Impoverished single travelers without credit cards could be stranded by unanticipated foreign airport taxes

Evidence

By the time we checked in at the airport in Guadalajara with only twenty minutes to boarding, I presented our non-refundable cheap tickets to the clerk and was told I owed Mexican airport tax. This was 1980 and I had never flown out of a foreign country before, nor did I have a credit card. I had spent every last peso we had, except for the quarter I was saving to call my friend Dick to pick us up at LAX when we got home. This was the first time I realized my daughter was scared and she started to cry. “Mommy, please, why don’t you sell our clothes so they will let us go home?” Luckily we were rescued by a handsome federal officer who took pity on the stupid single mother with her crying daughter and gave us the ten bucks to pay the tax and board the plane back to L.A. — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 68

Categorization

• XREF: The 1980 pre-credit-card cash economy and unanticipated airport exit taxes resonate with the reader’s interest in how financial infrastructure (or its absence) shapes everyday experience.