Echoes of The Inquisition

Miranda and I are starting to dig beneath the surface of this colonial city in which we live, and in doing so have discovered that there is more to Puebla than just a well-maintained historic center, several baroque cathedrals, and the cheapest maids in North America.

The city, we found, also offers much to learn about brutal torture.

While walking aimlessly about town in hopes of discovering where the cool kids hang on weekends, Miranda and I stumbled upon a huge historic building that billed itself as an art museum – one we hadn’t heard of. Outside was a banner promoting an exhibition called “Instrumentos de Tortura y Pena Capital” (“Instruments of Torture and Capital Punishment”). Miranda and I, it just so happens, have always been big patrons of the arts as well as of unrelenting pain and suffering, so this was really right up our alley.

I have always had a strong stomach and a high tolerance for physical trauma and gore – I went to public school. Miranda, too, having grown up on Indonesian and British food, is practically immune to that which typically horrifies others. However, little could have prepared us for what was waiting behind the curtains of the exhibition.

All the popular apparati and techniques were well represented: The Rack, The Guillotine, The Iron Maiden, The Judas Cradle, The Chair of Torture, The Skull-Crusher, The Breast-Ripper, The Breaking Wheel, The Pear of Anguish, The Pendulum, The Thumbscrew, The Brank, The Garrotte, The Heretic’s Fork, Water Torture, Crucifixion, Upside-Down Crucifixion, Burning at the Stake, Burning Not at the Stake, Exposure, Impaling, Stoning, Flaying, and Flagellation – to name just a few.

If any of the aforementioned devices and practices are unfamiliar to you, Google them, as I simply don’t have the strength to relive the graphic descriptions and illustrations of flesh ripping, bones twisting and orifices expanding that we read/saw throughout the exhibit. Suffice to say that, while sickened and shocked, we were wholly impressed by how creative humans could be in their cruelty. The inventors of these machines and methods were artists in their own right. Maestros of mutilation. Architects of agony. Miranda and I imagined the conversations these men might have while networking at medieval torture conferences: “I really like the way you designed that giant iron wedge to pierce a victim’s perineum when he or she is lowered upon it, Eugenio, but I think the effect could be greatly enhanced by smearing olive oil on the apparatus and hanging heavy weights from the victim’s arms.”

That sort of ingenuity can’t be taught; you’re either born with it, or you’re not.

Some of the devices on display sounded more like things you’d see in a sex shop and less like what you’d find in a torturer’s toolbox. The Spanish Tickler, for instance, elicited a few giggles – until we read about what it was used for.

While thorough, there were several obvious omissions at the exhibit – lesser-known torture tactics that I felt still deserved a place among the big boys. Examples include The Yerevan Kiss, in which the victim is forced to inhale while standing next to a homeless Armenian, and The Dip of Death, where the victim is forced to go swimming immediately after eating a big meal.

At several stages of the gruesome exhibit, Miranda and I became a bit wobbly and thought about exiting, but each time felt morbidly compelled to forge onward. It was like driving by the scene of a car crash or, more appropriately, an execution -- we couldn’t help but look despite the onslaught of nausea.

While you can read about such torturous and murderous tactics online, or even catch a similar exhibition at some museum in the States, nothing quite compares to seeing the actual instruments here in Mexico. This is one of the places where it all happened. Having been on the business end of the Spanish Inquisition, Mexicans in the Middle Ages got to see – and feel – these horrific contraptions in action. The Spaniards terrorized almost as many Mexicans as the INS does today. Non-believers, heretics, homosexuals and pagans who once walked the same streets as Miranda and I took a pounding starting in the early 1500s. In fact, when in Puebla, if you pick up a taco and hold it to your ear, you can still hear the torture victims’ collective cries for mercy.

(Note: Me being a Hebrew who lived in Spain from 2000 to 2004, I can say with authority that modern Spaniards are much more lenient toward people who refuse to convert to Catholicism. The worst I ever had to endure in Spain was a few pieces of undercooked pork.)

Roughly 45 minutes to an hour after we entered the chamber of atrocities, we walked weak-kneed back out to the street, only to find that the exhibit hadn’t actually ended. Every common outdoor object we saw with any kind of point, edge or plank was instantly converted into an instrument of torture or execution in our heads. Church steeples. TV antennas. Café chairs. Every person we saw was an ancestor of either a victim or a tormenter. Every plaza or square we passed became in our minds the site of a public stoning, stake burning or beheading.

We needed something beautiful and perfect and gentle to help erase the evil acts and inhumanity that had just been etched into our hypothalami. We needed to feel something wonderful, sublime and pure. Something ethereal and exquisite.

But it was too early to start drinking. So we headed to our favorite market in Puebla and risked walking among a sea of human beings – the same animal species that has demonstrated time and again its propensity for callousness, barbarity and savagery. Surely all the smiles we saw in the market were duplicitous. Certainly the laughter we heard was malevolent. Without a doubt the flowers and plants being sold were poisonous. Miranda and I boldly approached a food stall where a local woman was whipping up fresh Poblano-style quesadillas – the same that were likely eaten by angry 16th century crowds while witnessing the flogging of a wrongfully accused witch. The woman cooked her handmade tortillas on a huge metal plate that was suspended above coals hot enough to burn through the flesh and bones of an unwed pregnant peasant woman.

Though we were greeted by the quesadilla cook with a grin and some kind words, I knew in the back of my mind that we were risking death by intentionally tainted cheese. I had already witnessed 30 minutes earlier just how vicious man is at his core. You can neither rely on nor trust the kindness of strangers.

But we were hungry. And so, with the sun shining and couples kissing and children playing all around us, Miranda and I each took a bite of the fresh, hot quesadilla that had been laid before us, knowing full well the great risk we were taking.

And it was delicious.