Citizen’s Arrest: Adventures in Bolivian Babysitting

7:40am
I woke up to an extra­or­di­nar­ily loud “Screech! Chunk! Thud. CRASH!” from Simon Lopez, our busy city street. I run down the stairs to hear “Lorien! Camera!” and my sib­lings yelling, “The van! The van?” The crash was not our van, but instead a drunk dri­ver crash­ing into one of our large metal gates.

Juan, the drunk dri­ver, had swept the side of his car into a tree by the road.

He was dri­ving so fast that he had enough momen­tum to go for­ward into a lit­tle park­ing lot off the street and swerve hard left. He crossed the raised cement and grass divider between the east and west bound lanes, and drove head-on into our sec­ondary gate. The owner of the house had pre­vi­ously installed a cement block to pre­vent cars from enter­ing that dri­ve­way because it’s too steep for any­thing but a Range Rover. That cement block pre­vented the vehi­cle from enter­ing our garage. Having crashed into our gate, he reversed and drove off.

To be clear: this man was drunk; he was dri­ving on one of the busiest streets in the city; he rammed a tree; he almost rammed a hard­ware store, he almost rammed two houses, he crossed four lanes of traf­fic, crashed into our gate, and drove across two side­walks where peo­ple, includ­ing chil­dren, fre­quently walk. The side­walks where he hit were empty, but this was extremely unusual — we usu­ally have peo­ple of all ages walk­ing on those side­walks. Where he crashed is a part of the side­walk where my broth­ers will usu­ally walk down to the bak­ery for fresh morn­ing bread. Only coin­ci­dence pre­vented him from killing peo­ple in his drunken rampage.

7:50am
Nicholas found Juan and his wrecked car on a lit­tle dead-end street behind our block. Dad reached it before me, and as I went to meet him a crowd of wit­nesses fol­lowed behind. In that moment I felt very strangely Firth-like (not some­thing I would nor­mally say. The video cuts out some of the crowd-following sequence.) as the gringa with a crowd of “What’s going on? Looks like a good show!” Bolivians in tow.

At the top of the hill and around the cor­ner sat two vehi­cles: Juan’s and that of a Radio Movil taxi. We really have no solid idea as to why the taxi was present. As far as we could tell, his car was not dam­aged and none of the wit­nesses to the acci­dent had observed his involve­ment. We do know that Juan paid him 250 Bolivianos in cash ($35.71) to absolve his guilt from some­thing or another. Mom thinks that the taxista was black­mail­ing Juan. The taxi attempted to leave, and I asked him to stay and wait for the police. He refused. As he was leav­ing I took his photo, which made him extremely angry.

“Why would you take my photo? This is not my fault! I have noth­ing in this!”

“Why did he pay you 250Bs?”

“I have noth­ing in this! You do not need my photo!”

As he said all of this, he loomed closer and closer, which prompted my father to get between us. The taxista had clearly been drink­ing as his breath stank of it and his eyes were more red than white. He did even­tu­ally leave.

Juan also attempted to leave.

Lorien: “No, we all have to wait here.”

Juan: “But I’ll pay for the gate! I will! But I have to go.”

“No. The police are on their way. We will all wait here for them”

“Please, I need to leave. I will pay you!”

“No. Wait here.”

He motioned put his keys in the igni­tion — I attempted to grab them, but missed. That rather annoyed my father (“That’s my job.”). Meanwhile, when Juan opened his driver-side door… out tum­bled an empty beer can. He hur­riedly stuffed it into his pants pocket.

We spent the next hour wait­ing for the police to arrive, and try­ing to keep Juan from running.

The wit­nesses were fan­tas­tic. The entire expe­ri­ence was coun­try jus­tice at its finest. The peo­ple, a com­bi­na­tion of curi­ous wit­nesses and our neigh­bors, were lined up along the side of the road which had a steep hill down to a bike path.

For the first ten min­utes or so my father and I were very con­scious of need­ing to main­tain the sup­port of the peo­ple. Juan was a crook — no ques­tion. The peo­ple of Cochabamba are just astound­ingly good-hearted. However! The real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion was also that a a big, scary gringo (Dad!) was glar­ing down at an increas­ingly pathetic young Bolivian. The lov­ing spirit of Cochabambinos will usu­ally side with the under­dog, and specif­i­cally with the Bolivian under­dog, even to the detri­ment of jus­tice. This is under­stand­able, but some­times del­i­cate. When my father ver­bally defended my mother from a man who phys­i­cally assaulted my mother, our neigh­bors sided against us — and they did so by say­ing that we were for­eign, etc. Again, under­stand­able, but frustrating.

Frankly, too, it took a good ten to fif­teen min­utes for the group to accept that we weren’t going to beat up pathetic lit­tle Juan. We just wanted him to wait for the police. They were watch­ing both Juan and us with eagle eyes, wait­ing to see who was going to be worse.

Juan: “Please. Please. Let me leave. I’ll fix your gate.”

Lorien: “No, you must wait. We are all wait­ing. You need to wait.”

“I can’t be here!”

“You must. We know the law of Cochabamba, and you have to wait here.”

One of the men con­curred, “Listen. They’re for­eign­ers. They know the law.”

I don’t know why a for­eigner is expected to know the law, but what­ever, I wasn’t going to argue.

Juan: “Please.”

Lorien: “No. It’s bet­ter for Cochabamba, it’s bet­ter for us, and it’s bet­ter for you.”

“Not for me!”

“Yes, for you. I know it’s very hard for you now, but you must learn that this behav­ior [ed. I actu­ally said man­ner, but I didn’t know how to say it prop­erly] is not good. You need to learn, and then your life will be better.”

Mind you, in the States that patron­iz­ing crap wouldn’t fly. It’s true, and I meant it gen­uinely. But while in the States it wouldn’t have been… kind to say it out loud like that, here in the semi-open air of Bolivian dia­logue it worked. Juan wasn’t just a kid who had made a lit­tle mis­take, Juan was a young man who came very close to killing peo­ple because he a) drove while intox­i­cated, and b) prob­a­bly stole a car. Juan didn’t buy the expla­na­tion, but the peo­ple around us saw that Dad was NOT attack­ing the punk, and I was speak­ing firmly and sweetly, while talk­ing about the good of Cochabamba and Juan’s future. I was speak­ing more nicely to him than any of the peo­ple there. Go figure.

Juan didn’t want to hear it, so he turned around to walk over to my father. Now, for con­text: my father had already spo­ken to Juan in lim­ited Spanish (“No! Wait here! No!”). He’s still learn­ing Spanish, and because of our extremely low fund­ing his classes have been put on hold. All Juan knew, though, was that I had been talk­ing to him in lim­ited and child­ish but essen­tially under­stand­able Spanish, and that my father had used some Spanish with him as well. So he turned to my father and again began with, “Please, I can­not meet the police.”

Dad didn’t want to argue more. He crossed his arms, and in the most per­fect Spanish accent of all time, “No entiendo español.”

The peo­ple cracked up. One guy dou­bled over and clapped his knee. Juan turned to them in frus­tra­tion, and the fel­low in the open shirt exclaimed, “Nope! Can’t talk to him! Just her!” and cackled.

Juan: “Please!”

Lorien: “No.”

Juan assessed his sit­u­a­tion. His best bet was to jump down the hill and run down the bike path. He tried to sub­tly move closer to the edge of the hill. The group just as sub­tly inched down closer to him. My father met him at the edge, and when Juan stepped onto the hill Dad grabbed his arm:

Dad: “NO. Wait here.”

Juan stepped back up, and Dad released his arm. Juan came back to me.

“PLEASE, miss. PLEASE.”

“No. We are all wait­ing here.”

He got right up to me, inches from my face.

“PLEASE!”

“No, and please, I want space.”

He didn’t move.

Louder, “Space. I want more space.” I held up my hand as if I was about to push him away. “Give me more space.”

He didn’t move. Dad took a step closer. Juan didn’t notice, so I swiveled around so that the group could see the space dif­fer­en­tial. “I WANT SPACE. PLEASE.”

The men took a step closer to us, and Juan stepped back once.

I moved away so that I could observe but so that I wasn’t between him and the men. Juan turned as if he was going to just walk off. Dad stood in his way.

“Here. Take the keys. You can have the car. Just let me leave.”

He dropped the keys to the ground.

“No. Wait here.”

Dad picked up the keys any­way, although Juan tried to step on his hand. Juan decided to go sit in his car. He had another set of keys, so he was still a flight risk as far as we knew. He started gath­er­ing his things into a duf­fel, prepar­ing for a run.

Dad walked over and opened the car doors. Again, the group found this hilar­i­ous. The per­fect solu­tion: we weren’t touch­ing him, we weren’t hurt­ing him, but he wasn’t going any­where. They loved it.

Juan put his duf­fel in the trunk and went back to stand­ing in the mid­dle of the lit­tle road.

He pulled out his phone and pre­tended to have a con­ver­sa­tion, act­ing all non­cha­lant about every­thing… but steadily step­ping fur­ther and fur­ther up the road. Dad just went up and blocked his path. At first it was sub­tle. Juan would take a step for­ward and to the side. Dad would step back and to the side. A happy lit­tle waltz. After fif­teen feet of this, the group started laughing.

One pointed at Dad and tapped his own skull, as if, “ha! clever!” Juan started freak­ing out and tak­ing big­ger steps. The guy in the gold shirt walked up to block the cor­ner. I thanked him, and he nod­ded as he walked up to give Dad backup. I’m rather per­turbed because in the video it sounds like a grassy-ass gringo accent. Sigh. Anyway, I was tap­ing that bit because if he did run for it I wanted to have evi­dence of the sequence of events.

The Waltz of Dad and Juan the Drunk from Lorien Johnson on Vimeo.

Juan got ticked and gave up on that tactic.

He had already said that he didn’t have a license. Dad asked me if he had a gen­eral ID.

Lorien: “Do you have a carnet?”

Juan: “Carnet? Yes.”

Gold Shirt Guy was stand­ing a few feet behind him, and I haven’t the fog­gi­est idea what he mouthed in Spanish but he motioned and my brain trans­lated it as “Get it!”

Lorien: “Can I see it?”

Juan: “My carnet?”

“Yes, can I see it?”

He pulled out and opened his wal­let to dis­play his ID in a clear plas­tic pocket.

Lorien: “Can I read it?”

Juan: “Read it or take it?”

I just laughed and said, “Oh, I don’t under­stand. Can I just read it please?”

He took it out, turned it over, and replaced it in his wallet.

Lorien: “I can’t read it in the plas­tic. Please?”

I held the wal­let as if I was tilt­ing the angle to read, but his grip was iron and it would’ve been a fight, so I let it go.

He put his wal­let back in his pocket and backed up to stand on the edge of the hill and his escape. Dad and the men were primed to go after him.

“Please, Juan. I have your photo. I read your car­net and know your name and ID num­ber [I didn’t]. It will be much bet­ter for your life if you just wait here.”

Again, laugh­ter. “Better for his life! hahaha!”

He rubbed his head and went to go lean against the car to think.

Eventually he climbed in.

Thomas, my brother, had gone to get soft drinks for every­one present. I passed them out to every­one, and con­vinced Juan to have a coke to relax, too. We were about a half hour into the process, and the police still hadn’t arrived.

Open Shirt Fellow explained, “It’s a Sunday. You have to insist.”

Mom kept call­ing the police, and some of the peo­ple had left to go call from their houses or to go to the cour­t­house down the street to try to con­vince the police to actu­ally come out.

We spent the next half hour sit­ting around and wait­ing. The men cir­cled the car to ooo and aah over the exces­sive dam­age, which also effec­tively kept Juan con­tained. I even­tu­ally went down to the house to let one of the peo­ple call Transito (I think the equiv­a­lent of the American Department of Moving Vehicles”) and report it as a stolen vehi­cle (which the peo­ple had decided amongst them­selves that it must be). While he called and I brushed my teeth (finally! half an hour of talk­ing in my pyja­mas and unbrushed breath. Horrid!), we got the call from Dad say­ing that the police had finally arrived.

9:00am
I got back up the hill and talked briefly with the police. The group had dis­persed quickly, and were wait­ing on the other side of the street in front of our house. We took the police to show them our gate. They nod­ded and decided to bring their jeep and Juan’s car down to the street. The police went up the hill. Juan fol­lowed them from about 40 feet behind. I was baf­fled by why he was left alone, so I just stayed right behind him. We’d gone halfway up the hill when the lead offi­cer saw us and yelled at his assis­tants, “Why is he walk­ing? Why did you leave him? Put him in the car!” So Juan, bless the piti­ful lit­tle guy, shuf­fled up hill to the jeep and got in the back of his own accord.

Back at the house, we explained the sequence of events. Dad had gone inside to print of my pho­tos. A sec­ond police jeep arrived. A third jeep. Then a red Transito jeep. Apparently depart­ments had not been track­ing that the calls were all for the same event, or at least the sheer num­ber of calls pressed them to show up in a group. I think we had ten or fif­teen offi­cers there at the end. They had Juan pick up the pieces to the car and wait.

My father then came out with the print­outs of all of the pho­tos. One offi­cer just looked at them and was amazed. He took them over to the group of offi­cers who were stand­ing in a cir­cle around Juan, and I’ve never seen an offi­cer happier.

“Look at these! [flip page] Look at that! [flip] That’s his face! His face! [turned it over to show Juan] Your face! [flip] The license plates! Your plates! They have every­thing!” They were laugh­ing uproar­i­ously, and as he said that last bit he clapped Juan on the back, “Pobrecito!” {poor lit­tle thing!}

Pobrecito, indeed. The offi­cers were amaz­ingly thrilled, because we’d essen­tially done most of the work for them — kept him there and taken and printed pic­tures of him, the other taxista, and the dam­age. Probably the first time in a long time that they’d walked into a sit­u­a­tion and actu­ally had wit­nesses and evi­dence. They just stood there laugh­ing at the sit­u­a­tion and at poor Juan. Juan was def­i­nitely guilty, but he just hap­pened to be guilty in the worst pos­si­ble spot in the city.

Well. I sup­pose he could have crashed directly into a police sta­tion or the DEA build­ing. But, y’know.

Still, it was just so… Andy Griffith. The neigh­bor­hood ral­lied in the only pos­si­ble jus­tice avail­able to them, and we kept it on a strictly peace­ful level. Ordinarily a petty crime is frowned upon but earns merely a glare and a shrug. I fre­quently hear folks shrug in semi-apology, semi-indignation, “Eh. This is Bolivia. It hap­pens.” This time, how­ever, the neigh­bor­hood saw that Juan was a risk and he had care­lessly and ille­gally endan­gered their fam­i­lies, their prop­erty, and their peace. They solved the prob­lem. By the time the police showed up an hour after the neigh­bor­hood begin­ning the process, the offi­cers were so busy being amused by the ridicu­lous effi­ciency of the entire affair that all they could do was laugh and pat the crook on the back with a jovial but sym­pa­thetic, “You’re fried, man. You’re fried.”

I adore Cochabamba. Andy Griffith Southern Justice in the morn­ing, and at noon we left to go to the Feria de las Flores {Flower Feria}.

That’s Bolivia.

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