The Museo de la Policia Federal has got to be one of the strangest places in the world. Often ignored by guidebooks and maps, its contents are a dream for anyone who is obsessed with CSI:Whatever. I spent a few hours here and can attest to the outright creepiness that the museum delivers.
The building that houses the museum looks like any other in downtown; half-hotel, half-office and all business – hardly the locale for a museum. I took the elevator up a few flights, not sure what I would see as the ding dinged. The woman in the ticket office was downright startled to see a patron. Entering the museum, I could see why. Nobody was there – not a soul. I’d spend the next two hours taking it all in and would not witness one other customer.
The first section of the museum was straight out of a B horror flick. The curator used mannequins to display uniforms that were worn through various eras of Argentine history. The effect was eerie. There were glassy-eyed mannequins at every turn, all seemingly about to come to life. The uniforms were interesting – but not interesting enough to keep my pansy ass from scadoodling through to the next section.
Around the corner was another treat, the long-since-dead bones of a police dog called “Chonino” . Proudly displayed, the sizeable skeleton was flanked with information about his active duty.
Directly upstairs was an incredible array of gambling items, all from busts that have happened over the years. There were poker chips with president’s faces, roulette machines and a poker table. I wandered around for a while, trying to imagine the busts and bullets that had brought these items to the museum.
Not much could have prepared me for the section of the museum that dealt with drug crime. Immediately noticeable was some kind of display showing how heroin is injected, complete with a wax arm and a syringe. Examples of other kinds of drugs (locked in displays) rounded out the room.
Another section went into detail about what criminals faced in jail, a depiction that did not seem pretty in the least. A bizarre bust displayed a prison tattoo of a ship – the designer had glued on splotches of hair to give it a more realistic effect. He failed.
Being alone in the back room was on par with the most nerve-racking experiences of my life. The room displayed gruesome crime scene photos along with the explanation of what had happened to each person. It was all here; murder, murder and murder. It was the most shocking display of gore I’d ever seen, let alone in a museum. Bones with knife chips were out in the open, as were vivid descriptions of sexual crime. A huge case displayed the re-creation of what a dismembered body looked like after it had been dug out of the ground.
Back downstairs, a hundred guns stared me in the face. The display of weaponry seemed comforting given what I’d just wandered through. This section of the museum was pretty fascinating and also contained many other kinds of explosive devices, as well as an old-school diving suit. I wandered around for about thirty minutes wondering just how many kind guns one population needs.
Given the bodies, drugs and ready-to-kill mannequins I’d just seen – it needed lots and lots and lots.
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