MEXICO CITY — The first man caught in the drunk-driving dragnet was a 32-year-old Spaniard who had been guiding his car down this city's Avenida Reforma, apparently confident that as long as he kept going straight, no one would stop him.
After being pulled over at a checkpoint staffed by police, doctors and human rights monitors, Juan Jose Martinez puckered up to a Breathalyzer machine, put in place by a city program that is slowly changing attitudes about drinking and driving.
"This is a surprise!" Martinez said after his September arrest. Moments later, he was carted off to jail, uttering a series of Castilian oaths that can't be translated into polite English.
Launched four months ago amid much controversy, the Drive Without Alcohol program of random breath tests has reached a turning point this holiday season.
Despite statistics showing that car accidents are down since the program's inception, city officials decided to suspend it on Christmas Eve and will also suspend the checkpoints on New Year's Eve.
On a night of the most rampant revelry, Mexico City could return to the old unofficial tolerance of drinking and driving, an environment that has led to the deaths of several hundred people each year in alcohol-related car accidents.
"People drink on the 24th, but it's more of a family thing," said Manuel Mondragon, an official with the city's Public Safety Secretariat. In addition, the city wanted to give police a chance to celebrate the holiday at home with their families. "I don't think we'll have the same problems," he said.
"Before, the police wouldn't stop you unless you ran into something or someone," Stephanie Jimenez remarked as she nursed a beer at St. Patrick's Pub in the city's Condesa district.
"And even if the police did stop you for something else and you were drunk, you could bribe them and they would let you go," said her friend Leon Olvera.
Like most people at the bar, which caters to a distinctly younger-than-30 crowd, Olvera and Jimenez thought the random breath tests were long overdue. The months since the program's launch have brought a marked changed in their friends' behavior, they said.
"At first, it caused a general panic," said Olvera, 23. "The idea of spending a night in jail scared people. They started to say, 'Maybe we should take taxis instead.' People started to get some consciousness about the issue."
