November 10, 2007
What's All This To-Do About Torture?
With the confirmation of Michael B. Mukasey as the Attorney General, the United States once again renewed my satisfaction with our decision to leave the country, as well as my disappointment in our (ex)compatriots' apathy and willful ignorance about what their government is doing at home and abroad. It does not, however, surprise me.
I was astounded when it became clear that Americans would settle for nothing less than an invasion of Iraq, despite the flimsy evidence that the administration used to justify such an attack. I was shocked when the majority of Americans fell for Bush's little trick of associating Saddam Hussein and September 11th, despite the fact that no connection between the two existed. I was even startled when the Abu Ghraib photos seemed to elicit little more than a shrug and collective "what are ya gonna do?" from the collective American consciousness.
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.
Posted by crispy at 05:14 PM | Comments (3)
February 27, 2006
For Those Who Don't Know
Because one never knows who is going to show up at the blog nor how they got there, I thought it might be helpful to give some background on myself and why I now live in Mexico. If you know me already, or if you're just damned tired of hearing me bitch about how the United States sucks now, you can skip it.
I'm a 36-year-old guy from the midwestern United States that does nothing in particular and is married to a guy named Shawn. We lived in the United States our whole lives until 2005, when we decided it was time to leave because we no longer wanted to endure the growing divisiveness, the continuous scapegoating of minorities , the silencing of dissent, the selling out of individual liberties for the empty promise of greater security and the disturbing self-censorship of the media. And that's just the stuff that is going on inside the borders of the country. We also wanted nothing more to do with the never-ending war and the torturing of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the secret prisons in eastern Europe, where people are being held without charge because the government doesn't have to follow the constitution outside the nation's borders. That is not to say that the government has really bothered to uphold the constitution at home either, given the revelations about the president's domestic spying program.
But we were not only at odds with the government, but also with most of the people there. The fact that a majority of Americans inaccurately believed that there was some connection between Iraq and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and that Iraq had weapons of mass distruction although none were ever found suggested that most of our fellow citizens would just believed whatever they wanted to believe, despite any evidence to the contrary. The fact that the country is barreling headlong into authoritarianism (the United States now demonstrates all 14 characteristics of fascism) and that Americans seem to be welcoming this change is very sad. There were just too many things going too much against our way of thinking, so we left.
I had been studying Spanish for the previous three years, and while I am far from fluent, I knew enough to be able to get by in a Spanish-speaking country. We decided to give Mexico a try because we had heard many good things about it, and we had always enjoyed our time spent in the border cities. After a 12-year hiatus in the heartland, we both were longing to be back in a large urban area, and Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico, has several great cultural opportunities as well as the second-best climate in the world (after the Canary Islands, according to National Geographic Magazine). Waking up from their "perfect dictatorship" where one political party ruled for 71 years through a relentless program of electoral fraud and voter suppression, it seemed Mexico was just ending their dark period of authoritarianism while it was arguably just beginning in the US.
Many people suggested before we moved that we would face greater prejudice against us in Mexico as gay guys because it's perceived as such a "macho" country. It is important to note that in April of 2003, Mexico passed a federal law prohibiting discrimination based on several factors, including sexual orientation. No such law is even under consideration in the United States, where the popular trend is for politicians to accuse gays and lesbians of causing the collapse of modern society. And although an occasional macho guy might joke about gays as a source of amusement, at least here in the city, we have yet to see anyone demonstrate the level of hatred against minorities that is so visible in the United States. This is not to say that discrimination does not happen in Mexico, because it does. It is especially prevalent against the Indigenous, transsexuals and women. Yet it seems that here there is more widespread understanding that such discrimination is wrong than in the United States, where often people go to great lengths to justify their right to be jerks to other people.
In December of 2005, we arrived in Guadalajara, and it has been great so far. We currently live in the municipality of Zapopan, which is part of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, in Colonia Chapalita Sur. The purpose of this blog is multi-faceted - to provide information about living in Mexico for those who might be considering moving here, to give people a chance to know the real Mexico and not just the stereotypical image of it that one gets in the media, to keep in touch with our friends and family back in the United States, to discuss the application of classroom Spanish to a practical setting, to share the occasional photograph of funny product packaging, and as seems to be occasionally necessary, to defend our values and choices.
Life isn't easy anywhere. But for us, it's a whole lot better in Mexico. You don't have to be wacko left-wing bleeding-heart liberals like us to read this blog, although it might make it easier to understand why we'd much rather walk a mile to pay our electrical bill, go through elaborate steps to avoid crippling diarrhea and occasionally run out of water than live in the land we left behind.
Posted by crispy at 02:35 AM | Comments (5)