Global Journalist

Lost & Found in Ecuador

By Abraham Mahshie Posted Sat, Jun 30 2007

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Recently, while on assignment in Quito, Ecuador I returned from a press conference to find my apartment door open and my laptop gone. Its cables and speakers were jumbled on my desktop, my clothes littered the floor; my digital camera, cell phone and credit cards were also taken. I was appalled, for I had traveled and lived abroad for years and never been the victim of a crime. I was also worried. I had just begun a four-month stint covering the petroleum sector, fixing and reporting on the presidential elections in Ecuador for some major American and British media outlets— a great opportunity to make headway as a foreign correspondent. Now, all my tools for journalism had been taken from me.

Omar Handel Mestanza-Blackman confronted me at my door that morning. The transient tenant in my building was large for an Ecuadorean. Heavy-set and tall with short-trimmed hair, dark brown eyes and skin and a smug, grin-less face. The 26-year-old was a self-described “Christian brother,” who recently arrived from the coastal city of Guayaquil and was looking for work. He had received lodging and a letter of support from a local church and my landlord helped him revise his resume, which included journalism experience at Ecuador’s top news station. After Mestanza-Blackman stood outside the building and watched me enter a taxi to the press conference, he got straight to work. In about an hour he stole the landlord’s keys and several locks and borrowed a garbage bag to hide my property as he exited the building, hastily telling the landlord that he would be leaving that day.

When I returned to see my room, I decided two things: I would file a police report and hire a private investigator. That is how the two-month criminal investigation on my first foreign assignment would begin: trying to prove myself as a correspondent while also trying to solve a crime committed against me in a foreign country.

On Deadline

A fellow alumnus from the Missouri School of Journalism who I had befriended in Quito met me at the police station and lent me the money to contract a private investigator. Fernando Burbano, the proprietor and chief investigator at Cobeins was a character from a detective novel: a burly figure, he wore a pinstriped open-collar shirt, sleeves rolled back, gun-strap plainly visible and he had a limp. His office had a worn-out, once posh look to it—torn leather furniture, empty mahogany cases and a deeply treaded carpet— but he was very professional and serious, and he began the investigation as soon as the dollars hit his fingertips.
The next morning I flew four hours back to Miami for the weekend. There, I borrowed an old laptop from family and spent the weekend thinking how to re-organize myself as a journalist and return to Quito without missing a beat. The Ecuador experience had been a challenging and stressful for me in its short month and a half. I was beginning to learn the petroleum sector and terminology in Spanish and had fixed for some major publications by arranging their interviews, attending political rallies and meeting with the future president, Rafael Correa, but pay was low and late to come. My first full-time foreign correspondent job was teaching me that I had to pay all expenses— living and work related—with no guarantee of publication, timely payment or reimbursement. This would add to the mounting expenses and stress of continuing the criminal investigation.

When I returned to Quito, the air was thin, it was raining and dark. The next morning I was back at the crowded police station waiting in line to enter. I passed the outside gate, climbed the four stories of dingy stairs to the “delitos” or crimes unit and pressed them to begin the investigation that I had started for them.

I repeated this exercise for six weeks, visiting the police station, the public attorney at the tourism ministry (which had jurisdiction in my case) and the local courthouse. Each unit only took orders from the other, and I had to request the orders be given, deliver them, deliver the reply and see that they were carried out.

Andean Criminal Justice

In Ecuador, like in many Latin American countries, corruption is rampant, and resources for civil services are sparse. The offices that I visited were barren, scattered with empty desks and overflowing with bureaucratic paperwork. Stamps and photocopies seemed to be the priorities of the office, not solving crimes. In 10 days of police station and courthouse visits, I obtained the warrant for the 24-hour detention of Mestanza-Blackman for questioning, though his location was unknown and evidence of his guilt was circumstantial. I did this without bribes. My private investigator— who found that Mestanza-Blackman had a prior record of theft and armed robbery—told me obtaining such a warrant usually took up to two months.

In the days since the robbery, I became obsessed with the case. I pressured everyone I thought might be able to contribute with frequent calls and visits to the public attorney’s assistant, a lawyer, a police captain, an interrogator, the officer handling my case and I had three cell phone numbers for my private investigator. My old laptop and digital camera were of little material value, but my saved journalistic work was irreplaceable. And, I was angry.

So, I borrowed again and paid an additional sum to Burbano to send two investigators to Guayaquil in the provence of Guayas for one week. There, investigative phone calls had determined that the thief had stayed with relatives after returning from Quito. I arranged for the arrest warrant to be faxed to the police headquarters in Guayaquil. The investigators would stake out the thief’s home until Sunday, November 26, the day of Ecuador’s presidential election.

Election Day

The next week was the most stressful. Every day I called Burbano for news, not even sure if investigators were really in Guayaquil or if I had just thrown away more borrowed money on a hopeless effort to find a professional thief, while wasting my time and energy every morning and afternoon in between assignments. This was the last expense I could afford. I was down to just a few dollars a day for food, and my journalist friend was covering my beers when we went out for drinks while I waited for more correspondence checks to arrive. My only hope was that the thief would vote at his assigned polling station, a requirement in Ecuador.

Late on Sunday morning I received a phone call shortly after Mestanza-Blackman exited his polling station. Guayas police made the capture, but Burbano needed more money to transfer the thief to Quito. The police would not cover the expense of his bus transfer or the cost of an accompanying officer from Pichincha province. I withdrew half of what he requested from an ATM—everything left in my account.

At about 9:30 p.m. the following day, Burbano summoned me to the police station. He wanted me to see the thief booked so he could resign his duty in the investigation. After shaking hands and exchanging words I peered across the street at the station, a dark monolith except one inner hall light visible through the cast-iron perimeter fence. I was livid. I wanted to tell the thief to his face all the frustration, stress and anger he had caused me. A few minutes later, I saw a tall, chubby kid led to a back stairway, hands cuffed behind his back. Then an officer touched the back of his head, he ducked and walked down the narrow stairway and out of sight.

I never spoke to him or saw his face, but for the next three weeks I too would be at the police station every day. I had to ensure the investigation took place. Would he reveal the whereabouts of my property or would his detention expire and he be released just four blocks from my home? I called every day to make sure he was still in jail. I visited the public attorney’s office, the courthouse and my lawyer with lists of questions for the thief and photos of my lost things. My lawyer pretended to be his lawyer so she could access him for questioning. This daily pressure was the only way I could insist to the criminal justice system that Mestanza-Blackman be interrogated, that charges be filed, that his detention be extended and that he actually go to trial unlike in his past detentions.

Recovery and Justice

Apparently, “twenty-four hour detention” was nominal. It means “until you interrogate him” in a back-logged and under-funded system. Mestanza-Blackman sat unvisited by family, unrepresented and alone for a month in the basement cell of the police headquarters. He finally admitted that he stole my laptop and camera and revealed where he had sold them, first to an interrogator and then, in more detail, to my lawyer, giving me the details needed to begin to recover the items.

Two weeks later, I realized the police would not recover the items without a bribe, and I was to leave Ecuador soon. I had to do it myself. First, I found my digital camera at a stolen goods market in downtown Quito. Pretending to be an interested customer, I matched the serial number and showed an officer a copy of my police report. Then, I traveled to the mountain village of Riobamba, six hours south on rural muddy roads by bus. There, I located the computer service center the thief described and requested the assistance of the local police to question the owner. The thief had showed him a pistol, and sold him my laptop and external hard-drive. Nervous and uncertain of his own guilt, the owner complied and returned the items to the police.

In Ecuador or any other foreign country, one of the key factors to adapting successfully is accepting the cultural differences and being prepared. I was not prepared for a robbery, did not have my material backed up and secured, and I frustrated myself trying to make a dysfunctional criminal justice system work. Anger at injustice and resolve to find solutions are two of my main motivations to become a journalist, as is improving the misunderstanding U.S. citizens have for foreign societies.

These aren’t excuses for thieves and inept civil servicemen around the world, but a journalist’s job is not solving one problem for one person but rather to use the limited resources and time to help all citizens.