In addition to being held-up with my wife at a restaurant in Argentina, I have only been held up one other time in my life in Lima, Peru.
I was invited to a friend’s birthday gathering back in Lima, so I stopped by the commissary at the U.S. Embassy and purchased a bottle of Absolut vodka, which at the time was not available on the local market in Peru. When I arrived at the gathering, my friend quickly hid the bottle from all of the other attendees at the party. The gathering consisted mainly of his family and a few friends, but quickly broke up at around midnight, leaving a couple of friends and myself sitting around the kitchen. That’s when my friend retrieved and started passing around the bottle.
While I had my fair share of the bottle, my friend polished off almost half by himself, passing out somewhere around 2:00 am. He later woke up some time that night vomiting while lying on his back, earning him the nickname of “volcano”, ever after. After carrying my friend to his room and ensuring that he was OK, I ventured out to find a taxi to get me back to my hotel.
In those days, Peru was undergoing hyperinflation which caused the government of President Alberto Fujimori to implement some strict and hard-hitting economic measures that resulted in an overnight increase in the cost of gasoline and other items by 300%. This meant that taxi drivers were forced to increase their fees accordingly. But since the general population could no longer afford to pay the taxis, most ended up going out of business.
At the same time, many workers could no longer afford to pay for the gas in their personal vehicles to get them to and from work each day, so they ended up placing a small sign or sticker on their window reading “taxi”, and would take people to their destinations for a few hours before and after work, just to cover the cost of their gas (perhaps a predecessor to today’s Uber?).
So, coming out of my friend’s house very early that morning, the only “taxi” that I encountered was an old Volkswagen Beetle with a messed-up passenger door and a sticker on the window reading “taxi”. With no other cars in sight, I hailed the VW who approached very cautiously, but finally stopped to let me in.
As we took off, the driver apologized for looking me over prior to stopping, explaining that given the high level of sudden poverty caused by the economic measures, he was afraid of getting assaulted. The driver then stated that to protect himself, he purchased a gun, and proceeded to pull a small revolver out from his crotch, where he had been sitting on it. The driver began waving the gun around claiming that he would shoot anyone that tried to harm him and that he knew how to utilize the weapon (clearly, he did not). As we approached an intersection, he shoved the gun back into his crotch while he flew around the traffic circle, pulling it out again after crossing. The driver continued this process for the next several blocks.
Initially, I thought about going for the gun at one of the traffic circles, but seeing as I was somewhat impaired by the vodka, the thought of getting shot over a missed attempt was not appealing. I also had enough presence to realize that I didn’t want to get into a struggle in a moving vehicle entering an intersection where a bus or truck could appear at any time. So instead, I just tried to relax and wait it out.
Approximately two blocks from my hotel, the driver pulled over, pointed the gun at me and apologized, stating that he needed money for his daughter’s medicine. I had less than U.S. $40 in my pocket, which I handed over before exiting the vehicle and walking the two blocks to my hotel (luckily, he brought me almost all the way to my destination).
At the time, it wasn’t a big deal. After all, I was only out $40, part of which I was going use to pay him anyway to get me back to my hotel. But at about 5:00 am that same morning, I woke up in a cold sweat as I suddenly realized that I could have been shot over $40. It was humbling to realize that at that given point, my life was only worth $40.
That same morning, I reached out to one of my police contacts. As it turns out, I was not too impaired to memorize his license plate, and he was dumb enough not to cover it up. The driver was ultimately arrested and his weapon was seized. But I never looked at $40 the same way ever again.