Are any of these people professional pickpockets?
I had heard about the legendary pickpockets of Buenos Aires before I even left Florida. Supposedly they are some of the most skilled in the world, and indeed I was told they even held conventions and trade shows in Buenos Aires for their craft where they display and share the latest and best techniques for lifting purses and snatching cameras.On my third day I took a walking tour of San Telmo, and as I whipped out my $85.00 Blue-Light KMart Special camera to snap a shot, the guide quietly cautioned me to wrap my hand through the camera strap if I wanted to keep it. He said the pickpockets were known to drive by and snatch cameras loosely held right from your hand and drive quickly on.
Arlean, a 78-year-old expat, and the first I met on arrival in Buenos Aires, told me how she had her wallet and passport lifted from her purse on the subway shortly after her arrival, and it had cost her $100 to get her passport replaced. I was regaled with the story of how on the sidewalks one will come up behind you and drop bird poop on you and another accomplice will rush up to help you clean it up, while the first one beats a hasty retreat in the ensuing confusion–with your wallet in hand. I was told they often work in pairs and one will distract you, perhaps bumping into you on a crowded subway while another makes their move. Any purse, camera, or other valuable not firmly grasped by both hands, or with your arm firmly looped through the shoulder strap is at risk.
Determined not to be a victim to such predators, I quickly made an executive decision to leave my good Canon in its new case locked up in the hostel locker. If they were going to get my camera, they weren’t going to get my good one. I practiced holding my backpack on my back and then on the front of me, clutching it with both hands, with my arms crisscrossed over it in front of me. I watched other subway travelers and studied how they held their purses and bags and even cell phones. I had been told that electronic gadgetry fetched high prices on the street in Argentina and I fully expected to see pickpockets patrolling every subway car looking for careless passengers holding their smart phones loosely by open subway doors, making themselves targets for a grab-and-run.
I began to wonder what a typical pickpocket would look like? Would he be short, small, quick and nimble on his feet? And speaking of feet, I wondered what kind of sneakers he would wear. Would they be shabby, and his clothes likewise labeling him as part of Argentina’s underclass? Or would the really successful pickpockets be dressed to the nines, wearing designer jeans making a pointed statement about their many successes?
I wondered what an appropriate response would be if I felt a pickpocket’s hand in my pocket. Would I feel it at all, or were they so slick they could practically lift your underwear without your noticing? What would I do if I caught one in the act? Should I yell? Should I grab him? What if it ended in a struggle, a subway brawl? How could I accuse them of anything without proof? Surely they could say that they had innocently bumped into me on the subway, which at rush hour is really packed tight with people. If they worked in teams, would I ever know who their accomplices had been? Would they be scarred and scruffy looking? Would they look normal? Maybe a normal look would be the most effective disguise of all. But what did a normal Argentinian look like? I began taking inventory of my fellow subway passengers, wondering which ones of them were the pickpockets. As a writer, I even wondered if it would make a good story to go to the local police headquarters and ask them if they could direct me to a top-flight pickpocket that I could interview anonymously for an article containing useful tips how to avoid becoming a victim. Who better qualified to instruct us?
Whenever I asked about pickpockets I was calmly reassured that the best defense was mindfulness. So I practiced focusing on my wallet and valuables. Which pockets were the best, the most inaccessible? I opted for shirts with velcro strips on the pockets, preferably worn under a light coat, carefully zipped up to within a couple inches of my chin. My back pockets were always empty. My self-confidence grew. I could handle this. I started to relax on the subway. After all, no one else seemed really on edge. Why should I be?
And then today, the inevitable happened. The subway was crowded as usual. I was standing, facing into the interior of the car, with my back to a subway door. My back pockets were empty. People were standing all around me, and to my right was a long bench jammed with people and others standing in front of them clutching overhead grab handles. We had just pulled away from the last station and everyone in sight was doing the usual–avoiding eye contact with anyone else. I don’t know the exact second that I realized there was a small hand in my right pants pocket. It was soft and so subtle I could easily have missed it. It was clearly exploratory, undoubtedly looking for what I knew wasn’t there. My passport or money. My heart raced. This was the moment I had expected and feared. Furtively glancing down I saw the hand retreating from my pocket. My eyes locked on his. Ink black hair, his eyes inscrutable dark pools in an expressionless face. There was no frenzied reaction, no attempt to turn and run. Just a steady gaze. In that moment he and I were the only people on that subway car. Then as we pulled into the next station, his entourage made themselves evident and hastily made their exit, he backing his way to the door on the other side, his eyes never leaving mine.
About four months old, he was the cutest little boy I have seen in Argentina. He was riding on the shoulder of his father, and accompanied by his grandmother. His serious eyes never left mine until incoming passengers obscured our gaze.
As the train lurched forward again, I double checked for my passport. Just in case.
Such a lovely morning read. Thanks. –MaryGo
Mary Go, that was a true story, exactly as I told it. I may never forget the way that little boy put his hand in my pocket, and when I looked down he stared straight into my eyes and watched me as he got carried out the door of the subway car. I’m still smiling. Maybe that was his first training session as a pickpocket, or maybe he will grow up to be a magnificent doctor who saves lives. Who knows? Thanks for reading. I can smell the coffee.
You got me with this one. 🙂 I was a victim in Quito. My husband was a victim near Cinque Terre in Italy, and, like you, we considered ourselves to be seasoned, savvy travelers. In both cases, we let our guard down for a few minutes. Stay vigilant. You’ll be fine.
Connie, thanks for sharing. These experiences benefit all readers. When I head out, I feel like I am “at work” which means I have a job to do, which is to focus and hang on to all my stuff. I try never to take more than I really need, and think through with some care where I put things around my body, which pockets, etc. and creating as much difficulty of access as I can manage. Having done that, I try to relax and enjoy the ride. I like watching the people and wondering what their lives are like.
Now that you’ve mastered Spanish, welcome back to the English writing world !! Good to read something you have written again.
Phyl, I blush to admit I had help with my Spanish response. I have also learned a very useful phrase: Tiene una hermossa sonrisa! Which means “You have a beautiful smile.” Not everyone here is happy all the time (or I might possibly question their sanity), but still there are lots of smiles and laughter. And the best part is, whenever I use this phrase, their smile gets bigger. Thanks for writing, Phyl.
Excellent! Love your stories. I have subscribed so I will have regular access and hopefully follow the ongoing chain of events. My attire is a little “strange” when I am traveling in the high-risk spots for pick-pockets. My money and Passport are in a zip-pouch secure around my waist or across my torso underneath my shirt. I usually also have my camera strap slung across my torso under a lightweight sunscreen cover-up zipped up as well so I have a strange “prego” or weird “body-growth protrusion” but I am much more relaxed with it all completely covered up. In colder climates, it is easier to wear layers to cover it all. I have been lucky, except at an American hotel in Morro Bay, CA where the room cleaners stole a little bag of jewelry and my underwear, bras and matching undies!!!
Thank you Patty for your interest and for subscribing, and it is encouraging to know I am not overreacting to the threat. At first I was prone to changing my mind about the best places to hide my valuables on my person, so for a while my greatest danger was not pickpockets but forgetting where I had put things last time. On one occasion I had moved my subway card so many times to protect it that I finally lost it, not to a pickpocket but by accidentally knocking it out of my own coat pocket. I am normally absent-minded, so it takes quite an effort for me to train myself to always put things back in the same place every time, and the constant focus required to keep track of my things can easily be the most stressful part of my trip.
I just got thru reading your comments/experiences in Argentina. Some of this brings back memories of my time spent in Bogota, Colombia. Especially the part about pickpockets!! Also the bands of children who would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. I remember seeing kids pull windshield wipers off cars, and several streets further down they were in the streets selling them back to you. Busses were the most dangerous for theft. Someone would bump into you, then watch where you put your hand afterwards. All this just showed them where you were keeping your wallet. Then you were watched carefully—-then, as soon as the bus stopped, and you were ready to step out, they carefully picked your pocket; you got off, THEN you realized your money was gone. and by then the door was closed and the bus moved on. It never happened to me, but I learned quickly to be very observant of my surroundings, at all times. Several of my friends lost watches that way. One brother even had his WINDSHIELD to his car taken off, and the thieves did it so quietly that he never heard a thing. The irony of that was that a briefcase was lying on the seat just behind the windshield, and they apparently didn’t see it and it was still there. My landlord’s house was broken into , and the thieves were so quiet that the whole family slept thru it (there were about 8 people inside at the time) Most houses had bars on every window——-the houses looked like prisons. And driving—-the sidewalk was the passing lane sometimes. I did like the slow pace of life there—-people would sit and talk to pass the time away. I found the Colombians very likeable people: and for the most part did not have animosity toward Americans. They may not have liked the American government, but they realized, for the most part, that the individual Americans are not the same as the government. Their chief cause of disgust was the VietNam war, which they viewed as Imperialist Tyranny. ( Hell, I agreed with them about that! ) This was, however, a time long before the Drug War started. When I was there, the chief export was coffee. We didn’t even hear about drugs at that time. My!! How times changed. I do know that the American government made a fiasco in their war on drugs, and only succeeded in pissing off the Colombians. But that’s another subject. Cheers, David Reed