onto the property. It is possible they had simply driven in through the main gate that the idiot lady had no way of locking. Can you believe this? A history of burglaries and death and a gate that doesn't even lock! I had begun to repair the gate bolt system but her boyfriend wanted to do it his way and put off finishing it with a simple application of cement. (It WAS finally done when I arrived for my things, against my ability to enter) So, it is possible that the thieves simply drove into the property. There was in fact a set of tire tracks in the dirt straight from the gate to my place following the burglary. They were fresh and they were not from my car. The police who came to investigate didn't bother with the tire tracks even though I had pointed them out to them.
update : I heard from several that many, possibly most Gringos with homes in Alamos have been stolen from in some way or other. How sad that is. It's simply a way of life in Mexico! due to being poor and "without" & the fact that the population has grown immensely (expotentially) the past 35 years
update 2015 : The ladies house was again visited by masked men I heard, and the lady had placed cameras & got it all on video
