At least for the next month, Guadalajara is taking its place — alongside Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum and the Chinese “Bodies” exhibit that showcases preserved and dissected human remains — as the locale for two gruesome but probably necessary museum exhibits.
Located in a former downtown hotel and lacking a significant budget, the three-month-old Museo de la Tortura offers a sometimes illuminating look, in both Spanish and English, at the history of torture in Europe and the New World from medieval times and on, including, notably for this viewer, in the United States.
At the same time, the museum, which was organized by a Italian-based Mexican company called Exposiciónes sin Fronteras (exhibits without frontiers), is also offering on its top floor a more modern, companion show about serial killers (“Asesinos Seriales”), which likewise has its illuminating moments, even though most of it is dedicated to unsettling displays and videos about 12 infamous murderers that you may have already heard enough about, along with explanatory earphone recordings (only in Spanish).Such a museum has probably gotten its share of accusations of unwholesomeness, and these might seem in part justified by a few deliberately creepy touches such as very low lighting and the gratuitous use of skeletons.
However, the staff makes a good case for both shows’ historical, educational and preventive value.
“The purpose is not to exalt the killers, or create myths, like in the movies,” said Luca Pianesi of Exposiciónes sin Fronteras.
And, while perhaps deniers of torture or serial killing do not exist — there are certainly some who deny the Holocaust — it might still be good to occasionally reflect on the depths to which people can sink. (One display in the torture exhibit even showed the Twin Towers flaming on September 11, 2001, with the headline “Is there a time for torture?” apparently aimed at justifying torture at the U.S. military’s infamous Guantanamo Bay detention camp.)
One sure-fire bit of good that could come of such a show is seeing present problems more clearly. For example, while most of us probably believe we can safely relegate torture to the annals of medieval history or somewhere far from our present circumstances, in the exhibit we see a surprisingly modern device alongside the chain flails, knee splitters and red hot pincers – the electric chair.
This execution device — and implicit by its inclusion in the show, a torture device — was invented at Auburn Prison in New York and only used in the United States, currently only in a few Southern states. It was first tried in 1890 on an inmate who died slowly and miserably, although this didn’t prevent it from being hailed as evidence of “industrial progress.”
Another surprising bit of information reflecting badly on the United States could be seen in “Asesinos Seriales,” in a display showing what percentage of the total of serial killers worldwide can be assigned to various countries. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising, but it nevertheless comes as a bit of a shock to see that the United States ranks No. 1 here. (Asked about this startling statistic, one staffer attributed this statistic to “culture in the United States” and “the mixing of many different types of people.”)
Italy and England took a distant second and third position in this grim contest. According to the display, the United States has 1,291 or 58 percent of the world’s serial killers. Considered against its population of 322,583,000, that means .004 percent of the U.S. population is a serial killer. In Italy the figure is only .002 percent (123 serial killers in a population of 61,070,200), while in England, despite the notoriety of Jack the Ripper, the figure is .001 percent of its population (104 serial killers in a population of 63,489,200).Especially in such displays as this, the show could benefit from better citations and a clearer scientific slant, which would make it attractive to people in addition to the teenagers on summer vacation who were visiting the day I attended.
More educational focus is provided by the topic of criminology in Asesinos Seriales, with references to DNA, entomology, fingerprinting, etcetera. This includes dramatic and disturbing post-World-War-II psychological research about ordinary people’s propensity to follow orders and inflict pain on others, such as the experiments of Stanley Milgram at Yale and Philip Zimbardo at Stanford.
The two shows, which fill approximately 12 small rooms in the former hotel, are not new. They began in Florence, Italy (many of the torture devices come from Italy, as well as Germany, Spain and the United States), and have been shown in Europe for decades. The shows were conceived through the efforts of entrepreneurs who are holding the artifacts under license from 18 collectors.
About half of the 80 pieces in the Tortura show are originals, and the rest partially reconstructed, Pianesi said. He added that public reception of the show has been positive and some visitors had thanked him for providing an informative and unusual experience.
El Museo de la Tortura and Asesinos Seriales last until September 7 at Ocampo 85 near the corner of Juarez. (33) 3613-0004. Open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Entrance cost: 50 pesos general; 40 pesos for students.