And now, a short suspense story: How we liberated our pickup from the San Miguel auto pound

On Dec. 10, our trusty 2000 Nissan Frontier pickup was in a head-on collision with another pickup. On a scale of one to ten, this mishap scored a four or about the equivalent of a broken nose.  It's all fixable and fortunately there were no serious injuries thanks to the sturdy burro bumper on the Nissan and its airbags which, surprisingly given its age, performed flawlessly.

In fact, the damage itself was the least of our headaches compared to the six weeks of bureaucratic gyrations it took to "liberate"—that's what the process is called—our poor pickup from the San Miguel's auto pound.

Waiting to be liberated since ca.1981
If there were a special circle of hell reserved for cars it would resemble this facility, known as the corralón—or the "big corral"—and tucked away behind a remarkably large, unmarked and ugly building with crenellated walls and turrets that looks like either a penitentiary or a crude imitation of a castle.

Strange backdrop to a strange operation. 
There are few signs of order at the corralón. Rather it's one chaotic acre after another in which hundreds of rusted, mashed-up remains of vehicles of all types—from bicycles to cars, motorcycles and semis and tanker trucks, Pepsi trucks and what-have-you—have come to rest, each one marked with a date of arrival. It was sobering to think of what happened to the people inside some of these vehicles. 

This is no temporary holding facility. One car had a 1981 license plate and most of the vehicles were covered by years of rust, dirt and assorted junk that suggested indefinite prison sentences. Think of it as a roach motel for cars, where they check in but likely will never drive out, or not any time soon. We know two people who had their cars impounded, one for six months the other for two years.

Did your motorcycle turn up missing?
The corralón is owned by a man named Chucho who also owns a towing company called El Mercadillo. Whenever there is an accident, the transit police will summon one or more of Chucho's trucks to haul the damaged vehicles to Chucho's corralón, no questions asked or choices offered. Chucho is your man, like it or not. 

In the U.S. the owners of the vehicles involved in relatively minor accidents will curse and scream, and then exchange drivers licenses, registrations and insurance information, receive a police report and arrange for a tow to the mechanic or body shop of their choice.

But this is Mexico, where most drivers don't have insurance, which is not required, or a way to pay for damages. In our case we hit the jackpot: The other driver had no insurance, money, Mexico plates or even a valid registration. His only documentation for his late-model Chevrolet Aztec pickup was a faded photocopy of a bill of sale from a dealership somewhere in Texas.

Nothing to fear: Chucho is here. 
He was also hauling ten passengers including himself, three in the cab and seven more al fresco on the bed of the truck. Two ambulances arrived to take the injured, none of whom showed visible injuries but who nevertheless clutched  different parts of their bodies in what looked ominously like the Whiplash Mambo.

Both vehicles would be held at the corralón—effectively as ransom—as the incident worked its way through the bowels of the local State Attorney's Office, located in a new, bright- blue building on one of the entrances to San Miguel.

We realized there's a certain logic to the corralón: Given the general lack of auto insurance or cash to cover damages—and Mexicans' aversion to pay for anything or obey traffic laws—the only way to force settlement of claims is to impound the vehicles.

Even then, many owners just surrender their vehicles rather than pay for damages. Though mostly wrecks, there were also dozens of relatively new vehicles whose owners had figured it was cheaper to just walk away. 

If one or both of the parties involved in an accident has the ready cash, the matter might settled on the spot to avoid the corralón. Or someone might quietly negotiate a mordida, a little contribution to the police officer's private retirement fund, to help him forget the whole thing. In case of serious injuries, of course, there are no quick outs.

Abandoned by their owners?
Unfortunately for us, the usually torpid wheels of Mexican justice were grinding even more slowly following the accident because of the approaching Christmas holiday, which runs from Dec. 24 to January 6, plus a few more days before and afterward, during which hardly any activity transpires at any level of government.

Our insurance company assigned us a stocky, gruff woman attorney to negotiate the payouts to the other driver. Our truck was on the wrong lane, so in fact we were at fault. Part of this lawyer's negotiating strategy, though, must have been not returning our insistent phone calls to find out the date of the hearing, which we had to ascertain on our own.

When the day arrived, the aggrieved passengers in the other vehicle showed up, each claiming fifteen hundred pesos (about eighty dollars) in medical expenses which our lawyer promptly conceded. But two of the injured weren't there and the case was postponed two more times.

We finally received our "liberation notice" for our truck which we had to take to the state police office from which we got another document, and go to another state office to pay a fine (about eighty dollars), and back to the state police with the receipt, before finally driving to the corralón to liberate our Frontier.
The caretaker's home and guard cat. 

In all fairness, we were impressed by the efficiency and speed of the State Attorney's Office in handling this matter once they got to it. Or maybe we were just relieved to get out of there at all.

The corralón was guarded by a friendly, middle-aged man who lived in a very modest dwelling, borderline shack, with his wife, a cat  and a wiggly young puppy. They were most accommodating but seemed surprised that we had come to claim our pickup. They remembered our green Frontier but not where they'd put it.

After a half-hour walk around the pound they spotted it—in a corner of the lot, buried behind several rows of trucks and other victims.

Outta here. Hope to never see you again.
 "Do you still want it?" the man asked me, rather incredulously, indicating that he'd have to mobilize a tow truck to dig through the rubble to get to our pickup.

It took two and a half hours before our Nissan Frontier, bruised but still rolling, emerged from the corralón, its front end hoisted by a tow truck also owned by Chucho, who charged us for the towing to and from the pound plus a daily fee for the privilege of staying at his corralón, for a total of thirty-two  hundred pesos, or one hundred and seventy-five dollars.

The Frontier is now resting peacefully at a mechanic/body shop, curiously enough, right next to the other vehicle involved in the accident. Omar, the owner of the shop, was surprised as well that we had been able to extricate our vehicle from the clutches of the pound, which according to him, is a stop of no return for most of the cars that end up there.

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Comments

  1. Hopefully, none of your household were injured in the accident. And hopefully they can repair the truck. I had a 1980 Datsun that was involved in a similar accident. The insurance company totaled it, and then they gave me the carcass back. It was resting in front of my house, and a Gypsy fellow offered me five hundred dollars for it. I took it. He then showed up with a U Haul truck and a long chain. He hooked them together and then pulled the U Haul forward a bit. The damage popped right out.
    It was like a miracle. Two days later, the truck was ticketed for illegal parking in Las Vegas.

    Robert Gill
    Phoenix, AZ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a funny story about the truck showing up in Vegas. When the tow truck dragged my truck to the body show I thought it could never be fixed but the mechanic didn't see any problem. He's working on it right now. Let's see how that turns out.

      al

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  2. Well, I hope the Frontier will soon be cruising the roads again. The Mexican bureaucracy (sp) is amazing...

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    1. The truck is being fixed right now. How good the fix is going to be remains to be seen. I know the burro bumper is a goner and I'm not going to look for a replacement. We'll see.

      al

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  3. Your persistance paid off. Omar is a good guy and the person who bought my Pathfinder! He spiffed it up to the point that it looked better then it did when I had bought it 17 years ago.....

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    1. Omar specializes on Nissans and I never had a problem with him, and in the few instances that we did, he never hesitated to make it right.

      al

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  4. You DO know that the castle looking building is the prison, right?

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    1. Sorry Babs, but that is definitely NOT a prison. The prison is at the other end of town, by the hospital and the Tuesday market, on the highway to Queretaro. I don't know what that building is. They seem to be still working on it. al

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  5. From the headline, I was looking for the details of a midnight run and a flattened link fence. Phil

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    Replies
    1. Ah, Phil, you have a vivid imagination. It was hassle enough to exit with the truck through the main door of the pound.

      al

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  6. My car was totaled twice in the 13 years I have lived in San Miguel. My mistake was that the last time, I called the police that kept me at the scene for 6 1/2 hours. I experienced the mafia-life confiscation of the car and it being tucked away under junks in the holding lot. I certainly related to your experience.

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    1. In a previous blog I wrote about my previous car getting rear ended. You're absolutely right: Don't call the police unless it's absolutely necessary. They will only screw things up. Al

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  7. This reminds me of the time I was rear-ended in Mexico City. The guy who rear ended me was driving someone else's car. He had no insurance. And didn't have a driver's license. Three cop cars with a total of 6 cops showed up to deal with the accident.

    And what happened? Basically nothing. They took a report, and let the guy go. No corralón, no fine, no nothing. Fortunately the damage to the rental car was so minor that it wasn't noticed when I returned it, and I just kept mum.

    Still, given the plethora of stories like yours that I've heard, I was VERY surprised that the guy got off scot free.

    And I hope your truck stages a full recovery.

    Saludos,

    Kim G
    Redding, CA
    Which has the advantage of very ample streets and almost no traffic.

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    Replies
    1. My old truck is being repaired to the tune of $2700 US. Probably not worth it but we don't have the stomach to buy a new(er) one.

      BTW, how's the nightlife in Redding? LOL

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