Personal Narrative: Wrong Time In Mexico

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Have you ever heard the saying, “wrong place, wrong time,” or maybe that life is about “being at the right place at the right time”? Or have you ever heard about the cartels and their crimes down in Mexico? Murders, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and lots of partying goes on every day by every cartel and by every drug lord south of the border. Unfortunately, these two topics have much in common in Mexico. Civilians that do not have anything to do with the cartels get caught up in these kind of events like partying with them, then, unexpectedly local police, federal police, and even the marines show up to kill the show. Inevitably, this happened to my cousins, brother, and I when my family decided to visit in the summer of 2010 when I was …show more content…
With the peak of cartel crime and warfare among each other, a tourist must keep this in mind, be smart, therefore one is naturally paranoid. The first time when my family and I got off of our vehicle to eat breakfast I had a need to scope the environment, who was around, what was around, what was going on, everything. After I ordered my food, I had told my parents that I was going to the bathroom, while I was in there everything seemed unreal, looking at myself in the mirror, that we were finally in Chihuahua. A red head man with pale-white skin had walked in with his child of about my age only thinking, “Am I going to get mugged? Am I going to get jumped? Am I going to get mugged? What can I do, if I did?” I was observing them the whole time in any way possible, it was all in my head, nothing was going to happen and nothing did happen, all paranoia and what seemed like the longest time I have ever been in a …show more content…
As we drive through the blinding pitch black forest of Michoacan I question another time, “Which one of these houses belong to drug lords?”, “Will we get kidnapped at this very instant?”, “Will we get shot at this very instant?” Arriving to the city of Uruapan the first thing I observe again were sirens. In Mexico, the authorities find it very odd for the average person the be driving a “car of the year” especially a beauty like the Chevrolet Camaro, therefore they will pull you over and search, this is what happened when I saw those sirens. I remember it vividly, classic yellow Camaro SS pulled over at 3:30am to be searched of illegal firearms or narcotics, maybe even both. This is the life of Mexico, ‘narcotraficantes’ everywhere.
The next morning, my little cousin of only a year younger than me was excited to see us due to the fact that we haven’t been there in three years. He told me how he’s been and all of his stories, even the ‘narcotraficante’ stories that would happen only down the block. “One time there was a shootout between Los Caballeros Templarios de Michoacan and the federal police, they would move cars in between the streets for cover and burn rubber tires to send signals,”

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