Waterboarding and Mordida--Learn From the Mexican Experts
Posted: November 6th, 2007, 1:46 pm
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Waterboarding and Mordida--Learn From the Mexican Experts
for release 11-06-07
Washington DC
by Lightning Rod
We owe much to our neighbors to the South in Mexico. There are the obvious things like tequila and tacos and scads of cheap laborers. But there are also other and more subtle cultural influences.
Take the Mexican Federal Police for example. The Federales are a jovial bunch, just like cops everywhere, I suppose. But they are more entrepreneurial and pragmatic.
I've never encountered them in person. But when I was in the business of trading in Mexican vegetables in the late sixties, many of my colleagues had that dubious pleasure.
Two of my partners decided to take their girlfriends to Acapulco. They were riding around looking like rock stars, long-haired and all turquoised up, riding in big cars and throwing money around. The Federales grabbed them. They called it an arrest but it was actually a kidnapping. The next thing I know I'm getting an international phone call from Mexico--twenty thousand bucks and they'll forget the whole thing. Ransom in other words.
It was very creative police work. Why bog down the court system with unnecessary caseload when you can do the job in one smooth motion and send the gringos home and at the same time pocket twenty grand? Blackwater or the NSA couldn't have done it better.
It took me a week to raise the money and send it down there. During that time my friends were held under 'house arrest' at some hacienda outside of Acapulco. Every day the cops would bring them a bag of herb in the morning and in the evenings would take them out clubbing in town. Hey, that's better than an armed guard any day, and cheaper. What I love about the Mexican system is that they don't make things more complicated or uncomfortable than they have to be. They call it 'la mordida'. Cash will grease any wheel.
The Federales also had a method of interrogation to which I am harkened when I observe the recent news about American use of 'waterboarding.' Of course anybody that doubts that waterboarding is torture should probably experience it. But the Mexican Federal Police have a novel twist on the technique. When they want information from a suspect and they want it quickly, they use good old American Coca Cola.
The equipment is simple and the process goes something like this: First a piece of duct tape is placed across the victim's mouth. Then the interrogator takes a bottle of hot Coca Cola, shakes it and squirts it up the victim's nose. I'm told that the resultant sensation is very akin to drowning. The victim at this point tells you whatever you want to hear. Not necessarily the truth, but whatever you want to hear, to avoid drowning in syrupy bubbles. It gives a whole new dimension to the idea of snorting coke.
This is the trouble with torture. Not only is it ugly and strenuous and troublesome, it rarely achieves the result that you are seeking, which is presumably to ascertain the truth.
It's easy for The Poet's Eye to see that we have been learning from our neighbors to the South. We have a system of institutional bribery. In Mexico they call it la mordida. Here we call it lobbying and political contributions. And we torture our prisoners. I think that the Coke up the nose method of torture is ever so much more elegant than waterboarding though. The equipment is simpler, a coke and a roll of duct tape. We need to study harder in the torture department. The Mexicans should be our gurus. What could be more American than Coca Cola?
I'm bugged at my ol' man
Cause he's making me stay in my room
(Darn my dad)
I came in a little late
And my ol' man he just blew his mind
(Blew it bad)
Why did he sell my surfboard?
He cut off my hair last night in my sleep
I wish I could see outside
But he tacked up boards on my window
(Gosh it's dark)
I can't hit the surf, can't drag
Can't do a dog-goned thing
(Wish I could)
---Beach Boys