Hell yeah. Applause to the tourist. I probably would have at least attempted to do the exact same thing he did, though maybe it wouldn't have ended up as well for me
I kind of get tired of all of this talk "it's just possessions, you can get them back". If people fight back crap like this isn't so widespread to begin with even in bad times. I'm not suggesting anyone be a hero, and I don't know what I would do if I felt a knife stick in my ribs and a voice telling me "dame tu dinero", but not every situation is life or death.
Just the previous night I was coming home from watching Sunday night NFL at our "clubhouse". It was about 1:00 am. We have a dumpster parked almost in front of our building, a bit to the side away from the intersection, and I came around the corner and started to cross the road and saw three guys at the dumpster. One guy was looking in the dumpster while his other two buddies were standing by the dumpster in the street making terribly rude comments and gestures to a very pretty, obviously worried, young lady who had crossed the street right before me and was going down the other side of the street from my building, along my street. These were not cartoneros. They looked like callejeros, probably villeros from Villa 31. I walked toward my front door but stopped when I realized what they were doing. "Oye chicos, todo bien?" I said. They looked at me and laughed and all three of them walked off down the street in the other direction.
There have been a large increase of motochorros and street robberies in my area. Obviously, with the villa close by and a concentration of wealth it's obvious why, but they are becoming more bold as things worsen.
We thought we got hit with an attempt at a moto robo yesterday for a moment. Ended up being an idiot motorcyclist with no apparent intent to rob.
We were taking the girls to the bus station in Retiro to send them back to visit their folks in Paraguay for the holidays. I'd parked in front of our building and loaded up the car with luggage, then everyone got in. The light had turned green and I started to pull away from the curb maybe a foot or so and waited for cars to pass to pull out. We're right at a corner with a stoplight and there was a good bit of traffic. I could have just started moving forward through the intersection and tried to push my into traffic but I was not in a hurry, had a load of precious cargo, and was going to wait for the traffic to clear the intersection so I could pull out.
Then my wife remembered that she had forgotten something for the girls to take with them. We were still within parking range of the curb, not into traffic or the intersection, so I put the shift into neutral, pulled the handbrake and put my flashers on. My wife opens the passenger door a couple of inches and hits a motorcycle who had popped up on the curb to the right of the car to avoid hitting us because I'd stopped. He was trying to get around us to the right to pass through traffic. Damn I hate that! these idiots are much more dangerous than buses and taxis! He stops, looks at his bike and starts blaming my wife for opening her door, even though he had no business being where he was and my wife had no reason to look for a motorcycle to her right before opening the door! I open my door carefully (traffic passing by on the left) and get half out of the car to confront this jackass who's cursing out my wife and noticed a cop coming up the cross street sidewalk from the right to see what's going on. The motorcyclist looks at me, must have seen me looking at the cop because he looked to his right, then looked ahead and took off quickly.
Cop comes up and asks if we're alright, if the guy tried to steal anything. I thought about it and figured he couldn't have been intending to rob my wife because her window was closed when she opened the door and his passing, though extremely strange and dangerous, would have been a horrible way to try to rob. I told the cop no, just an idiot on a motorcycle and he shrugged and walked off.
Keep your eyes open folks. Now not even the airport terminals are safe, much less even reasonably well-to-do neighborhoods. And it's the holidays - people are crazier it seems to me. It pays to be a little paranoid.
