Police, Bribes, and Corruption: A Road Trip to Mexico City
Without the correct papers, a road trip to Mexico City is risky.
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We knew we were in trouble when the federal police—Mexico’s infamous “Federales”—flagged us down with a wave of a flashlight. Seeing we had no other choice, we pulled onto the shoulder of the highway we had just merged onto.
It was around lunchtime on a clear, sunny day, and we had been blessed with perfect driving weather for our first-ever road trip to Mexico City. We’d left our home in San Agustín Etla, Oaxaca at 7:45 am, almost an hour later than we had originally intended, but we’d been pleased to find the typically busy roads from our hillside home to the entrance of Mexico’s federal cuota, a highway with tolls, were placid.
While we hoped we’d have a smooth trip, we also had realistic expectations and were prepared for a difficult day. Many of our friends had made the expedition from Oaxaca to Mexico City and all had supplied vague but serious warnings about the difficulty of the trip. Notes about the poor condition of the highway and challenges with traffic were punctuated by cautions about the police, and two friends shared a truly alarming tale about a specific brush with police corruption.
No one, though, mentioned how spectacularly beautiful the drive would be. Because we’d asked for advice about what might make the journey demanding or dangerous, we likely primed our friends entirely for tales of woe and misery. None of them noted how the slow climb out of the high-altitude plains of the Valles Centrales would abruptly become a breathtaking voyage through the Sierra Norte mountain range. We didn’t know that the dense pine forest that clads the mountains is studded with towering spires of needle-like cacti that look like they fell from the heavens in a verdant rain, only to become lodged in the skin of the earth. We didn’t know that when you exit the Sierra Nortes and enter the plains-like environment of the state of Puebla, suddenly you’re in terrain dedicated to agriculture, with fields blanketed by crops and flowers, men on tractors, and tilled parcels lined with towering oaks and willows.
Because we didn’t know a significant portion of the drive along the cuota would take us through environments that are so stunning they should be world-famous, we were particularly awestruck, and the towering, shocking beauty of the mountains dulled our sense of caution. We steadily drove along, bewildered by the unexpected majesty, and by the time we had reached the city of Puebla, our thoughts were entirely on the only non-driving activity we had planned for that day: dinner at the beloved restaurant Contramar with our friend Sophie Avernin, a sommelier, wine importer, judge on Iron Chef Mexico, and owner and chef of Provocateur, an excellent wine bar.
We should have been ready for a police stop, if only emotionally. We weren’t.
Our stop happened right at the border of Mexico City, and within moments of being pulled over one Federale stood at the driver’s side window, another at the passenger side window where Andrea sat, and a third was looking through the glass of the back of our SUV.
“Su licencia para conducir y identificación, por favor,” the cop said to me, and I handed over my driver’s license and Mexican ID. As he looked at them he pointed to our windshield and said the words we feared hearing;
“Ustedes no tienen permiso para viajar en la Ciudad de México.”
We dreaded these words not simply because a police stop in Mexico is hazardous. We also knew we likely had broken the law, and we didn’t have a choice about it.
In an effort to crack down on vehicle-born emissions and reduce the number of vehicles on the road in one of the world’s most traffic-impacted cities, Mexico City (and, we learned later, the states of Mexico, Querétaro, Puebla, Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Michoacán, Morelos, or Tlaxcala) had implemented a system by which cars needed to be inspected for emissions and, depending on how new and clean-burning they were, issued holograms attesting to their cleanliness.
The more polluting your car is, the less frequently you’re allowed to drive, and anyone who wants to drive in Mexico City, or its surrounding states, needs the appropriate hologram and the documentation that accompanies it. In the event you’re not from one of the states which require this documentation, you can apply online for a “pase turístico,” a tourist pass that exempts you, for a limited number of days, from those standards.
Of course, in true Mexican fashion, the website to obtain that pass is hopelessly broken. We tried for hours, across multiple days, to create our accounts, verify our information, and fill out the forms, and failed at every turn. The website wouldn’t send verification links to one phone number, so we tried another. When we eventually did get the link, the system refused to acknowledge that it worked. We couldn’t register our accounts and we couldn’t save our information. When our friend Frida, owner of the phenomenal local restaurant Frida Libre, learned of our troubles she offered to register our car using her own, existing account. She, too, failed. When Andrea contacted customer support they were unable to help us.
Thanks to Mexico’s famously broken mechanisms of government, it was literally impossible to obtain the paperwork we needed for smooth transit, and we were greatly worried about it. But, I said to Andrea the night before our trip, we were in luck; what I read said we wouldn’t need a pass on Saturday, or during certain hours. As long as we stayed off the road during designated periods, we’d be ok.
A significant portion of this information is what I relayed, in my best, slightly panicked Spanish, to the police officers standing around our car. What the officer said in return was, “No, ustedes necesitan permiso por manejar los sabados con placas de otros estados.” The waiver for Saturday driving didn’t apply to cars with out-of-state licenses. Those cars can be driven on Sunday only without the necessary paperwork.
We were dismayed. The police had caught us violating a real rule. This wasn’t just a shakedown—we were in trouble.
So, what happens now? I asked the police officer in Spanish. Ruefully, he shook his head and replied that they had no choice but to impound our car until Monday, stranding us in Puebla.
That was the moment we began to panic. It’s one thing to be confronted by a Mexican cop trying to extract a bribe. That’s easy, you just give them somewhere between 200 to 500 pesos and grovel enough for them to feel powerful. But it’s another thing entirely when an officer tells you that your car is going to be impounded, that you’re going to be fined the equivalent of a thousand dollars, and that you and your pregnant wife will be stranded in a city you have no experience with during a time you’re scheduled to see friends and complete very necessary pre-baby chores.
Andrea and I looked at each other, stymied, and, having an idea, I asked the cop a fateful question: could I please call a friend who lives in Mexico, who speaks better Spanish than we do? She’ll be able to explain what we need to do to us.
Sure, the cop said, and I dialed Sophie’s number. The phone rang interminably but, finally, she picked up. Hurriedly, we explained our situation to her and Andrea handed the phone to the officer, who now stood by the passenger window. Sophie’s words were unintelligible, but we could hear her speaking quickly and emphatically. Soon the cop handed the phone back to us.
“Ok, so what’s going to happen?” we said to Sophie.
“I told him that I’m your attorney,” Sophie said with a laugh. “You need to give him some money.”
Andrea and I looked at each other with wonder. We know Sophie as a confident and charismatic connector, someone who knows everyone, a consequence of growing up in Mexico City’s restaurant industry. Sophie strikes me as a survivor, someone with the demeanor and effectiveness of a lifelong bullshitter, a characteristic I also associate with a great many native-born New Yorkers. We had called her thinking that she could help prepare us for whatever would happen next. We hadn’t anticipated that in the blink of an eye, she’d inform the cops she was our legal representative.
We weren’t entirely unprepared though, and before we’d embarked on our trip we’d practiced what we’d do if we needed to pay a bribe to a police officer.
“Can we pay part of the fine to you in cash right now, a deposit on the full payment?” I asked the officer in Spanish.
This seemed like a good strategy, giving the cops the ability to take the cash while also being able to maintain the appearance that everything was above board, and the money wouldn’t simply end up in their pockets. Everyone would receive culpable deniability.
We were also prepared with what felt like an appropriate amount of cash. We’d made sure to travel with several hundred dollars worth of pesos, largely in case we needed to buy our way out of trouble, but taking the advice of our friends we’d also stashed the cash all over the car in places we thought were unusual. While our wallets only held about 500 pesos each (around $27) we had stuffed pesos into a spare roll of toilet paper, had hidden them inside of an umbrella lying on the floor in the back seat, and had wads of cash in other strategic, discreet places as well. If we needed to we could put together around $300 or 400 dollars.
There was a meaningful pause after I made the offer and the cop looked at us with an expression we weren’t ready for—kindness.
“No necesitas pagar,” he said, a statement made meaningful for two reasons. Not only was he saying we wouldn’t need to pay, he’d dropped from the formal “usted” to the familiar “tu.” He was going to let us go without any sort of fine or penalty, as long as we immediately returned to the large highway which runs directly into the city. Stay on that highway, he said, and you probably won’t have any more trouble from the police.
Deal! we thought to ourselves. We thanked the officer so profusely it was almost embarrassing and made the turn he had indicated, which led us onto a rotary. On the side of the rotary was a gas station, and we pulled in and I guided the car into a parking space. We promptly emotionally collapsed, laughing almost hysterically and holding our heads in our hands.
What on earth did Sophie say to the police officer? We asked each other. A few minutes later, after collecting ourselves and once again feeling ready to drive, we pulled onto the highway and called her back.
“He was actually really nice!” Sophie said. “I told him that you were on your way to the hospital. If you get pulled over again tell the police you’re going straight to Hospital Metropolitano to have your baby. It’s near your hotel.”
Sophie had made a great point, Andrea’s pregnancy did give us excellent cover for why we might be driving on the road, in a hurry, without a permit. We told Sophie we’d do exactly as she had suggested.
By this point, we were far more cautious, and we began to realize the reason so many other drivers on the road were acting peculiar was because they also didn’t have the required paperwork. Whenever a large truck drove down the highway it had in its shadow one or two smaller cars, positioned in a way where the truck obscured them. It reminded me of the smaller, survival-minded fish that swim near a hulking shark or whale, hoping the presence of a larger companion might ward off predators. We, too, became one of those fish when we observed the highway was lined with dozens of officers, all of whom were halfheartedly scanning the road for cars missing paperwork while also chatting, drinking soda, and goofing off with other officers.
Traffic was heavy and we realized we could also use that to our advantage. We began to time our driving so that we were so heavily embedded in traffic that, should an officer spot us, it would be impossible to have them pull us over. Sadly, though, I made a tactical error.
Thanks to an unpredictable traffic pattern we abruptly found ourselves at the front of an intersection with no cars around to shield us. As if drawn to us by black magic, a traffic cop appeared from nowhere on a bicycle. He did a quick loop of our car and aggressively knocked on my window, gesturing to the side of the road. We had no choice but to follow him, and he guided us through honking, oncoming traffic off to a spot where he could talk to us.
Immediately perceiving our Spanish wasn’t excellent, he handed me a well-loved rulebook, written in Spanish, indicating our offense and the corresponding fine. He then quoted us a number that didn’t at all sync up with what his book said and told us if we didn’t pay he’d have no choice but to impound the car.
“Señor, lo siento, pero mi esposa esta teniendo nuestro bebé,” I said. “Vamos a Hospital Metropolitano en este momento.”
“Cuál hospital?” he said suspiciously, clearly not believing me when I said my visibly pregnant wife was in the throes of labor. He peered through the window at Andrea, and I looked over at her.
Andrea, not missing a beat, had even in advance of my statement been having mock contractions. She held her stomach and grimaced, writhing in her seat as she breathed heavily.
“WE NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL,” she said in English, per performance giving us a huge advantage.
The officer could see that this was not his average traffic stop but while the Federales were swayed by compassion, the same cannot be said for this particular officer. We were not surprised. Mexico City’s transit police are infamously corrupt. The fine, the cop said pointedly over Andrea’s artificial labor pains, is 9000 pesos, around $500.
“Tengo 200 pesos,” I said to the cop, which is around $11. He looked supremely unhappy.
“Puedes hacer una transferencia?” he asked. We were so surprised we almost blew our cover by laughing. The officer, giving up any semblance of propriety, had asked us to pay his hilariously gigantic bribe by an electronic bank transfer.
“No, señor, no tenemos un banco en México. Pero tengo ciento más dinero.”
Having refused the opportunity to pay a huge digital bribe, I’d upped the offer from 200 to 300 pesos, cash. The officer looked furious but could see he wasn’t going to extract any more money from us. “OK,” he said, angrily taking the cash from my outstretched hand.
But then he, too, did something unexpected. He handed us a small rectangle of paper and said that if anyone else pulled us over we could show this to them and it would get us out of the interaction. Put today’s date on the back! he said, and then he got back onto his bike and rode off into traffic.
This was hardly the end of the adventure. After we told Sophie over the phone about the second officer’s extortion and his request to be paid digitally we all had a good, long laugh. To prevent this same thing from happening all over again Sophie also offered to connect us to a gestor in Mexico City, the uncle of her assistant. “He’s trustworthy,” she said, and we rerouted our directions to head to his repair shop.
45 minutes later we pulled into the gestor’s garage and handed over our keys. For 1500 pesos, he said, about $80, he’d be able to get us the documentation we needed for unlimited travel within the Mexico City megalopolis for the next six months.
By Monday afternoon we had our car back, with documentation, and began the dark, dangerous drive back to Oaxaca.
In practical terms, all is well. We lost shockingly little money considering what we experienced, we maintained possession of our car, and we were more or less able to do what we needed to in Mexico City, all while spending quality time with great friends.
Emotionally, though, it was both unsettling and also, perhaps, a bit rousing. We’d had a very Mexican sort of experience and when I told my friend Jules that I felt more Mexican than I had before her text message reply was, “No literally you just upgraded to gringo plus.”
I do feel that way. Life in New York will without question make a person harder, more formidable. Life in Oaxaca is, generally, quite easy. For the first time since moving here, I feel like I learned a very particular kind of lesson, one that will prepare us better for the future everywhere, but also one that helps to show that, indeed, Mexico still has many problems to overcome.
Wow. You guys were lucky. So glad.
If the police in Mexico City could spot thieves as quickly as they spot license plates that should not be circulating that day, it would be the safest city in the world!