A Life Interrupted Nothing Is As It Appears

In this the last installment in my Mexico story I pick up the narrative the morning after my night in a Mexican jail.

Mexico: A Night In The Hoosegow

In the morning it was a sore head and a trip back to the detachment for me. I was ushered out of the Bug into a waiting room of the detachment off of which were several rooms. After about twenty minutes of sitting in the waiting room I was ushered into one of the rooms. The room was bare except for a long table around which were a number of wooden chairs. A lone light bulb hung from the ceiling. Seated in one chair at the far side and in the middle of the table was a lone middle aged Mexican policeman with a mustache and an open file folder lying on the table in front of him. He stared absently at a pencil that he played with in his hands upon the table and made no notice of my entrance as I was directed to take a seat opposite him. Neither of us spoke. The fellow that brought me in the room left silently and closed the door. A long silence ensued as the policeman continued staring impassively at the pencil. My head was throbbing and all I could think of was “What now?” read more

The last installment saw me in search of water in a nondescript, dusty town in Mexico at the end of the day. I settled on imbibing beer, flicking beer caps at a child, wandering through a forest into a clearing, and being picked up by the Mexican police for creating a disturbance. I pick up here after a trip to the local police detachment.

Mexico: A Night In The Hoosegow Part 2

By the time we made the detachment the beer had totally kicked in and I was pretty intoxicated so the details are a little fuzzy. However, from what I recall, the policemen took me into the detachment where I was stripped of my personal items including all my money, papers, and my shoes, and interrogated, which in Mexico apparently means being unceremoniously slapped and tossed around getting one’s shirt torn at the collar in the process. Clearly unimpressed by what I had to say for myself, the policemen loaded me back into the Bug and transported me to the local jail. Since everybody that I had been in contact with throughout the whole proceedings spoke barely any English, nor I their language, and by the fact that I was thoroughly intoxicated by this point, I had little to no idea what was happening. However, in retrospect, it was not totally unlike being 15 again and coming home drunk at two in the morning to face my angry and belligerent mother. The jail on the other hand was an entirely different experience from anything I had known. read more

This is the first installment of a three part travelling story.  I left for Mexico in the early fall of 1999 with $1,200 in my pocket and nothing but the clothes on my back from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I was at the time not receiving treatment for mental illness. I left for Mexico primarily to avoid what I perceived as possible further persecution and mistreatment under the mental health laws of Canada and its institutions in which I had been remanded against my will on numerous occasions and subjected to treatment I did not want. I also left because I was laboring under the delusion that I was being attacked by the local chapter of the Window Washer’s Union (I was a self-employed window washer under cutting the market at the time), a group I had had no contact with, but whom I blamed for the cutting of the brake lines on my car. I convinced myself my safety was at risk. It may well have been as someone had cut the lines. However, in truth, it was questionably a false premise I fomented in my mind to justify a further adventure. I spent six months walking and busing across Mexico before I was picked up by immigration and told to leave the country.  The story below chronicles a night I spent in a Mexican jail during a part of that walk-a-bout. Enjoy. read more