“It’s only a grafitti!”
During my junior year in high school, I had the good fortune to live abroad in Venezuela for a year in the city of Valencia. Since then, it has shaped almost every aspect of my life. So many crazy things happened when I was there, but if I had to pick one that stood out, it would have to be when my friends and I were held up at gunpoint by the police.
One of the traditions at the end of the school year was to leave a graffiti on the front of the school if you were graduating. Normally it was done by an entire class, but I wanted to leave one just from me, as a thank you for all of the students to see. I spoke with my friend and we decided that we would go and do the graffiti later that night.
Several things should have tipped us off that it wasn’t a good idea. First, they had just instituted a curfew for anyone under the age of 17. I was the only one who was 17 out of the 3 friends that I was going to go to the school with. Second, we thought it would be a good idea to take my friend’s sister’s car without telling her. Finally, it was my last night in Venezuela before leaving on a month long trip around South America. After reading my previous stories, however, you know by now that making good judgment calls doesn’t really fit into my persona.
That night we picked the perfect time to sneak down and grab the car. We were only a few miles away and figured that we could be done in about an hour or so. We embarked upon our adventure with 3 or 4 cans of spray paint, and my creative juices starting flowing with anticipation of my great work of graffiti art. What kind of graffiti would I do? Something cool like a picture of me waiving goodbye, a mural with vibrant colors or a tiger (just because that would be cool). Upon arriving at the school we got out and I quickly went to work. After about 2 minutes, it became clear that my artistic abilities were extremely limited. In other words, I could either draw a stick figure (my specialty) of just write something. I decided on the latter. I would write, GRACIAS LOS CEDROS. Los Cedros was the name of the school and if you don’t know what gracias means then you should return to first grade Spanish. Even that was looking like shit as I started to paint. As I finished the GRACIAS one of my friends yelled out. In the distance there were 2 police cars that had stopped. At this point I had no time to finish. I simply finished by putting GRACIAS L.C.
The cops were a ways away and we figured we had time to jump in the car and get out of there. They were parked on the side of the highway up above, and we were down below in the school parking lot. If we were able to get away, there was no way they were going to catch us. We climbed into the car laughing , we thought that we had just escaped a close call. As we started to back up, one of the police officers came sprinting up behind us. The second we went into reverse he leaped into the parking lot, pulling out his semi-automatic rifle and pointing it right at us. We then stopped and looked in front of us. The other officer had done the same thing and his rifle was aimed directly at my head.
I started to panic and freak out. My friends, however, were surprisingly calm. They kept laughing at me as I told them I was too young to die and that I couldn’t be somebody’s bitch in a Venezuelan prison. Thinking back it made sense. Normally you could throw some money around and get out of anything, but that was only as a last resort. Unfortunately, we had to run into the only 2 policemen who didn’t want money.
The first thing the officers did was go through our car. On the front seat of the passenger side there was a box with some white powder. We didn’t really know what it was, but it had something to do with a printer, so we didn’t think anything of it. Of course the police officers saw it and immediately thought we were doing coke! We had decided earlier that we were just going to tell them we were hanging out because we had hidden the spray paint cans. As soon as we were accused of doing coke, the spray paint cans came out immediately. We told them that we were just doing a graffiti and that the powder was not cocaine. The officer must have realized immediately that it was not coke and turned his attention to other matters. The car we were in was not registered to any of us, and we were, of course, out past curfew. To make matters worse, they didn’t want any bribes as both my friend and I had a fat wallet filled with cash that we were flailing around in front of them as we tried to talk our way out of our the situation we were in.
Lets recap from the police officers point of view: Four kids out in Venezuela past curfew with a stolen car, a few cans of spray paint and a curious white substance in the front seat.
At this point, I’m completely convinced that we’re screwed. My friends are starting to worry more, and as a last ditch effort my host brother, Renato, walks with one of the officers back to his car. At the time in Venezuela, there was a show where 2 slackers would always get off by telling the cops that their uncle was the chief of police. When Renato returned he told us that he told the officer his uncle, or some family member, worked with the government and that he was making a big mistake by arresting us. Just like in the TV show. Apparently it worked!
After their conversation the officer returned and decided to let us go. Since I was the oldest, I was told that I would have to drive home. That was frightening considering I didn’t even have a license, but who was I to argue at this point. We jumped in the car and sped off. Once again everyone laughed at me as I breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked them the whole ride home.
To this day I don’t know what he told that police officer, but in my head I imagined it went something like this:
Renato- “Officer, isn’t there anything we can do to get out of this.”
Officer-”Absolutely not!”
Renato- “Look, we have an exchange student from the US and he has dollars! How about I give him to you and you can hold him for ransom?”
Officer- “While that’s tempting I think that I’m going to have to pass. Besides I think he just pissed his pants down there, so I’m not sure how much I could really get for him.”
Renato- “I didn’t want to have to do this, but I think you should know who I am.”
Officer- ”Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
Renato- “I’m being very serious.”
Officer- “Really?”
Renato- “My uncle’s brother’s cousin’s nephew is cellmates with Hugo Chavez!” As you know he is threatening a coup any day, and when he gets out and takes over the country are you going to be the one to tell him that you arrested me?”
Officer- “Oh my god, Hugo Chavez!”
Renato- ”That’s right.”
Officer- “I’m so sorry! I’ll let you all go immediately. ”
Renato- “Can you make sure and tell the American he has to drive?” I think it’d be really funny to push him over the edge.”
0 Responses to “Held up at gunpoint in Venezuela”