el crispito

That was the last straw for me, the final point from which there was no turning back. I did not want to be a part of an America that was indifferent about using torture on prisoners, even if they were called "detainees" or "enemy combatants." I expected a tidal wave of outrage from my fellow citizens when it was discovered that the White House, under request from the CIA, asked the Justice Department to give an opinion on the legality of torturing suspected terrorists. That outrage never came.

Oddly enough, some of the leftists that I thought would be most infuriated about their government's lust for torture there were more outraged over the fact that Shawn and I found Mexico to be far and away more tolerant and socially progressive than the United States. Their reactions ranged from skeptical rolling of the eyes to aggressive verbal arguments.

Usually this manifests itself when we relate that in our experience, Mexico is far more enlightened about the gay issue. For some reason, people in the United States tend to underestimate the bigotry that exists there. This could be an artifact of our tendency to associate with more liberal and tolerant people, combined with a touch of false consensus effect (Ross, Greene & House, 1977), but maybe it is because many Americans do not consider the systematic prejudice that exists there to be an urgent problem. So often the victims of such bigotry are told that they are rushing tolerance by well-meaning folks that do not have to deal with such prejudice and think that justice will just work things out eventually.

Yet the Mexican public is also much more progressive and proactive in its approach to the idea of torture. The public line is that it is not to be tolerated, period. Were there public debate about whether nor not an interrogation technique constituted torture, there would be no public indifference about it nor would politicians be allowed to dodge the issue. It would be declared inappropriate. It might be argued that such certainty exists because torture, carried out on its citizens by the government, is a historical reality here. Nobody here would deny that either. International groups such as Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights have reported cases of torture in Mexican detention facilities in recent times, and I have no cause to be skeptical about this. I am sure that the majority of mexicanos would not doubt it either. Mexico has historically been, and in many ways, continues to be a corrupt country.

However, the political situation is changing rapidly here, and like most countries crawling out from under repressive regimes, Mexico's new government and her people are unequivocal in denouncing human rights abuses that were permitted in the past. The studies that are refered to by the above groups in which more torture was found to be going on than previously thought, were conducted with the full support of the Procuradúria General de la República (the Mexican Attorney General's office), although no government officials were permitted to be involved with the analysis or the publication of the results of the studies. Mexico has also instituted legal and social programs aimed at the elimination of torture in the country, such as a program where forensic physicians are trained to recognize signs of torture in detainees.

This stands in sharp contrast to a country where the Attorney General cannot decide whether or not waterboarding is torture and believes that the president should be allowed to ignore what he considers to be an unconstitutional law if he believes it infringes on his executive rights. It does not surprise me that Mukasey will not claim that waterboarding is torture, nor that Americans are not going to make much of a fuss over it. On the other hand, I think it would really surprise Mexicans if anyone in their government hesitated to make a very clear and public statement that such an interrogation method was illegal and unacceptable. Here, the failure to be upfront and clear about that would be political suicide.

Mexico certainly has its fair share of problems, but it seems to emerging from the darkness of an authorian past while the United States seems, at least to us, to be sliding headlong into a future where individual rights are sacrificed whenever necessary to allow the ruling junta to continue its clandestine operations.