Jennifer Lawson Zepeda has been a content writer for over twelve years, writing corporate success stories, speeches, marketing collateral, direct response scripts for 60-second radio ads, and press releases.  Her focus revolves around cross-border relations, and socio-political stories of Hispanics. While living in Tijuana she published several short stories, poetry, flash fiction and essays until her husband became the focus of a group of organized criminals.  The couple was forced to flee Mexico and request asylum for her husband in the U.S.  Since then, she has been marketing her personal story in her book, Save Me Salvador. Her work has been published in:  Moondance, Boom! For real - Better Non Sequitur, SoMA Literary Review, Events Quarterly, Excess Compassion and Eclectica Magazine.

Extortion...The Salvadoran Mail! (April 20, 2010. Issue 16.)

You want to know what’s scary in El Salvador? The freaking mail!

A document arrives in my mailbox with the following huge words scrawled across the top, “Tramite Aduanal Urgente II.” The people at the main post office in San Salvador refuse to identify any specifics about package ‘due to confidentiality.’ This is a package I’m convinced I need, sent two weeks ago by my son, with two paychecks inside and other items I’ve been eagerly awaiting. It has been routed to customs. The extortionists there want their cut. And the lady at the post office tells me I can’t pick it up at the airport after 2:00 p.m. because customs closes at two…lucky bastards!

The next day, I climb into a taxi dressed like some Latin corporate tart. Wearing a navy-blue business suit and three-inch heels, knowing these provincial nitwits have a way of concluding your importance by your dress. The dress pumps are already pinching my feet.

My husband is at work, so off I go, alone to deal with this. Confident and ready to do anything to claim that package! My taxi driver, Roberto, makes good time rushing to the airport as I ride in the back contemplating reasons my mail can’t simply be delivered to my house. Observing anorexic cows with skin clinging to bony ribs grazing along the median strip, or tied to palapas made of palm leaves and tree branches on the sides of the road. A group of three cows cross the road leisurely, stopping traffic with the same slow pace I’ve come to know all over El Salvador, oblivious to the horn honking of impatient drivers. I’m peering at the skin sagging off these animals’ bones, confident I’ll never eat another steak in El Salvador.

Forty minutes later, Roberto pulls into a grassy area looking more like an entry to any community park rather than an airport. I spot the shipping and receiving building, the cargo and aduanal, or customs area of Comalapa Airport - where you claim packages or shipments.

Three different official looking men in customs uniforms study me in my blue suit as if I am an enigma as I show the document and ask directions. They send me to three different locations: a row of offices, a shipping area, and a UPS store the size of most American walk-in closets. The uneven cracked pavement doesn’t accommodate my Latin come-fuck-me pumps with the three-inch heels. I’m wishing I’d worn comfortable shoes.

Finally, I’ve found the right office and take a seat; waiting for the 8 a.m. window to open, noticing it is 8:10 already. Fortunately the room is air conditioned, because it is already suffocating outside. I fidget with the aduanal document, glancing at my watch here and there, peering around at the 1950’s plastic office décor and signs saying: no guns, no cell phones, no food, no drinks; and I wait, and wait and at 9 a.m. the blinds open and bespectacled a man appears behind the counter and safety glass.  

I approach that window marked, “Emissiones de Carta del Carcel,” and I’m watching this man’s eyes inspect my cleavage as he stamps the document I hand him. His smile is like that of the Mona Lisa, it seems to mock everything about me, and he shoves my document under the slot with another document on top. “Vaya a la ventana allá,” he orders.

There are five windows across the lobby. I point to the last one and he nods.

The woman behind the safety glass at the next window glances at me as if she smells vinegar. She tells me to complete customs declaration forms in triplicate, and sends me back to those uncomfortable plastic seats.

“But, I don’t have a pen.”

She shrugs. Not her problem, I guess!

Bitch!

The man next to me offers his pen, and rolls his eyes at her. When I’ve completed these forms and handed them back, she points a finger and directs me out the back door into the sweltering heat, with the same nasty expression. Already it’s so hot outside that I feel the blast of heat as I step out of the door. Another uniformed man I stop for directions - showing him the paper she handed me - slowly roams his eyes from my feet to my face and directs me across the huge uneven parking lot again, to the end of the shipping docks and a set of stairs.

Hiking across that field with broken cement once more, a series of blisters on my heels take on a life of their own, festering in the Salvadoran heat. The area under a rusted aluminum roof is next to the shipping docks. I take a seat and fan myself, staring at every face there, overhearing customs is busy loading the trucks first and will get to us after that. The waitress at “Cargo Cafecita” and outdoor café beside the waiting area, serves two airport employees empanadas. She takes a seat at the counter to slap maza between her palms for pupusas. She serves another employee instant coffee and I decide maybe even an instant coffee is more welcome than sitting there doing nothing. She has a Pipil Indian face and a missing tooth, and she’s less than eager to jump up from her chair at the counter and serve me; but, she brings a styrofoam cup of barely warm instant coffee and tells me there is no cream. I gaze at a milk container behind her. After an hour seated outside, the mosquitoes and sun fight a battle with my patience as I flick my ankle up and down, wondering how many more hours it will take to claim a package. Another uniformed man calls me.

I’m directed to hand over my passport and handed a red badge to wear. They tell me to remove all of my jewelry and put it inside my purse, and hike across the warehouse to another station next to the caged received goods, where I sign another document. Every cockroach in the facility crawls up the walls faster than the agent filling out this next form. I conclude the sun has fried his brain and affected his ability to deal with the mechanics of scrolling the letters he pens. He points to my package with a shy smile and cuts it open with a box cutter. Inside are over a hundred international bank deposit slips which he eyes as if they have nuclear particles attached to them. My disappointment sets in.

He hands me the document he’s completed and I read the declared value. One-hundred and seven dollars and forty-one cents. What? The agent reseals the package as I reach for it. He pulls it away, waves a forefinger at me, and hands over a form to pay duty first. Sixty eight dollars, for a box of paper! Are these people nuts?

Another hike across the lot! The noon heat radiates from the pavement in waves, this time I’m hobbling like a child wearing her mommy’s shoes. My feet as hot as a buzzard’s breath.

I explain to the woman that the documents in the box are bank deposit slips…worthless paper. I pull out my checkbook to emphasize my point. “See! They have no value.” I point to the deposit slip.

She’s wearing way too much eyeliner, has a semi-sympathetic smile, and tells me it doesn’t matter. “It’s based on the declared value.”

“But you opened it! And you saw it has no value. So why are you charging me so much? This is ridiculous! Sixty-eight dollars for paper?”

“Si senora, y mas por… ”

I interrupt her. “More?” I’m ready to leap through that protective window and slap this uppity Salvadoran bitch holding my mail at ransom. “You want more, besides the sixty-eight dollars? For deposit slips?”

“Si, senora.”

“Are you marijuana loca?” I close my eyes to grasp my sanity. “Keep the damned package, senora, and if you feel kind one day, make a deposit to my bank for me!” And that’s when I snatch my passport from the counter, stumble off with my sore feet, nearly tripping before I reach the door. All eyes are locked on my back, watching the huffy American who can’t even walk in a pair of heels. But I still have my money and a smidgeon of self respect.

Roberto whisks me home, pointing out very lean-to along the way while we dodge those anorexic cattle, and I remove my shoes and wonder how extortion is legal in El Salvador.