The first time I left Colombia, they had overbooked the flight to New York and I elected to wait a day and take a voucher for a round trip ticket on Avianca airlines. It had been nearly a year and I hadn’t yet used the ticket. I was participating in a Latin American cultural show at my college and mentioned to some acquaintances that I had this free trip to somewhere in central or south America. Carolina, a girl I had been friendly with over the year, exclaimed that I should come visit her at home in Panama that summer. I enthusiastically agreed and spent a week with her and her family seeing Panama City and spending time at her beach house. My flight went through Bogota since that’s where the ticket had been issued and I had a four hour layover at the airport.
I was not yet twenty-one and took the opportunity to purchase some alcohol, a typical Colombian type called aguardiente. In my teenage rebelliousness I figured I might as well get a little tipsy to help the time go by and assure that I would sleep on the flight home. I bought some orange soda and combined the liquor in the bathroom. I smirked, pleased with my audacity although a bit surprised at my own daring. I returned to the waiting area and sipped my orange sodaa while watching people bustle along through the halls. After an hour or so of people watching I hadn’t even gotten through half the bottle of spiked soda, I felt nervous and a little guilty for drinking, even though I was of age in that country. I figured there were no rules against drinking in the airport since they sold so much alcohol there and also on the plane. I knew my friends had downed plenty of wine on fancy flights and said it made them fall asleep until they landed. I went through my digital camera, reminiscing about the trip and looking forward to printing out the photos when I got home. Unfortunately my boyfriend at the time had not been too happy with my going away to a foreign country alone and I was eager to get home to him. I sipped my soda and willed the hours to pass faster.
A security guard approached me and asked if I was alright. He appeared to be in his thirties and wore an intimidating dark green uniform with a gun at his waist. He spoke in Spanish, a language which I had recently attained fluency in and I responded that yes I was fine, just waiting for my flight to New York after having been to Panama. He asked me about the trip and I told him I had gone to see a friend from college, he was surprised I had only gone for a week and I explained that my summer job was starting soon at home. I’m sure the nervousness of having been drinking showed through, although he didn’t seem to notice and I didn’t feel the effects of the alcohol. We chatted a few more minutes in Spanish and I was pleased at how I was able to keep up the conversation. He then asked to see my passport and ticket. I rummaged through my purse and handed over the documentation. He asked where my Colombian passport was, since my American one said that I was born there. I was used to this question when I was traveling and told the usual reason which was that I had been adopted as a baby and only had American citizenship. He looked at me sternly but closed the passport and handed it back. He asked me why I was going to New York and I answered that my family lived there, not wanting to go into the details that my parents lived an hour north in a smaller city. Whenever I traveled I told people I was from New York since it was somewhere everyone was familiar with. He asked me how I had paid for the ticket and I explained that I had a free voucher with Avianca.
His attitude had been friendly and he had talked with me in a carefree chatty manner. Now his face was stern and his voice serious. I wondered if I was going to get in trouble for drinking the alcohol and almost confessed to it but reminded myself that there was no rule against having a drink ifyou were of age and taking a flight. He suddenly began grilling me with questions like a drill sargent. “Who bought you this ticket? Who sent you? Where are you going? What are you carrying there?” I was frozen in shock and had no idea what to say or how to respond. I repeated my story to him again but he was angry now. He said “we’re going to find out what you’re carrying there and you will tell me who sent you and who you are meeting, come with me”. I stared at him, wide-eyed and terrified. “Ven! Vamos!” he repeated; “come on, lets go”. I was shaking as I gathered my purse and backpack and threw the orange soda in the trash as we walked through the hall. I wondered what he was going to do to me and I wished fervently that I had not been so stupid as to have bought and drank alcohol in the airport! “Why did I do that?! Who drinks by themselves? I didn’t even get drunk or anything! I’m such an idiot, my parents are going to kill me” I yelled at myself in my head. We walked through the airport halls until I had no sense of where I had come from. We walked through doors labeled “security only” and I was about to cry only I was too tense to let even a tear out.
“Enter” he commanded me as he held open a door to a small dark office. “Sit” and he pointed at a chair in front of a small table. There was another security guard in the room and he gathered some papers and put them in front of me. It was all in Spanish and at that moment my language abilities failed me and I couldn’t understand more than a few words of what was written. “Sign” he pointed at a line, I signed. He held out an ink pad and took my thumb and forefinger in his own and smushed them into the black ink. He slammed my fingers down on the paper and my smudged fingerprint remained. He took my backpack off and held my purse as he pointed to a door to another small room. There was a big machine in there, which reminded me of the one at the dentists office when they take an X-ray to see your teeth. A lead apron hung against the wall. He instructed me to stand in front of the machine and it dawned on me what was about to happen. I cried out that didn’t I need to wear that apron? He shook his head. He stepped out of the room and closed the door. I found myself laughing in shock and fear, not knowing what else to do I just could not believe this was really happening. A high pitched beeping sound went off and he came back into the room. He turned me around and left again. Another beep went off and I tried to take deep calming breaths, reminding myself that I had nothing to hide, at this point I was pretty sure they didn’t care about the alcohol. He opened the door, nodded and apologized for the inconvenience. He handed me my bags and held the door open.
I walked out, numb and confused, and wandered aimlessly, just trying to get away from that office. Eventually I found a pay phone which charged nearly two dollars a minute, and called my parents. I explained what had happened and now the tears began to flow freely. My parents were furious at what had happened and were very concerned if I was ok. I explained that I was alright, just shaken up and that my flight was leaving in an hour. They exclaimed that I should not have let them X-ray me but I pointed out that if I had done that they would have detained me and I would have missed my flight. All I wanted was to go home. I boarded the plane, shaky and exhausted and fell into an anxious sleep. I noticed other young females on the plane, some of them looked as shaken up as I felt. I shuddered, wondering if they were carrying drugs. I considered the question which resurfaces in my life time and again, “what would my life have been like if I wasn’t adopted, if I grew up living the life I was born into?”. I realized with a shock that it was entirely likely that I could actually have been a drug mule. Girls were paid thousands of dollars to swallow condoms or balloons full of cocaine and carry them in their stomachs to another country. There they meet up with men who wait in hotel rooms as the drugs go through their digestive system. If so much as one bursts or tears, she will undoubtedly die from an overdose. If she fails to produce every single packet, she may be killed, suspected of trying to keep money for herself. If she dies from a burst package, she is cut open and the rest of the drugs removed. This all only happens of course, if she does not get caught and sentenced to prison, at which point no one will save her or help her and her family probably won’t even know where she is. She could be tortured as well, to get information about whoever sent her, which she would not want to reveal for it would be putting her family in danger. If she makes it through immigration and survives delivering the drugs, she is given a plane ticket back to Colombia along with cash and is often expected to make the treachorous journey again. The drug dealers who employ these women keep tabs on their families and threaten to hurt them if she tries anything suspect. The security guards X-rayed anyone who fit the description. The mules were often attractive young women, traveling alone, to New York city. They were given fake passports and identities and instructed to tell a specific story about where they were going. These girls do this job because they have no other options. They carry drugs because it is the most high paying opportunity for them and their families. I knew that had I grown up there, I would more than likely have been in that situation, and knowing my own ambitious personality, I probably would have taken that risk. I hoped at least that having been checked by the authorities could have saved another girl from being checked. When I landed, I watched a few girls who were by themselves collect their bags and look around uncomfortably. As I walked easily through immigration and customs on the American side I said a prayer of thanks and a prayer for any of these young people who were forced to do such a dangerous job.
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