D-Lab 2008

Bribery and Extortion

The road trip begins, we hit the road at 10 am, and are quickly lost. After going several kilometers in the wrong direction asking for directions and turning around, we find ourselves being flagged over by a police officer. Apparently it is illegal to drive in Argentina with your lights off… The friendly police officer explained to Hoff and Seth that for violating this law, we were required to pay a ticket of $555.43 pesos. According to the law, we needed to go straight to the bank and pay the fine. Luckily for us, he was willing to let us avoid the hassle of going to the bank and continue our trip without paying any pesos… this of course would require a small tip… Although D-Lab officially has a zero tolerance policy to extortion by armed public officers we made a small exception offered 100 pesos and rolled on…