TRAUMA DE TRAMITE Y TAMALES

This morning we went to Immigration to renew our visas.  It doesn't seem like a year since we first did this, but it is.  It's not a long walk, which is a good thing, since people usually have to make several trips to accomplish anything.

The office opens at 9 am.  We were there at 8:45.  There was already a line of course, but we weren't worried since we're of the Tercer Edad status and can go to the front of the line once everyone is inside and waiting to access a clerk.

The woman who waited on us was rude and nasty.  She perused our documents.  She said our letters of petition (one of the several requirements) were incomplete because we need to say. . ., and then she uttered a long sentence starting with "manifiesto."  I asked her to please repeat and she looked disgusted, but she said it again, very fast.  I got "manifiesto bajo protesta...."  I asked her if she could write it down.  She refused.  We also needed yet another copy of our US bank statements from the last three months.  We also had to go to our local bank and pay the government fee, which we knew we would have to do, and then bring back the original receipt and two copies.  All this meant we had to come back another time and hope we had everything we needed.

So we came home.  I wanted to wait and go back tomorrow, but el sr J was infected with resolve to counter-attack at once.  Teh [sic] internets are wonderful.  I typed in "manifiesto bajo protesta" and got this:  MANIFIESTO BAJO PROTESTA DE DECIR VERDAD QUE LOS DOCUMENTOS QUE EXHIBO SON FIDEDIGNOS Y COPIA FIEL DE LOS ORIGINALES QUE EN ESTE MOMENTO PRESENTO.  No wonder I couldn't remember it.  It basically says I swear these documents and copies are true.  This statement was new to us:  we didn't have to swear about anything (except the process) last year.

So we went to the bank, went home to make more (true) copies of things, and then hiked to the office. I wanted to go to a new window for a different bureaucrat, but el sr J wanted to grapple with the same one.  Victory.  Kachunk, kachunk, she stamped many pages, kept our old visas (we can't travel without them), gave us passwords to access our account on their website.  We will be looking on line for the outcome, which, if things go as they should, would mean we will have new visas in a couple of days.  Then she added a last note of officiousness:  if nothing appears on line in 10 days, we have to go back to her and find out what the trouble is.

We treated ourselves with tamales for lunch and now we're exhausted.