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Plaza del Congreso

Plaza del Congreso

I had visited one of my favorite cities, Buenos Aires, dozens of times before without incident, but this particular trip at the end of February, 2010 was to prove different. Barely had I left my hotel to venture out in the Plaza del Congreso,  a small backpack containing my laptop computer and digital camera slung over one shoulder,  that some band of miscreants attempted to turn my holiday into a fiasco. Suspect number one, a young man, approached me in the middle of the square and asked me for the time, oblivious to the obvious fact that I’m not wearing anything on either wrist. I shrugged and continued  walking at my usual rapid pace. A little further ahead I noticed the same fellow running by my side and then turning away.

A few more steps and a very old man taps me on the shoulder and tells me I have something on my back. I stop and reach behind me, touching my lower back and looking at my hand, now smeared in bright white paint. What the…? I didn’t go anywhere near any painted surface and the many pigeons in the vicinity don’t typically poop paint. An instant later an elderly woman appears on the scene proffering tissues to clean the offending material off my person. I tell her “no thank you”, which is when their little plan began to unravel. That, and a passerby who told me “Beware, that’s how they rob you”.  I then glanced over and saw both elderly phony Samaritans standing together, looking like deer caught in the headlights.

I quickly returned to my hotel, furious that I had almost been mugged. The only other time something like this had happened, and I had also had managed to escape any loss, was when street urchins accosted a girlfriend and I on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. After changing out of my clothes, which had a white streak from top to bottom, I returned to the square in an attempt to identify the thieves to the police. However,  none of the many federal policemen in the area would accompany me and after milling around in the park for about 15 minutes and seeing that the culprits were nowhere to be seen, I gave up waiting for the phantom foot patrol the other cops had supposedly radioed.

After speaking to a fair number of people living here, it became evident that the robbers’ scheme is a popular one in this city, although they typically squirt you with mustard rather than paint. I’m certain now that the lad who asked me for the time was the one who “marked” me (as I mentioned, I walk fast), and the two seniors attempted to distract me, which would have resulted, had they been successful, in my backpack or wallet, or both, being lifted. I was targeted because I was alone, as such a scheme could not work if the victim was accompanied.

The “helpful citizen” distraction scheme  comes in many different forms, this being  just one of them. Sadly, you have to be suspicious of anyone offering help you didn’t ask for.

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