Usted no tiene que confiar en nadie.

Trust. Trust is the sum of a series of unfounded conclusions made about the trusted. These conclusions are rarely based in anything concrete, but more often derived from the trustee´s personal code of social ethics, personal experience and moral values, projected onto the trusted. If person B hits certain arbitrary chords of sociality in person A, this person will somehow feel a lure to trust person B, in order to invest in their mutual friendship. This can be wonderful, and it can be disastrous. One instance of trust proved to be disastrous to me during my time near coastal northern Colombia. My trust was bought with little labor, and sold for a modest financial fortune.

...

¨What are you up to after the Tayrona beach?¨
- ¨I´m looking to go out tonight too, hang out in Taganga and then go rumbear in Santa Marta.¨
¨You should stay at my place, we can leave the things, shower, eat, and then head out to Taganga.¨
- ¨You´ll have plenty of girls, so many girls in my neighborhood.¨
- ¨Hey I´ll get this bus fare, you get the next one.¨
- ¨My parents are just mad at me for giving my brother the motorcycle keys¨

...

No aca en este barrio no vive ningun Miguel. ¿Que direccion le dieron?
- No se, esque solo tengo el nombre, que vine aqui ayer, y ahora tengo que encontrar la casa pero solo el nombre del chavo me se.
A pues esta dificil.

Aqui ya no camine despues de las 10, esta peligroso, mejor duerma, coma y manana regrese temprano con luz, y asi ya le funciona mejor la memoria.
¿De donde es usted?
¿Ala, y que necesita de el?
Viera que usted no tiene que confiar en nadie, la verdad. No importa lo que le digan.

Mototaxis abound in the small town of Sant Marta. These tenacious drivers apply their experience to being the best at disobeying traffic regulations. On my ten to fifteen rides with them, my partly employed drivers probably amassed a penalty of four thousand dollars in the eyes of a Rhode Island Highway Patrol.
They were confused as I attempted to describe the neighborhood I didn´t know. A place I had visited for under twenty minutes in a rush. A street entrance, a sister, a mom a dad I greeted. A street exit, an intersection and I was gone.
¨Voy a encontrar esta casa aunque me tarde tres dias¨

¿Que dejo en la casa de Miguel? ¿Que tiene Miguel de usted?
Aqui no se debe confiar en nadie.

I noticed the panecitos on the counter just the way I did on Friday evening. It was the same store. Down that callejon to the right. It´s down here. I recognize the adjacent house. I´m here, i found the house. The door doesnt answer, the curtain lets me see the room where my backpack and red miniature pack once were. They aren´t there. The house is empty. I knock, and knock. and knock harder. Where the hell are they? They´re surely out and put my backpack away.

15 minutes later...

Ya no está, vino, me dijo que se llevaba su mochila a Taganga que usted lo estaba esperando alla, y se fue.

Senora, su hijo me robo, me dijo que iba a hacer unas llamadas y comprar ron para la noche, y no volvio. Esto no puede ser. ¿Que va a hacer usted?
iSu hijo es un ladron hijo de puta!

Yo no me voy de aca sin mis cosas.
Voy a denunciar esto y van a aparecer.

...

Don Carlos, the father of Miguel Angel BriseÑo, an undemployed, attempted smooth speaker, machista. The father of a Ana, a 15 year old who wouldn´t listen to the slightest command or plead of her mother to put away the dry laundry. The husband of a soft-spoken, timid seemingly battered wife. The father of the most cold-hearted delinquent I have met in person.

A delinquent, someone who breaks the law. This kid Miguel bursts through the law´s cuffs into something new I haven´t seen before. He cultivates my trust with the most convincing scheme. A scheme fully dependent on my status as an outsider trying to get to know his country and its people; my sheer naive amiability. He puts his family and home at the mercy of a stranger he hopes won´t find his way back to them. He renounces all right to return home without his police record burrying him in problems.
Whatever motivated Miguel Angel´s interaction with me was something far far far from anything beneficial to his existence, and to mine.

The lecture, ¨usted no debe confiar en nadie¨ i received from about twelve Colombian´s has made it deep into my head. The emails from my mother I read two days later advised me about being naive and stupid. ¨No vaya a ponerse en situaciones de riesgo para evitar gastos por favor mijo.¨ It frightens me to see the merit in motherly wisdom. During the phone conversation where I brushed the incident aside as something ¨unfortunate but interesting¨ she told me she had been worried about my faith in people; my trusting people, like I often do, who seem nice but have other intentions. As to how she found out exactly what was most likely to have happened to me is a mystery.

I get it, I got it the moment i uttered to myself ¨ique estupido de mierda!¨ inside the gated house in Concepcion II, Santa Marta. I understand the flexibility of the human mind: How the dignity which upholds beautiful systems of trust, shelter, exchange and love can break down in certain people in the wrong circumstances. Leading to their cunning use of these self-sustaining systems in order to pilage them.