I should have seen it coming – trouble, that is. Before I headed for Mexico in the summer of 1972, I had heard rumors that they weren’t being too welcoming to long-haired hippie freaks. Here’s a picture a friend took of me before I left – what do you think, did I qualify?
The Desert Mountaineer in Vancouver in 1972
The way I figured it, at least if I didn’t look too hippie-ish when I entered the country, I should be okay. On June 18th, I flew via Canadian Pacific Airlines from Vancouver to Mexico City with a brief stop in Guadalajara. Before we touched down, I spent a bit of time in the plane’s bathroom and prepared my secret weapon – a short-hair wig. The wig had already served me well. I had worn it for hippie-related court appearances where I had to look presentable; also, I wore it every day for my 6-month probationary period as a letter carrier. The Post Office was cracking down on long-hairs like me. Let’s just say that if I had applied for the job looking like I did in the above picture, they’d never have hired me. Once off probation, though, I belonged to the rather militant LCUC, or Letter Carriers Union of Canada. The union would really go to bat for you, and sure wasn’t going to take any crap from the federal government, my employer. I still remember it vividly, as if it happened yesterday. The day after my 6 months of probation was up, I walked into the Post Office, no wig, with my hair down. It was like they said in the Crosby, Stills and Nash song “Almost Cut My Hair” from their Déjà Vu album, “I feel like letting my freak flag fly”. The station manager was horrified – he told me that he’d always thought of me as a fine young man who had been doing a good job. I replied that I was still the same young man, and yes, I had been doing a good job and would continue to do so, long hair or not. He and everyone else in the postal station had no choice but to accept the “new” me. There were other long-hairs working for the Post Office, but they had let their hair grow out once their probationary period was up, under the protective umbrella of the union. Mine was more of a “cold turkey” approach.
Anyway, I cleared Mexican customs late that night after landing in the capitol, sporting my short-hair wig, and everything went without a hitch. From that point forward, I didn’t wear the wig at all, and I found that as I traveled around the country, the Mexican people themselves could care less about my long hair. I wasn’t alone – there were Mexican long-hairs like myself, native sons who felt as I did, and they seemed to live pretty normal lives.
A week or so after I arrived, I decided to pay a visit to the Guatemalan consulate in Mexico City. It had always been a part of my plans to pay a visit to their fine country, but I would need to obtain a tourist visa ahead of time. Expecting the worst, I showed up to their office – the place was packed, the waiting room full of tourists. I signed in and sat down to wait my turn. I was wearing my wig, and good thing too! Prominently displayed in the room was a sign which stated, in English: “Hippies or persons with long hair shall not be allowed to enter into Guatemala”. “Wow, they seem really serious about that”, was my thought. They finally called my name – I went in and sat at the desk of some official who asked all the requisite questions. I guess I passed the test, because I paid a fee and he stamped a visa into my Canadian passport. My wig did the trick, as he didn’t suspect a thing.
By July 6th, I had worked my way down close to the border, to the city of Comitán, then hitchhiked the last of the distance to the frontier. Because I was wearing my wig, the Guatemalan officials didn’t bat an eye when they stamped my passport and allowed me to enter. The sign up ahead says “Bienvenidos a Guatemala”.
Entering Guatemala
I caught a bus at the border and headed into beautiful mountainous country, arriving at Quetzaltenango by 6:00 PM. The next days were spent traveling through high mountain scenery and making my way to Guatemala City. There, in the capital, I made my way to the Mexican consulate to obtain – you guessed it – a tourist visa to allow me to re-enter Mexico. It goes without saying that I wore my wig once again, and I fooled them all. That afternoon, I went to the Rutas Lima office to buy a bus ticket for the sum of 6 quetzales for the trip back to the Mexican border. Soon after leaving the city, I had this view of Volcán Pacaya from the bus window – it was erupting.
Pacaya
The bus on which I was riding turned out to have several tourists like myself on it, all heading up to Mexico. During the 4 1/2-hour ride, we got to know each other pretty well, babbling away in different languages. By the time we reached the border, we felt a lot of camaraderie in our little group. From Guatemala City, we had traveled on Highway CA2, which ended at the frontier, at the Suchiate River. The bus drove across the bridge spanning the river and unceremoniously dumped all of us and our luggage at the Mexican customs station on the other side of the river. That done, the driver turned the bus around and headed back to Guatemala.
In the years to come, I would do a lot of traveling in Third World countries. I would cross many borders and visit many strange and interesting places, but never again would I have as scary an experience at any border as was about to unfold that dark night of July 8th, 1972 at the Mexican customs station near Ciudad Hidalgo in the state of Chiapas. Here’s how it all went down.
We all entered the station with our luggage, whether backpack or suitcase, and formed a line. Each in turn approached the customs agent at his counter and presented our passport for inspection. We had all obtained Mexican tourist visas before arriving here, so it should all have gone without a hitch, right? Well, remember my wig? During the lengthy bus ride to reach the border this evening, I hadn’t noticed that a lock of my hair had come undone and was dangling out of the wig. The wig itself was very short, the hair being not above one inch or so in length, so you can imagine how strange that must have looked, a lock of hair about a foot long hanging down from the wig to my shoulder. In case you’ve forgotten, look at my hair in the picture at the very beginning of this story.
When I walked up to the customs official, I handed him my passport – he looked at my photo in it and then up at me. A strange look came over his face, one of shock and surprise, sort of hard to describe, and he said to me “You have long hair, Sir”. How would he know such a thing, I wondered. I looked at a few of the other tourists standing near me and saw a look of horror on their faces. One of them made a subtle gesture, indicating to me that I should check my hair, which I did, and discovered the long strand of hair hanging down. Whenever I would wear the wig, I used bobby pins to fasten my hair, all piled up carefully on top of my head, so the wig could sit on top of it all and hide it perfectly. (It was a good wig, I had spent a lot of money on it, and it always worked well). The jig was up, I was caught red-handed!!
There was no longer any hiding it, so I took off the wig, un-pinned my hair and let it all fall down to my shoulders. One of the uniformed guards walked up to me and said that I would have to return to Guatemala, that I wouldn’t be allowed to enter Mexico. My heart sank. Here I was, at this customs station at night, on the border with no apparent recourse. The other tourists looked crestfallen, unsure of what to do. My head was spinning, I had no idea of what I should do next.
For some reason, I walked back over to the guard and told him that the agent had already stamped my passport at the counter, that I had a valid visa and that he needed to let me enter Mexico, that he had no right to refuse me. He told me to give him my passport, but I said no. I was terrified that he would keep it, not give it back to me, and if that happened, then what would I do. My tourist friends were watching this drama unfold, but nobody was coming up with any helpful ideas. This guard I’ve been mentioning, he seemed to be in charge of letting people he approved go into an area of the room which showed that they had received their final clearance to enter Mexico and were good to go. I hung back, watching him carefully. I mean, this guy had a pistol on his hip, and I sure didn’t want to get him really mad at me.
Minutes passed. One of my friends said that the guard’s job appeared to be to check the passports of people whose visas had been approved by the agent at the counter before giving them final clearance to enter Mexico. Maybe that’s all he wanted to do, maybe just check my passport. Hmmm, if that was all he really wanted to do – that should be okay, I guess. I mustered my courage and decided to give it a try – after all, I didn’t appear to have too many other options at this point.
I walked back over to the guard. He gave me a stern look, and said “Pasaporte, Señor.” I handed it to him – he scrutinized it carefully, taking his time, letting me know by his actions that he was definitely in charge. After an inordinate amount of time, he handed it back to me and indicated that I could join the others in the “approved” area. I was so relieved – it felt like a great weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I happily joined the others and felt like I had a new lease on life. As we sat together and talked, one of them mentioned that this guard had a little side action going on – he was changing money for people. He would take your no-longer-needed Guatemalan quetzales (named for the resplendant quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala) and give you Mexican pesos in exchange. Someone remarked that he was making a killing on the deal, offering a rate way worse than any bank would give, but most of us just wanted to unload our quetzales and be done with it. I thought that I could use a little of that action, killing 2 quetzals with one stone, so to speak – I’d get rid of some unwanted currency and at the same time let the guard know that there were no hard feelings. That’s exactly what I did, and everything was all kumbaya between him and me. I also apologized for misunderstanding his intentions earlier.
We waited for hours until, at 10:00 PM, a bus arrived from the Mexican side from the Cristóbal Colón bus lines, loaded us all in and whisked us away into the night. I was so relieved to have made it through the border in one piece that I actually got some sleep on the bus. When I awoke around sunrise, I saw that we had traveled far into Mexico. The mountains actually looked familiar.
Sunrise, east of Oaxaca.
Before long, we arrived in the city of Oaxaca. I was very happy – my experience at the border seemed like a distant memory, but the night before, while it was happening, it seemed like I was in the middle of a nightmare. I’m happy to say that I never had such a scary experience again at any border.