Mexico: Land of Efficiency

Mexico, renowned internationally as a country of great efficiency and order, has been discovered to have been engaging in a secret information obscuration endeavor. It has been discovered that government agents have been infiltrating the usually robust information dissemination networks throughout the nation with orders to hide factual information and spread lies.

The reason for the creation of this highly specialized agency, the Inaccuracy Dissemination and Information Obscuration Team (IDIOT), is yet unknown, but American analysts suspect it is a direct attack on the freedom of US citizens. One such citizen has already come forward to testify on the suffering the IDIOT has already caused her.

Emily Van Halen has been living in the Mexican state of Jalisco since September 2008. When the time came for her to renew the permits for her US vehicles she had no idea she had already fallen into the nefarious traps laid by the IDIOT.

"I thought, you know, it couldn't be worse than the DMV" said Van Halen "But even the DMV has a website and a phone number." Surprised to discover that vehicle permits could only be renewed at the US/Mexican border, some 700 miles away, Van Halen pursued the issue with local authorities. "After finding no information online, I started to ask around. I ended up driving to another town so I could ask a lawyer there. I wanted to be prepared."

Van Halen discussed the requirements for permit renewal with various individuals, but was unable to encounter anyone who could give her the information she needed. Each agency she approached provided Van Halen with a new set of recommendations, which only afterward was she able to determine were incomplete and inaccurate. "Even the lawyer told me she was going to call up her brother-in-law and ask him about it. I just thought that's how people must get things done down here. And an agency employee in Guadalajara actually told me that she didn't know much, but that a guy wearing a white shirt standing on the sidewalk out front probably could better help me. I approached him, and he did have a lot of information for me. It later turned out to be mostly untrue, though."

Van Halen was sent on an information scavenger hunt, directed from place to place, visiting four cities in all, unaware that she had fallen into the IDIOT web of misinformation. "It was weird, I asked so many people, but nobody knew anything. It was like no one had ever needed to renew a vehicle permit before."

Discouraged, Van Halen considered legalizing her vehicles rather than renewing the permit, but she encountered the same foul IDIOT handiwork. "Each time I spoke with someone new about renewing the permit or about making the vehicles Mexican, I felt like I got one more tiny piece to the puzzle." Vehicles can only be made Mexican if they are 10 years or older, "Luckily, our truck had just become ten years old," and only if they were manufactured in certain countries. "I had to learn how to decipher the VIN," says Van Halen. "If it begins with a J, the vehicle was made in Japan, and can't be legalized. Luckily, our Toyoto's VIN has a T, for Taiwan, and therefore qualifies. Also, the first digit can determine whether it qualifies or not, but I never quite figured out how. It was all very mysterious." Each piece of information came from different sources, "It was like everyone had heard a different tiny part of the policy."

There were only three points that everyone agreed on. Legalizing the vehicles would cost upwards of $2500. She could only renew the permit at a border town. She would need to have the primary vehicle, her truck, with her, but not her trailer. "Every single person agreed that we didn't have to drive up with the trailer too. It was such a relief. The only bit of good news we had."

When Van Halen reached an information brick wall, she and her husband started the long drive to one of Mexico's border towns. "It's ironic," observed Van Halen, "that the Mexican government would require tourists to spend time in border towns, what with their campaign to increase tourism and downplay the presence of drug cartels and poverty. You'd think they'd send tourists to Cancun or Acapulco instead."

Van Halen drove 16 hours straight to Nuevo Laredo, only to be denied a permit renewal. The basis for denial: they hadn't towed their trailer behind them. "We were outraged, but we were holding it together in case we could still get the permit somehow." The official they approached refused to explain the grounds for denial to more than one individual. He told them that either Van Halen or her husband would have to wait nearby while he explained the basis for denial to just one of them. "You know, because you wouldn't want too many people to have accurate information," commented Van Halen, "you can't have information like this get out. It might end up becoming public knowledge."

Frustrated to have to return empty-handed, and by the $400 travel expenses, Van Halen registered a complaint with the Bureau Of Grievances, United States (BOGUS), which tipped off authorities that the IDIOT is still quite active.

Asked what she would do next, Van Halen commented, "Since we have to drive all the way back to the border with the trailer anyway, we've decided to leave the vehicles in the US, where we don't need no stinking permits."

Meanwhile, the IDIOT remains at large, keeping information from the public and spreading untruth and mayhem.