By Patrick Osio, Jr.

Sam Warren has written his book, at last. It’s somewhat of a sad tale, since he had to go through so much grief, abuse, anger, fury, desperation, frustration, horror, and I am sure many other adjectives that probably do little justice to all he underwent.

But his story is also a testament of the human spirit, how it copes, adapts,
acclimates and perseveres in the face of totally strange surroundings, without
any sense of power or control over events unfolding, faced with not only a different culture and language, but one that in which even local natives are
complete strangers.

All this and much more Sam endured, but no one envies him for it, no one wants to duplicate that experience, and no one should.

And that is, I think, what he wants to convey above all else, how to avoid having to go through his experience. In so writing, however, his anger is ever present, a man who once loved Mexico, is now wanting to still love, but is having a very hard time finding room for the return of such feelings of good will he once held.

In time, when his anger subsides, he may again think fondly of Mexico, the
good times, the good people. But like the tattoo obtained after a night of hard drinking without conscious decision, his experience will forever be there, faded with the passage of time, but always there.

The premise of why his living nightmare took place is simply, because he and the others, who were snared into the nightmare, are gay.

Could a drug addict say he was arrested simply because he was an addict?
Not typically. Usually it has to do with the unlawful usage of or trafficking drugs. But what about persons who are present in the same building wherein a drug
trafficker is arrested based on an accusation from an eyewitness, and the authorities, finding that the other occupants are drug users, take them all in the sweep charging them all with the same crime but with the absence of eyewitnesses or evidence tying them into the crime ?

Those arrested, not the subject of the accusation, would say they were simply
arrested for being addicted, and they would be right, but it would be as a
consequence of one in their presence who could not say the same. That person
was arrested because there were charges of illegal activity directed at
him.

Sam and the gang of eight went through living hell as the consequence of
accusations made against one of the occupants living in a residence directly managed by Sam himself.

Sam and some of the other residents of his Bed & Breakfast establishment
had lived there for some time. Sam himself was no stranger to Mexico, having
lived from time to time in the Tijuana area, and traveled through parts
of Mexico.

He lived in his Playas de Tijuana residence for a couple of years before the
nightmare exploded. Up to that point, Sam had never had problems with the local authorities. Sam has always been gay, so why, if it were only a matter of being gay, was he never arrested before?

Does Sam have a right or is he justified in being angry? Of course he has.
Any American who was raised in the United States, who knows his Constitutional rights and is deprived of some or all of them, would justifiably be
angry – particularly if innocent.

I have known Sam for better than 10 years. I would vouch for him, and fear
no compulsion in saying that he was innocent of the charges levied against
him. But I am not in a position of saying the same about his house guests.
So I can understand Sam’s anger, and it comes across loud and clear in his
book.

Sam is also angry at the U.S. Government, with good reason. The U.S., along with Mexico and over 160 other countries, is a signor to an agreement wherein each government is mandated to advise foreign prisoners that they have the right to have their consular representative called, and the consul is to be allowed access to the prisoner citizens of their country, plus the right to oversee that the prisoners are treated with dignity, respect and provided with the same constitutional rights as their own citizens have.

In the U.S., the Mexican government takes full advantage of this agreement. But U.S. consular officials go through motions, they do visit the prisoners, they do give them lip service, they do talk to the authorities, but they do not champion their cause. In Sam’s case and the others held with Sam, there is no evidence that the U.S. consulate questioned the integrity of the evidence, they could have and should have.

What they did do was provide Sam’s friends who had put together a committee
to raise funds for his defense with a list of supposedly pre-screened attorneys, most of whom had paid some local consular official to guide information seekers towards them.

But Sam’s best salvos are directed at the Mexican justice system, or lack of it. And in this too he has a right to do and is justified in so doing. But Sam wants the U.S. to mandate to Mexico what it should do and how it should behave, and this will not happen.

Sam points out that when an American once crosses the border, his U.S. constitutional rights stay home; those rights do not have a passport into Mexico.
Sam probably does not understand or maybe even know that once he and
his companions were arrested, the case became a cause célèbre throughout
Mexico. The arrests and accusations were fodder for news media in every
major city of Mexico.

Sam’s case had all the trappings for good print; Playas de Tijuana, an upscale
neighborhood, close to schools with lots of children in the immediate vicinity, a house full of perverted gays accused of raping a teenage boy, and all the perverts – Americans!

Reporters scurried and scrounged around the neighborhood interviewing local residents, did you know, did you have reason to suspect, was your child safe, did they talk to your children, did they try to get them to go into their house, do you think they raped others, and on and on.

The Mexican press had a field day since the arrested and thus guilty were U.S. citizens. No different than the U.S. media relishes publishing articles about Mexicans or Mexico when some wrong is done – innocence or guilt are not a part of the equation – it’s about selling newspapers.

The publicity removed the case from being one about justice into the political
arena. Local authorities were faced with angry and scared neighbors demanding
justice; they already knew from reading articles, Sam and his friends were guilty, the only ones with questions were the investigators and the court. Unscrupulous
attorneys saw a chance at making some very good money; it was not about Sam any more at this juncture of the case.

Imagine a politician standing before a group of scared and angry citizens saying, “Yes, we found pornographic magazines; yes, some with minors; or at least they looked like they could be minors. Yes, we found pornographic videos, no, none involved minors, but some looked awful young. But – there is no evidence those arrested did anything wrong, the minor they’re accused of raping was not a minor, and he was not raped, he is a male prostitute. So we are letting them go since they have not broken any laws.”

What a field day the Mexican national press would have had at the expense
mostly of the Tijuana authorities and about Sam and his group, but they would have hurriedly scurried back to the US side, before someone changed their mind.

So the Tijuana authorities or the Baja California state authorities could politically
not do the ‘right’ thing – it would have been political suicide. The case belonged to the gods of the political, not the justice, system - Sam and his friends were expendable.

Couple this with a less-than-fair justice system in place, and what happened
to Sam became irreversible.

What happened is now part of history, and Sam’s ordeal is over except for
the nightmares, and memories of the most horrific chapter of his life.

But as he relates in parts of his book, there were also good and kind people, particularly a Catholic nun, and other Christians; this is important because Sam
is (hopefully was) a diehard atheist, and a diehard anti-Catholic, because he
accepted me as a friend, he had to convince himself that I was not really a
Catholic, that I just said I was.

In jail he came face to face, not with past history and dark chapters of the
Catholic religion: it was the face of goodness, of those who do what they do
for no reason other than that is what their religion is all about and they’ve
become one with their religion. He may not know it yet, but this will immensely
help drive the demon memories away.

Sam’s book is worth reading, there is a lot to learn from it, and some of his
warnings and advice are worth the price of the book and time it takes to
read it.

Just remember that you don’t have to be gay to be arrested in Mexico (or
anywhere else), even if innocent, and keep in mind that Mexico does not have a monopoly on injustice or corruption: many an innocent person has been Executed in the U.S. for being black or brown or gay or simply at the wrong place at the right time.

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Patrick Osio, Jr. is Editor of HispanicVista.com an Internet public interest publication serving the US-Hispanic community.