Beware of Mexican Tangents When you Retire in Mexico

It has happened again and it’ll happen a million times in the future. Mexican bureaucracy has sent innocent people on a tangent. No one is exempt and you won’t be either when you retire in Mexico.

I’m sure you’ve guessed. It’s me who is on the tangent. Here’s what happened.

My husband and I went to get letters stating that we have not committed any crimes in Mexico. This is a standard letter, issued by the state police department, used as part of job applications and other official processes.

At the outset, it seemed like a standard Mexican process. (If you plan to retire in Mexico and need to know more about doing paperwork in Mexico, I have explained and clarified this redundant and confusing aspect of Mexican life in the second edition of my eBook Mexico: The Trick is Living Here.) We went one day to write down the list of required documents and photo copies then gathered them all the next day. Finally–or so we thought–we went back this morning to do the actual paperwork and have our fingerprints taken for analysis. I went back in the afternoon to pick up the letters at the alloted time between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. I was careful not to be late and had the proper proofs of payment in my hands.

To my surprise I was sent upstairs to see another member of the police department. I was horrified when she told me that something showed up on my husband’s record from 2004. I just about feinted when I heard this. Had they somehow recorded someone else’s crime on my husband’s file? I started breathing again when she told me that it had to do with a car accident and I remembered that it was the time a taxi driver ran into my husband on his bicycle. It wasn’t serious, she said, but she couldn’t give me the letter until he had personally requested that the file on the incident be officially closed.

To make a long story short she gave me a date and a file number and sent me off to solve the tangent, promising me the letter once I could bring her a stamped paper stating that the request to close the file had been submitted (and here she was being helpful because she won’t make us wait until the entire tangential process has ground to completion–which could take a month, she informed me). In the course of the next hour I went to about 5 people sitting behind desks and finally got help filling out a bad photo copy of a letter that my husband must sign and I must return, along with 3 photo copies, to the office tomorrow morning.

Patience and Tenaciousness Required to Live in Mexico

As one family member said as she listened to the tale of my adventure today, “I can’t believe your patience.” Hopefully, this tangent will end tomorrow morning. If not, I’ll tell you all about it on tomorrow’s blog. Obviously, if you plan to retire in Mexico you must speak Spanish so you can talk to people and try to make sense out of the bureaucratic tangents. More importantly, if you plan to retire in Mexico, you must be a patient and tenacious person. If those two words don’t describe you, don’t retire in Mexico because you’ll go crazy!