Friday, December 17, 2010

Robbed of everything at gunpoint

Now that I'm safely back in England, I can tell you the truth about my trip. I experienced genuine Argentine culture first-hand - hearty barbecues; wide-open horsey spaces; passionate football support; and violent robbery at the wrong end of some of the two million unlicensed guns the country can boast.

Yes indeed. On Sunday 31 October, I was attacked by a gang of gunmen, tied up naked on a hostel floor, and robbed of everything I had. It was not one of the more enjoyable Hallowe'ens I've had.

I was staying in a hostel in Rosario. There were only three other people in the hostel that evening: two guests and a guy on reception. At half past ten or so, I was woken up by a man hitting me on the head. Not violently - more like a peevish interwar Latin master boxing the ears of a boy who had forgotten his prep. I protested until I realised, staring foggily at him without my glasses, that he was hitting me with a gun.

Though I couldn't quite understand what he was shouting - my phrasebook unaccountably didn't have a 'Armed raids and hostage situations' chapter - the gist was clear, and involved me taking to the floor, face down and naked, to join two other hostellers who had their hands tied behind their back.

One of the gang tied my hands behind my back - I thought with handcuffs, but it turned out it was coat-hanger wire. Another pointed a gun at the reception guy and demanded the keys to the safe and the security lockers. With us on the floor, two gunmen hoovered up everything in the hostel and lobbed it to their accomplices standing outside by the getaway van: rucksacks, cash takings, clothes, contents of all safes and lockers and cupboards, even - rather bizarrely - the beers in the hostel fridge.

It took about seven or eight minutes. Eventually they left, and the four of us unwired our hands and assessed our situation. We were left with nothing except the clothes we stood up in. Except that I'd been stark bollock naked and face down on the floor.

In fact, in the chaos of clothes left in our dorm and deemed valueless, my T-shirt and jeans remained. Luckily for me, my credit cards, passport and cash happened to be in my jeans; the thieves were both ruthless and incompetent. Everything else though was gone. Clothes, shoes, waterproofs, hiking boots, swimming stuff. Camera, laptop, watch, toiletries, Swiss Army Knife, nail scissors. Spanish books and dictionaries, work, documents, contracts. The rucksack itself. My underpants.

What sort of weirdo takes beer out of the fridge, and underpants?

It was a vile experience, made worse by the total lack of interest shown by the police. Unknown to us, a fifth person was in the hostel while the raid was taking place, an Argentinian guy who hid under a bed in a remote dorm and called the police on his mobile. All he got was the Rosario Police answering machine: If you wish to report an armed robbery in progress, press 4. For theft of underwear, press 5. If you're delivering the pizza we ordered, please hold.

When the police eventually did come, they made no effort to investigate and took no statements from most of us. They had, grudgingly, to be persuaded to make lists of our stolen property for insurance purposes, taking half a day to do so. The document I got from them is virtually useless, an illegible dot-matrix photocopy cursorily summarising the detailed list of articles I tried to give them. (And missing out the underpant larceny entirely.)

Their attitude was clear. Gun crime? So? This is Argentina, what's the big deal? Happens all the time.

The loss of all my belongings made the following months quite a challenge. Without Spanish books or dictionaries (and no, worthwhile replacements are not available in provincial Argentina) I couldn't develop my Spanish. Without my laptop, bus journeys changed from being an opportunity to work and write up into deadly boring six-hour purgatories. The very guidebook I was updating had gone too. I struggled by for the next six weeks on the bare minimum - two sets of clothes, a toothbrush, and a pen and pad, essentially - but it was no fun.

Obviously, I couldn't tell family (they'd have worried) or friends (they'd have told family). It didn't seem right for a Facebook status update either:
OMG just got robbed at GUNPOINT!!! : ( wtf?? even took my underpants lol!!

Now, to put it in context, I only met a couple of dozen people in my time there who'd been robbed of personal possessions at the point of a gun. So the chances of you being attacked by evil men with firearms are very, very small. Only one in three, say.

So let me stress that Argentina is a wonderful country full of vibrant and friendly people, and I can thoroughly recommend going there. Except for Buenos Aires, which is too dangerous, and the bits outside Buenos Aires, which are too dangerous.