Señor Placas
On Buying a Car in Mexico, Part 2
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Our moving to Mexico has been a story about many things, including food, culture, privilege, opportunity, climate change, and much more besides. But it has also been a story about bureaucracy, and for the first time we hit a roadblock we simply could not pass over: the Mexican DMV simply would not register our car.
The issue was not that they couldn’t, it was that they wouldn’t.
Before buying our car we had cleared our ability to register it with our attorney, an extremely professional, proper, and slightly reserved man named German. He had confirmed that, yes, it was legal for us to purchase a car and register it. So when for the equivalent of about twenty bucks the car dealership offered to send someone to the DMV to register our car for us and get the plates we agreed instantly. Someone would spare us the hell of a government appointment held in a language we don’t speak for less than the cost of a NYC hamburger? Sign us up!
The problem came to light weeks later, when we returned to the dealership to pick up the paperwork we had given them to register the car. Despite the fact that for weeks they’d been saying everything was fine, in fact, it was not. The dealership’s person had returned with the feedback that while the car could be registered, the office was simply refusing to because we had temporary resident visas. “They’d had a bad experience,” was the only feedback we received, and no further explanation was forthcoming. Sorry, the dealership said, try again in four years when you’ve got your permanent residency visa. And with that two important lessons sunk in. The first was that in Mexico people don’t like to give you bad news, instead preferring to simply say nothing. The second was that, and we realized this sitting in the car we would soon no longer be able to drive, there’s probably nowhere in the world you can trust a car salesman.
It was a puzzling outcome, though. How could a government agency simply refuse to do their job?
We asked German to look into the problem, thinking having an attorney weigh in might rattle them enough to settle the issue, but he came back with the same answer. Yes, legally we were allowed to register the car. But, sadly, the government just wouldn’t do it for us.
Contrary to stereotypes about Mexico, the issue wasn’t an official looking for a bribe, or even a problem with one particular office. None of the Oaxaca DMVs would do it. German’s best recommendation was to gift the car to someone we trusted who was a permanent resident and have them register it. No, we wouldn’t own our car anymore, but at least we could drive it.
While we appreciated German’s expertise, the answer made me feel like I was losing my already tenuous grasp on reality. We’d have to give away our car in order to drive it?
There was only one solution: Señor Placas.
The Gestor, Señor Placas
Many professions exist solely because bad things happen. We have fire fighters because things catch on fire. We have tax accountants because the government doesn’t run on hopes and dreams (and because someone has to pay for all of those tanks and bombs). And in Mexico and Spain we have gestors (pronounced hess-tors) because, sometimes, the mechanisms of bureaucracy need to be, if not bypassed, perhaps just greased a little.
A gestor is someone who acts as an intermediary between a normal person and some sort of administrative or bureaucratic organization. But describing the job that way is a little bit like saying a bookie is a person who acts as a go-between for a sports enthusiast (a gambler) and a large organization of like-minded professionals with a vested interest in the outcomes of a diverse portfolio of entertainments (the mafia).
A gestor is a fixer, someone with connections and an understanding of how the government and local corporations and businesses operate. While this is an actual profession in Mexico, it shouldn’t be, as the job exists solely because of how infuriating, nonsensical, and stubborn the bureaucracy is here. In Mexico you can’t get stuck on how things should work, though, you have to roll with the dysfunction and find a creative solution.
When you need something done and if someone, somewhere, is refusing to do something for you, if things are taking too long, or if for some reason you simply cannot get unstuck in whatever process you’re mired in, the gestor can attempt to solve your problem. All that is required is trust in a relative stranger, a willingness to supply them with whatever legitimate paperwork they might require to get the process rolling, a fee that is only slightly higher-than-reasonable, and the intellectual (and perhaps ethical and moral) flexibility to not worry too much about how the problem is being solved.
Meeting Señor Placas
We met Señor Placas just after 8am at Mercado Zonal Santa Rosa, a large, red indoor market with tan trim which sits just off the highway in the pueblo of Santa Rosa. While we weren’t nervous per se, we also weren’t sure what to expect. We were put somewhat at ease when he texted to say he’d be a few minutes late because he had to drop his son off at school before meeting with us.
Señor Placas came to us via a referral from someone else who had used his services in the past and that is, of course, not his real name. We simply started calling him that because when we told our friend that we’d met with [name redacted] she said, “who?” and then, laughing, said that she’d just been calling him “placas,” the Spanish word for “license plate.”
Our meeting was incredibly straight forward and, in the shade thrown by a tamale stand, we explained our situation. Señor Placas was completely nonplussed and said sure, no problem. We agreed to pay him a certain amount of money, gave him all of the carefully gathered and precious documents the DMV originally said they needed, and parted ways.
Two weeks later, we heard from Señor Placas. ¡Felicidades!, the car was registered. But, sadly, we couldn’t have the plates yet: the government had run out. For the next two months we’d have temporary paper plates while we waited for the DMV to get more of a product that, you’d think, would be fairly essential for them to have.
Despite the mixed news, we were happy. We’re Americans, hailing from the least functional democracy in the developed world; government incompetence we were used to. And while we’re still not used to the stop/go attitude of Mexican bureaucracy, or ability of the Mexican DMV to simply refuse to do their job, Señor Placas pulled off what felt like a Christmas miracle.
