"Did you torture him?"
Captain Segura laughed: "No. He doesn't belong to the torturable class." ...
"Who does?"
"The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable. In Cuba the police can deal as harshly as they like with émigres from Latin America and the Baltic States, but not with visitors from your country or Scandinavia. It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal."
Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
Captain Segura laughed: "No. He doesn't belong to the torturable class." ...
"Who does?"
"The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable. In Cuba the police can deal as harshly as they like with émigres from Latin America and the Baltic States, but not with visitors from your country or Scandinavia. It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal."
Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
Leave a comment