Bureaucratic Shenanigans

My work visa in Peru, called a “carné de extranjería,” runs out next Friday and there are hoops to jump through. Believe me; no flaming rings in a dog show/circus were ever more humiliatingly frustrating than third world red tape. The whole thing is a study in Latin American bureaucracy that makes even me stand gape-jawed and incredulous. There are aspects so disarming in their ability to allow you to believe that it will somehow differ from the expected, that you just simply cannot believe it. For example, the carné itself is a most professional looking piece of plastic with the photo and everything, just like a driver’s license from any state in the union. That one aspect can lead you to believe that the process that got you the piece of plastic in the first place was somehow similar to a comparable process in said state; but that would be oh, so wrong!

In order to renew the carné, which renewal amounts to a little sticker that goes on the back of the card, we were required to submit a letter, from outside of Peru, signed by my boss, saying that Mr. Rich has a contract with our company that has been extended for another year and would the department of immigration please grant an extension of the related carné, yada, yada, yada. My boss and I were in Arequipa at the same time, so I simple mindedly, thought, “I’ll get him to sign this here, get a copy of his passport and send this in with the necessary payment and pre-paid envelope to get it back to me in the US and save him a trip to the consulate. Duh…slam dunk!” I got him to sign it and once back home, arranged for it to arrive at the consulate with his return address, a note saying what we needed and I thought it all pretty neat. Wrong!!!!!!!!

I hate getting blind sided. The personnel in the consulate changed with the new president in Peru. I get this call back from the nice lady at the consulate informing me that the signature on the letter must be legalized in order for them to legalize the signature for Peru. What? If you are dizzy now, just wait. She told me that they needed me to notarize my bosses signature with a notary in New Mexico, (my boss lives in Denver) then run it up to Santa Fe to the state Attorney General’s office and get them to send a letter verifying that the signature notary’s signature was a legitimate one. I said, well, “John lives in Denver, I was trying to save him some time and I would see if he could go into the consulate and sign the letter in person.” This preempted her sending the whole mess back to me and starting from zero. John is really busy in Denver, a little prone to procrastinate and so I got that sinking feeling that I would not get it done in time.

To his credit, he went in, a little late but I got the letter in the end. As a secondary element, my carné is obviously connected with my passport number. After I got the papers back, on Saturday more than a week ago, I started to look for my passport, not finding it in the two places I always leave it. I spent more than six hours on a passport-treasure hunt and could not turn it up after turning over most of the house. I did not sleep all night and could not recall for the life of me where I had it last. I prayed fervently for help in finding it but nothing came to me and it did not accidentally turn up.

What had I done with it? Gr-r-r-r-r! I arrived at the decision that it was lost or stolen and on Tuesday, I began the process of canceling my travels and putting together a new trip just to Argentina for some business there. I also began the process of declaring my passport lost and applying for a new one. I could never rid myself of the nagging sensation that it would turn up. It would obviously cause me problems with my carné for the change of passport number and the fact that a new roll of red tape would wrap the whole thing up.

There are groups who say that they can get you a passport in a day but that does not mean delivered to New Mexico in a day. It actually means three days if nothing goes wrong… Anyway, I sat down in the early morning on Tuesday to do this and began by printing out the pages I would need to fill out to get a new passport. While I was printing them out, my printer kindly informed me that I needed to put in a new cartridge, which I did. It then prints out a page that must be placed face down on the scanner to alighn the printer… When I lifted the scanner cover, there was my passport. It was positively surreal. I have no recollection still of scanning or copying my passport! If anyone believes in coincidence, I defy them to convince me that no divine intervention was involved and I am appropriately grateful.

Leaving off, the uplifting miracle story, and back to the miserable rules and regulations story, I took my papers to our lawyerette the morning I arrived in Peru (Thursday) to get her started getting my little carné sticker. Now, she had said that she could get this done in one day… Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha… I told her that I would be traveling to Argentina the next evening but would be available until 9pm, before the flight. She kind of blanched and asked, “Tomorrow?” and went into a phoning fury and asked her go-fer if it could be done in that short a time.

Ready to be astonished? He said that the legalized signature legalizing my bosses signature and the legalization from Peru’s own Denver consulate, with its official looking stickers, stamps and cover letter, would first have to be legalized by the department of the interior in order to then be sent to the department of immigration to ask for the sticker. This would take all day and because tomorrow is Friday and they are lazy on Fridays, it won’t get done until Monday! What a stunner! Well, I have kind of gotten used to it and you may think all you like that I am pulling your leg but, there is not joking with these guys; they don’t have senses of humor as far as anyone has ever been able to determine.

Luckily, the letter had been written in Spanish, because had it not, they would have to send out for a legal/official translation of it before beginning. That takes from a week to a month because; guess what…it has to be legalized!

As it works out, on the next Wednesday, I was to be heading back to Arequipa. Now, instead of killing time in the airport, I will have a driver pick me up at 1am, take me across town to leave my carné with the night watchman at the lawyer’s office, to get the sticker stuck on it, and then repeat the performance on my way out of the country on Friday to pick it up. So it goes in dealing with the bureaucracy of a third world country and not bribing.