Petacalco-Mexican check points

Before we left on our 70's trip to Central America we ran into this local guy named Bob Bacon. He told us that if we were making that drive, the hot tip was to get a bunch of old Playboy magazines if we wanted to get through the army checkpoints. We thought the bugger was nuts, but he rattled our cage enough that we rounded up about 10 dog eared mags just for insurance sake.

After weeks of driving and pretty much forgetting about the possibility of a military checkpoint we came around a corner a couple hours north of Petacalco and there it was. We had heard plenty of rumors of these checkpoints tearing cars apart, taking hours of your time, and potentially planting crap on you.

We were in the middle of nowhere, and as we pulled to the side our hearts were pounding. Six well armed, pimply faced soldiers circled our car. We exchanged pleasantries as best we could, as they looked in windows and asked to have this door and that box opened and removed. I gave it a couple of minutes and reached in for a mag, pulled one of the guys aside, and said "Te Gusta?".

We owe Mr. Bacon a ton for that tip. We hit 6 checkpoints (this was drug country) in the next day or two and the Playboy worked every time. The soldiers were much more interested in the mags than they were in us (remember Mexico was very conservative back then, and these were rare I am sure). We would give them a minute or two with the mags, share some smiles and favorite pages, and then offer it to them in "friendship".

My memories are of six soldiers, in a circle, in our rear view mirror as we moved down the road.
share on: facebook