This popular article for travelers discusses situations in which people get ripped off in the street, on public transportation or in markets in the countries of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. It also fits Colombia. It provides a lexicon of terms. It offers advice on the kinds of tricks perpetrated on unsuspecting travelers to extract their valuables. It mentions cities where this happens a lot. It also tries to understand why this happens so frequently in the Andes and how to deal with it when it does happen to you.
This article first appeared in Explorer's Club Magazine #52, 1998
Although I don’t have the statistics to prove it, it’s a fair bet that any formal study of petty larceny would establish Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia as major rip-off centers. Further, of all the countries I’ve come to know, thievery in these countries is practiced with the greatest ingenuity.
Thieves and the paranoia they arouse are the bane of Andean travelers. Here, I offer some ruminations on the subject based on my travels. Although I see myself as a seasoned traveler, I’m chagrined to admit that the petty larcenists have done their number on me on half a dozen occasions.
The best way to understand thievery is in the context of culture and time. It’s not a subject that gets a lot of attention. Indeed, before the 1970s, thievery didn’t even rate a mention. On the other hand, most travel literature in the last twenty-five years describes some act of despoliation. These vary in the way they deal with theft and the emotions surrounding it.
Tom Pow’s In the Palace of Serpents: An Experience of Peru dwells on theft almost obsessively. He devotes whole chapters speculating on the evil intentions of low lifes and ways to outwit them. Up to a point, Pow’s misadventures evoke sympathy—he was, after all, robbed on two occasions. Still, it’s interesting to note that his getting robbed seems to have galvanized him, providing him with the creative inspiration to sit down and write the book.
Guidebooks to Andean countries reflect the fear of theft by the space they set aside for advice on how not to get ripped off. Before the 1970s, the South American Handbook (SAH) says nothing about thievery. But from then on, cautionary remarks creep in, no doubt reflecting an avalanche of travelers’ complaints. The 1981 SAH urges travelers to be cautious and in bold type posts warnings about certain cities and whole countries. By the 1990s, theft advisories extend to a variety of specific locales beyond the cities.
Nowadays, almost every guide, from the Lonely Planet guides and the Bradt publications to the Sierra Club book by Frazer and Secreast, dish up generous admonitions to travelers. Stephen Lee in The Andes comments knowledgeably about "running the Andean gauntlet" and textile-maven Lynn Meisch, an Andean specialist tells it like it is in her forthright A Traveler’s Guide to El Dorado and the Inca Empire. Peter McFarren’s Cultural Guide to Bolivia is more coy: He simply cautions travelers to watch out for pickpockets.
Early on, the South American Explorers Club alerted members to theft and recommended its denim leg pouch with a Velcro fastener. I used a leg pouch and felt secure long after the elastic sagged after many months of constant use. My downfall came in a Lima colectivo when I lifted my pant leg to extract a bill. A fellow passenger observed this little operation and deftly removed my passport before I reached my stop.
Public Transportation and Markets—Where the Thieves ArePublic transportation offers a variety of prime opportunities for a heist. The examples are endless:
A man from Vermont spent weeks photographing the wonderful people and landscapes in Pomabamba. His bag bulging with hundreds of rolls of film suddenly vanished in the Lima bus terminal—months of work and memories gone in a flash. A promised reward yielded nothing.abuelita in her place for the rest of the trip.
In the Guayaquil airport, an underworld denizen nimbly removed from my backpack a handicraft I had purchased a mere fifteen minutes earlier. In the same terminal, friends of mine had a bag carrying their camera equipment spirited off while they chatted before their flight.
In Tarija, Bolivia, I was checking in when someone whisked off my cap of which I was inordinately fond right off of my head.
Although an aircraft would not seem a good set up for picking pockets, on a flight to Cusco a crafty-looking granny seated behind me slid her fingers into my back pocket. Feeling the pressure, I whipped around and fixed her with a menacing stare. I was reluctant to create more of a scene, but this sufficed to keep the
Matthew Parris tells of a seemingly nice woman who asked his traveling companion for help to move her boxes—just the distraction needed for her accomplice to make off with his bag and passport.campesinos in the back, but none willing to identify the culprit.
Lurching over the cold Altiplano between Tirapata and Macusani, Peru, my wife and I accepted the driver’s offer to move up front into the warm cab. One of our two duffles left in the back disappeared. There were twenty or so
Travelers in transit, unless they have their own wheels, pass through truck stops, train stations, bus depots, and airports—crowded places where they are preoccupied with finding a taxi, locating a bathroom, getting to a connecting flight, etc. Thieves sizing up their marks wait for the right moment to pounce. Luggage momentarily set down disappears into thin air.
Gangs periodically hit packed city buses and inter-city trains, harvesting wallets from unsuspecting passengers. One thief crowds the victim while his partner performs the more delicate work of extracting the valuables. Of course, pickpockets often work alone.
Trains are a rewarding milieu for crooks to ply their trade. All sorts of people amble up and down the aisles and move between coaches while, lulled by the clickety-clack monotony, passengers lower their guard. When the train slows down on a steep grade, a thief will strike, then jump off. Dark tunnels offer other opportunities. Night trains in particular have gained a sinister reputation for roving gangs that pilfer while you sleep. The ten-hour night run between Arequipa and Puno enjoys a special notoriety. In successive editions, the SAH claims that fully 80 percent of the passengers get robbed—a scary statistic.
Travel in the back of the truck is more confined and for this reason somewhat safer than train travel. Although trucks make frequent stops, you at least get to see who gets on and off. Still, travelers beware.
The chaos of a bustling market provides good hunting for thieves who correctly assume you’re carrying money or you wouldn’t be there. Even locals get shorn regularly in marketplaces, but foreigners wandering around savoring the sights, sounds, and smells are more enticing targets. In the hubbub and crush of people, criminals often work in pairs. One thief jostles the trekker while the other slits the backpack. In the 1980s, Jacques Cousteau’s hapless crew waded into the Cusco market. Thief heaven! Bags got slashed, pockets rummaged, and pride hurt.
Thieves: the Low-DownSpanish has many names to distinguish the different types of thief. Ladrón is the all-inclusive term—one that every foreign traveler should know. Pillo refers collectively to all kinds of roguish behavior. Ratero, or crook, is taken from the rodent of the same name. Pericote, pianista, choro and jalisco are a few of the slang terms used by the underworld to describe themselves. Some terms describe particular talents or levels of skill: carterista (a specialist in stealing carteras or billfolds), lancero (one who works crowds), gemilero (a stealer of light bulbs), correvolando (a very clever thief), tombero (one who picks padlocks), punga or punguista (one who picks pockets particularly on public transportation). The work of a highly skilled thief is praised as muy fino. A simple act of grab-and-snatch is said to be an arranch, but one pulled off with particular skill—a puntazo.
Thieves tend to be between 18 to 35 years old. Men predominate. Thievery is a trade requiring native intelligence to master. Some thieves use cocaine—not surprising given the tension inherent in this line of work. Drugs and theft often become a vicious circle—thieving to support a habit leading to a frenzy of stealing.
Accomplished thieves possess what the underworld calls a sense of "grift." Without this special talent for crime and the cunning that goes along with it, an aspiring thief cannot hope to prosper in his chosen racket. An inspired thief will possess good judgment in spotting the mark, discerning where to find the valuables, and executing the deed with appropriate timing, dexterity, and misdirection. The heist itself generally takes less than ten seconds. A considerably lower level of expertise is required to slashing a knapsack or suitcase. Lower still is the skill required to grab and run—a strategem invariably adopted by rank amateurs who have chosen the life of a delinquent over digging potatoes in the family chacra.
Thieves working in gangs (pandilla) choreograph their crimes having learned that a three-person team can pull off crimes that transcend the aspirations of a thief working alone. One such scam is the Please-Let-Me-Clean-Off-This-Filth-On-Your-Coat trick. Almost unknown before the 1970s, many a tourist fell prey to this ploy until warnings by victims made travelers wary. The police in Spain view this particular ruse as a New World import introduced to Europe by Latin ladrones. The Money Drop is also a popular scam. Here a thief drops a wad of bills and, as the victim stoops to pick it up, a second thief makes off with his backback, money, or whatever.
Whatever the ploy, many crooked practitioners have honed their skills to a fine art and might well make first-rate magicians. The finesse of these predators not infrequently evokes a tinge of admiration from their victims, so elegant is their performance compared to the brute force characteristic of their North American partners in crime.
Who gets ripped off?Andean thieves are equal-opportunity robbers, preying on locals and visitors alike. It is the rare Peruvian, Bolivian or Ecuadorian, rich or poor, who has not at one time or another been robbed. Still, foreign travelers are more appealing targets: The scruffy bearded gringo with holes in his jeans is far from home and more than likely carrying a tidy bundle somewhere on his cuerpo. A fat wallet might be worth a year of honest work. A foreigner’s bag is apt to be stuffed with valuables—choice stuff like a Japanese camera, maybe binoculars or a tape recorder—all easily fenced. Stolen goods may show up for sale before the victim leaves town. Rings, watches, and other jewelry are all targets, but the best prize is U.S. currency—untraceable, instantly convertible, worth a fortune in local currency.
In addition, foreign travelers are most vulnerable to dupery. They are out of their cultural element, hailing from countries where bag slashing and pickpocketing are not everyday concerns. A New Yorker might expect to be mugged, but is certainly not prepared to have his backpack slashed—a crime virtually unknown in the United States and Europe. For some, warnings about pickpockets, purse snatchers, and slashers don’t seem real. "It could never happen to me," they think—until it does.
Robbery: The AftermathOnce robbed, a victim must deal with a storm of emotions. It starts with disbelief. Bewilderment quickly changes to outrage. What happens next depends on the individual: Some lash out, others may blame themselves. Usually, the thieves are long gone; it’s the bystanders who witness the wreching, sometimes hostile, reaction. Fecklessness by the locals increases the acute distress.
The victim asks, "Didn’t anyone around here see what happened? Who did it?" Often, says the SAH bluntly, "The police and local people seem unwilling to help."
There’s a reason for this: There’s little the police can do. Petty crimes go largely unsolved. In fact, few police anywhere are likely to track down a clever thief. The criminal must be caught in the act. For many police, investigating petty thefts is not worth the effort. It’s also not unheard of that the police know the perpetrators and wink at their activities in certain areas as long as they rob the tourists and not the local citizenry. The police might expect a kickback for their tolerance. But aside from a few bad apples most police will arrest thieves caught in the act.
Why are bystanders unlikely to help? For one thing, empathy with strangers is not natural in the Andes. Fear of retribution is also a possibility, since the crooks may be known in the neighborhood. Finally, complicity should not be ruled out. This didn’t occur to me back in 1986 when I caught a woman cutting my bag with a butcher knife in the Quito market. As I swung around, I hit her on the back. Her yelps brought the surrounding vendors rushing to her assistance. Faced with this phalanx of solidarity, I hastily retreated.
It’s interesting to note that thievery is viewed quite differently in Africa. In contrast with the Andes, thieves are energetically pursued, and if caught in flagrante delicto, onlookers will pummel them. There are many cases of thieves being beaten to death. This being the case, give me the Andes any day—lynch mob hysteria is far scarier than bystander apathy.
The victim of a robbery receiving no available assistance or even empathy may feel cynical and pessimistic about what lies ahead on his trip. These feelings at some point turn to resignation and stoicism. Typically, the traveler rationalizes the experience saying, "I didn’t need all that stuff anyway," "They (the robbers) probably need it more than I do," "Everyone here is so poor; we are so rich," or "If I lived here, I’d probably rob, too."
Danger ZonesYour chances of getting robbed in Peru are higher by far than in either Ecuador and Bolivia. The reasons for this are the larger number of foreigners visiting Peru, an upsurge in lawlessness surrounding the drug trafficking, and a recent history of terrorism. Heed travel warnings and keep your guard up, but don’t be detered from experiencing this enchanting country. Life is short, and some things are worth the risk.
For obvious reasons, petty thievery predominates in the big cities, the anonymity of crowds and affluent targets attracting the professional thieves. Downtown Lima, Quito, and Guayaquil have all gotten bad press, but after spending a lot of time in Guayaquil recently, it’s reputation seems somewhat undeserved. On the other hand, compared to Quito and Lima, La Paz is the safest city, quite possibly because its thief population trails in the thieving arts.
One of the worst places in Quito is the area around the church of San Francisco, so close to God, yet teeming with sinners. Thieves here include women with babies (dolls, maybe?) on their backs. Vendors crowd the atrium in front of the church. You have to manoeuver around their tables stacked with candles and religious paraphernalia. These obstructions create choke points. As described in Thurston Clarke’s Equator: a Journey, shoppers and visitors to the church emerge from a gauntlet feeling "like an assembly-line chicken, wrung, hosed down, and plucked."
Cusco has arguably become the rip-off navel of the Andean world for the simple reason that, on most days, it hosts more overseas visitors in a smaller area than any other city in western South America. When mass tourism from Europe focused on Cusco in the 1970s, it attracted upwardly-mobile pickpockets from all over Peru.
While Cusco is the South American mecca for tourists, other Andean cities such as the Peruvian cities of Puno, Juliaca, Huancayo, Arequipa, and Trujillo, and Cochabamba in Bolivia, have achieved notoriety. By contrast, Ecuador’s provincial cities seem safer. Perhaps the local talent heads for Quito.
Thievery is not restricted to towns and cities. Where travelers go—to beaches, mountains, archaeological sites—thieves follow. When travelling in Latin America, best be wary.
Thievery: the Whys and WhereforesPeople thieve for different reasons. Fear was the motive behind an incident that occured in 1865. In the remote village of Pichigua in the Department of Cusco, a thief purloined a precious notebook belonging to the great explorer Antonio Raimondi. The whole village was more or less drunk, which made it impossible for the authorities to do much of anything. Much distressed over his loss and unable to find the culprit, Raimondi left for Cusco, where he reported the theft. Six months later, Raimondi got his notebook back. It seems the locals feared that he had come to the village to compile a list of taxable citizens. Emboldened by repeated infusions of aguardiente, the townsfolk figured they could impede the imposition of the hated tax if the notebook got "lost."
Of course, the prime motive for thievery is material gain. It is common these days to explain away thievery. People are said to steal because they are poor. Needing to eat and having no gainful employment, they steal because they have to. This lofty rationale is in fact the standard explanation thieves give when caught in the act—a neat trick, for it transfers the guilt of the thief to the victim who gets robbed because he’s rich. Cousteau bought into this theory. His reaction to being robbed was to pontificate, announcing that in "the impoverished Andes...desperation begets minor desperados." And, indeed, such thinking appears reasonable. However, in poorer parts of the world, notably Africa, petty thievery is relatively uncommon. Moreover, need is not necessarily a justification, for the thieves are rarely totally down-and-out and wondering where their next meal is coming from.
A similar though equally flawed theory holds that theft grows out of resentment, envy, dislike, or even a hatred of foreigners. Cousteau opined that Andean people might confuse the foreign traveler with notions of the Devil, a superstition that resulted from their "near-absolute isolation that enforces their fear of the outside world." In fact, however, Andean people by and large do not resent the foreigners in their midst. This is not to say there may not exist reasons to dislike visitors who are condescending, disrespectful by local standards, or conduct themselves scandalously. However, it’s unlikely that rancor would inspire an honest citizen to turn to crime.
Though practiced by a minority, thievery is to some degree sanctioned by the culture. Thievery fits into a peasant’s view of life that goes back 2,000 years. One feature characteristic of this rural philosophy is a perception that regards all good things as limited in quantity. In other words, there is only one pie. It can be cut up in many slices but not made bigger. By this reasoning, you get money or goods at someone else’s expense. Survival becomes a matter of getting what you can. Thievery is just one of many methods of acquisition, a strategy to better one’s state, not a desperate act of last resort. True, the consequences of getting caught arouse some concern to the Andean mind, but the Christian catechism notwithstanding, stealing is not deemed particularly immoral.
Letting GoThere’s a philosophical dimension to getting ripped off that’s worth considering. True, at the moment, a robbery is not just terrible for what is stolen but for how it makes us feel. Over the long term, however, the experience can change our way of thinking. We come from a consumer culture and may not realize how insidiously material things possess us. Suddenly, we are forced to realize we can do nothing about our loss. Fatalistically, we go about our business, viewing the theft, perhaps, as one of those painful learning experiences. Then, with time, we come to see that what we have lost is not so terribly important. In letting go, we adopt a new attitude—recognizing how material things clutter our lives. An unpleasant experience leads to a new awareness, knowledge that we may cherish for years to come.
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