LAWLESS NICARAGUA
The first in a series of dispatches from our intrepid correspondent
Rocky de la Cruz
This article was submitted for comments to the Nicaraguan consuls in Washington DC and 4 other US cities on March 1 & 3, 2009. By press time no objections had been received. This is taken to signify tacit approval of its contents.
I can’t vouch for it, but I read somewhere that Nicaragua ranks second, next to Canada, as the safest country in the Western Hemisphere. However this appears to be more a result of the sluggishness of the criminally inclined population than of any serious efforts to deter crime on the part of the police. Not that I blame the Nicaraguan police, of course. If I earned only 50 US dollars a month, I too would be reluctant to make any sacrifice or undergo unpleasantness just because some foreigner had a complaint about too much noise, or suffered a burglary, rape or other indignity.
Police inertia has been a constant of my stay in Nicaragua. I have received conflicting advice from various local residents on how to motivate the police to keep order, at least regarding my personal safety and peace of mind. A certain acquaintance boasted of his success at proffering petty cash to the local police as an enticement to crack down on recidivist cacophonists.
In Mexico, bribing government officials has been developed into a fine art. Not so in Nicaragua. Despite the claims of my acquaintance, I could never get the chemistry going for a successful bribery attempt. The authorities seem strangely unreceptive to subtle hand gestures and suggestive phrasing. I wonder how he does it?
The Nicaraguan police is a national laughing-stock and is usually depicted as an ineffectual troop of bunglers. A most fitting description, as can be seen by a phenomenon that takes place, I have heard tell, every night in the wee hours on the stretch of the Pan-American Highway that passes in front of the police headquarters and the Shell gas station in Estelí. At around one a.m. there is a changing of the guard. The group of uniformed men standing before police headquarters on and around a couple of blue pickup trucks fades away as the new masters of the night take over: los vagos. In all Spanish-speaking countries vago is a pejorative term, whose meaning varies somewhat from place to place. In Nicaragua vago usually denotes louts, hoodlums and men who hang out on street corners. These individuals lord it over this point of the Pan-American Highway in the hours before dawn, presumably (because I've never heard any actual account of their activities) intimidating and extorting the sporadic passers-by. Service station attendants confirm the rumor to a (wo)man.
I met a foreign resident of Estelí, whom I shall call ”Benito Mussorgsky”, whose nationality is vague, to say the least. He told me hair-raising anecdotes about the antics of local law-enforcement. This is his account:
“A local lawyer once offered to accompany me to the police station to state my case against a local hooligan who for weeks had rattled my nerves with his shrill whistling at all hours right in front of my house. The reason I asked for his assistance was that despite my three visits to the police station over a span of several weeks, the police had apparently been incapable of browbeating a 14-year-old kid into submission, although I had told them where he lived (namely right in front of my house). Assuming they actually made an attempt to do so, of course. On one occasion the police asked me for the full name of the miscreant’s mother. I had only met her once, and briefly at that.”
“That was several months ago. After that I asked the lawyer several times to make good on his promise. But he never seems to find the time. In the meantime I made a deal with the kid: he now whistles only occasionally and discreetly, and in exchange a local computer establishment treats him to 30 hours of computer time each month. He's not a bad sort, really. And I'm glad to be able to make a contribution to his education, since his family is rather needy like so many Nicaraguans. Furthermore I draw my income from abroad, and to the locals it looms lavishly copious, albeit erratic in the extreme. So I'm not actually complaining.”
“I'm merely furnishing background information on recent trends in Nicaraguan law enforcement.”
“However, when your new laptop gets stolen it's not easy to reach a negotiated compromise. That's what happened to me today. I phoned the emergency number (118) at once. Unfortunately the number was busy -- just as it had been the previous six times I had called it. This peculiar phenomenon of an emergency line with a busy signal appears to be unique to Nicaragua. For all I know it may be a stunning new development of Nicaraguan scientific research. In any case it started a few weeks ago after I phoned the police to complain about an Evangelical revival meeting in a church right behind my house, that dragged on into the night and continued relentlessly through the following morning. Atheist that I am, I must concede that those Evangelicals really keep up with the times. Their loudspeakers are state-of-the-art. I had to play the Moonlight sonata at top volume on my ghetto-blaster in order to keep the Spirit of God at bay. Ever since, all my emergency calls have gone unanswered. However they were almost all about excessive noise, no actual felonies.”
“Until today. I returned at 3 p.m. from a local computer establishment, what you would call a Kinko’s, I suppose (“Quínquez”?). While I was at Quínquez, as a matter of fact only a few minutes after I arrived there, my domestic factotum Rania phoned, excitedly announcing that she was off to the dentist's, where she had an appointment. She sounded quite agitated. I had to ask her for her name and business before I discovered who she was. I returned an hour later to my house. Rania had still not returned. Still at the dentist’s, I suppose. When I approached my office I saw with alarm that the door had been broken into. My new laptop was missing. Also my Swiss army knife, a kitchen knife I had bought that very day, and sundry smaller items. I went to the police at once. My feeble attempt to phone them petered out in the manner related above.”
“I entered the police station with trepidation. What's the point, I thought. I recalled my first visit there, months before. I had gone to complain that vans with large loudspeakers on their roofs would crawl by my bedroom window at 6 a.m. – and at less exotic hours -- exhorting me at full throttle to attend the impending funeral rites of people I had never heard of.”
“When I had told that to a police officer, she had given me a 4-minute lecture on how the bereaved were entitled, virtually as a human right, to give vent to their grief by deploying boom boxes on wheels to alarm the populace at large at any hour of the day or night. When I had asked about the decibel limits in the new penal code, she had triumphantly retorted that the Nicaraguan police does not possess any sound meters, so the law is unenforceable. A subsequent check at the local Radio Shack disclosed that no sound measuring instruments were in stock, and none can be ordered.”
“At the police station I asked to make a criminal complaint. I was introduced to a young lady of saturnine disposition and physiognomy. I was still rather shaken by the burglary – which I had discovered some twelve minutes before -- and her slow-motion charade exasperated me. She showed about as much interest in my case as a fisherman for the well-being of his catch. She would sometimes sit motionless for seconds at a time, staring quizzically at me.”
“The upshot of all this was that I was forced to state my complaint in a different office. The same police officer asked me the same questions. However we were sitting at the desk of a female police captain, presumably playing the role of moderatress, who listened in on my complaint while she fielded questions from colleagues and generally chewed the rug with assorted third parties who wandered in and out of her office. Raising my voice over the chatter, I remarked, “Perhaps I came at the wrong time. You seem to have much more important matters to deal with right now than my burglary complaint." I was hastily assured that I erred in my judgment, and most people at once decamped, leaving just the three of us there, my questioner, the police captainess and me.”
“Soon thereafter I learnt that the reason we were in the captainess’ office and being invigilated by her steely gaze, was that my questioner (name of Carla) had complained that she had had "trouble" with me -- referring no doubt to my excited demeanour when thwarted at submitting my complaint in the teeth of her obdurate stolidity.”
“Strangely enough, Nicaraguans don't have much of a reputation for keeping calm when excited, any more than other Central Americans. So I didn't immediately comprehend why the police officer had felt so threatened by my expostulations. They must receive a lot of criminal complaints, I would think. I wonder, are all those crime victims under heavy sedation? How do crime victims in Nicaragua manage to restrain themselves, I wondered, so as not to grate on the police’s delicate nerves when reporting the grievous wrongs they had suffered only instants before? One more mystery of history, I suppose.”
“Nonetheless further submission of my criminal complaint again encountered repeated acoustic interference from the doughty captainess, namely each time she exchanged repartee with another police captain (a male of the species this time) who would stick his head through the doorway every minute or so. Unfortunately (and no doubt by sheer accident) this effectively prevented me from disclosing my telephone number to Carla, together with sundry other information relevant to the case.”
“At that point I remarked dryly (Is it possible to remark wetly?) to Carla, ‘Shouldn't we go and talk somewhere else, where it's quieter? I don't want to disturb these people’s conversation, you know.’ The captainess waxed indignant. ‘How dare you tell me to shut up!” she exclaimed and withdrew into a prolonged pout.’”
“From then on I was enabled to unburden myself without restraint to the valiant Carla. Shortly thereafter I departed the Estelí police station. For some reason Carla failed to hand me a copy of my report, and I forgot to ask her for one. So I can't honestly say at this point that I have any actual documentary evidence that I was at the Estelí police station today. Nonetheless the reader should rest assured that nothing in this account is an actual falsehood.”
“But allow me to make a brief historical digression,” Mussorgsky continued. “For the sake of completeness I feel obligated to squeeze in a picturesque but crucial footnote in connection with my vain attempts to phone the police. It is the documentary record of a previous such attempt. Behold,” and he showed me the following note:
Test Emergency call to Estelí police 15 Dec 2008 2206h to complain about a car sounding its horn repeatedly on the street outside – no traffic.
For the 2d time I get Madriz police instead of Estelí police.
Police emergency line says: “Zona norte 4, Estelí 4!”
Finally, through the grapevine, so to speak, I discovered that to get the Estelí police one must dial 3, not 4!
The delay was not excessive. There was a grave misunderstanding when I pompously chose to call the street I live on by its official title décima calle sudeste, which threw the cop at the other end of the line into confusion. Then I reverted to the folksy del Parque Infantil 2 calles al sur y 2 calles al este, which did the trick. He promised to send a prowl car. By then I think the miscreant had decamped.
Benito Mussorgsky went on: “I later informed the police of the mishap and suggested that they change the recorded message on the emergency line to square it with the facts. Two months later, the national Nicaraguan emergency line 118 still earnestly misinforms callers that to reach Estelí they must dial 4. But in truth it's 3, not 4. Perhaps some former political appointee of the Bush II régime has found a safe haven in the communications branch of the Nicaraguan Police.”
“When I left the police station I was curtly informed that a patrol car would soon appear and disgorge a police investigator who would take control of the investigation. However after eight hours lurking at the scene of the crime, doing my best not to destroy any clues, like the shards of glass on the floor and other crime litter, I began to realize that I was on my own.”
“I am now resigned,” Mussorgsky muttered morosely, “to the melancholy thought that the Nicaraguan police have given up on me, branded me as a trouble-maker and resolved to ignore my importunate pestering at all costs. The reason I am so sure is that this afternoon I called directory assistance (113) to ask whom I should call to complain that my calls to the emergency line 118 were being consistently throttled. I was instructed to dial a regular police number in Estelí, to wit 713-2333. When I did so I reached the Estelí traffic police, which has nothing to do with criminal investigation. The traffic policewoman kindly told me that the numbers to call in Estelí for criminal investigation were 713-2615 and 713-2718. I called the latter number. A man answered gruffly, his words unintelligible. I told him that I had been waiting for hours for the police to arrive to investigate a crime scene, but in vain, alas! He immediately began hollering “Hullo, hullo, hullo!” into the mouthpiece, and then hung up on me. The sound of him hanging up was a cascade of gliding bakelite impacts, reminiscent of a Ligeti concerto played on a hat rack. Clearly a classic desk phone.”
“I thought about phoning the other number, 713-2615. But then I decided I had had enough excitement for one day.”
Some time later I ran into Mussorgsky at a café. Mussorgsky muttered morosely that it was the sixth day after the burglary, but the police had still made no attempt to contact him or to inspect the crime scene. Moreover he had discovered that in addition to the computer and other knick-knacks, the burglars had stolen several papers from him, among them a rental receipt. Thus he was unable to prove he had paid rent for the last month, and faced eviction although he was up to date with his rent.
The landlady lives next door, with her parents. She is on familiar terms with Rania, whose involvement in the burglary is virtually certain. A cui bono analysis indicated the disturbing possibility, nay, likelihood, that the landlady had had a hand in a burglary committed in her own house, against her own tenant.
“Yesterday morning I went again to the police station. I was told my case number and the name of the investigator. I asked to speak to the investigator and was told that yesterday was the first day of his 2-week vacation. He will become “available” again in two weeks’ time. However the policewoman I spoke with cautioned me that the investigator carries a heavy case load: more than 100 criminal investigation cases for this year (without counting his backlog from previous years). Presumably I'll have to bribe him to get anything done.”
“I'm negotiating to obtain a return of my security deposit. The landlady said she’d visit me today at lunchtime to discuss the matter. Yesterday I went four times to the legal office where my lease was executed last September. I was informed that the lawyer who had made the lease would be available in the afternoon. I went in the afternoon and was told she would be back this evening. I went back twice in the evening and the second time found the lawyer. I spoke to her, and she denied having made any lease for me. She told me it was a different lawyer. I asked when I would be able to see that lawyer, and was told “in the morning"!
“So this morning I went to the office for the fifth time in 24 hours. I was in luck. The lawyer in question, one Iarra, was present. However she flatly refused to give me a copy of my lease. The reason she gave was that she had already given me a copy six months ago! Even if that were true (and it isn’t), it does not justify her refusing to give me a second copy.”
“Consequently I don't know what my lease says and I can't negotiate with the landlady. I refuse to accept anything other than a certified copy of the lease. It seems I've been taken for a ride by a bunch of crooks. Crooks who have their own lawyer, too!”
His conclusion was: “The cost of living in Nicaragua is modest. Nonetheless to settle in this country it’s best to have a substantial amount of money to shield yourself from all the nuisances, chiselers and thieves.”
Next installment: Selected Imbroglios with the Nicaraguan Immigration Service
