One aspect of traveling in Latin America I’ve always found fascinating is brujería, literally translated as witchcraft. Brujería is a melting pot of Indigenous, African and European beliefs and culture that influenced religions like Santería, Candomblé and Umbanda.

It’s a super interesting topic that is much deeper than this, but as a traveler, you may encounter it in tourist-y forms at places like the Mercado Sonora that is part of the greater La Merced market in Mexico City or El Mercado de las Brujas in La Paz, Bolivia. At these markets, there are all manners of potions, talismans, powders and more promising, among other things, good luck.     

I’d like to thank my good friend and close collaborator smugdog for the idea for today’s post. When we aren’t discussing Eastern European card dealers, we spend a lot of time unraveling the nuances of debit targets, especially a certain prominent one (don’t spend time guessing – if you’re reading this, you know the target). 

He mentioned that sometimes it feels like brujería to get this target to accept your card, and he is absolutely correct. It’s kind of funny that a hobby that is so constrained by systems, guidelines and structure can sometimes have a mystical element of luck to it. But in my opinion, there can be. 

Why is this target (and many others) tricky like this? Well, a lot of platforms in MS can be loaded in a lot of different ways. Between many versions of an app, a website that can be accessed by many different browsers, and many debit cards to use, there are a lot of combinations of access method + payment method for you to try out.

The vast majority of the time, they will all behave the same. But not 100% of the time. And not always related to those two variables, either. The genesis of this blog post was smug and I dissecting a weird occurrence with said target. 

While he has a perpetually working combo as mentioned above, I don’t. It doesn’t matter if I’m on mobile or desktop, mobile wallet vs. debit card, my transactions don’t go through. Until I leave my house, that is. 

All I have to do is head down the street to my local brewery, hop on their Wifi, and the transactions go through, all else the same. The bartender I’m friendly with that’s always there when I’m doing this is probably confused why I went from going there to relax with my dogs to hunched over my laptop, but hey, it pays for the beers. 

While it’s an interesting anecdote, this likely isn’t actionable insight for you. You (probably) don’t live in the same city as me or drink beers at the same small brewery. And on top of that, you could probably find a way to get this target working on your own IP address, because most people can. 

So why am I sharing the story? It illustrates some of the things that are important for success in MS and churning:

• The MEAB mantra of “always be probing” – there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and what works for someone else may not work for you
• The importance of building a network and befriending people with similar goals to collaborate (and gamble) with
• That sometimes things aren’t what they seem, and you won’t know until you try

I can’t tell you what winning combination will work for you on this, but I can say that keeping these ideas in mind will help. 

¡Mucha suerte con la investigación, amigos!