Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

use of colloquial language and comic expression. For example, in order to extract a
confession, the police chief says to Mr Tinoco, in the episode about the robbery, that
they can do ‘una simple “manita de puerco”, hasta sacarles las uñas una por una, o
colgarlos de la lengua’, 200 and he adds that the reason for using violence is because ‘es
difícil sacarles la verdad con palabras suaves y cariñitos a los hampones. Con ellos hay
que usar la fuerza y la violencia’. 201 These methods, which are described by the police
chief himself, also include skinning the arrested person, pouring boiling oil in the
suspect’s ears and lighting torches in their eyes.
In Hermelinda Linda there are also some references to torture, although not as
many as in La Familia Burrón. In the episode previously discussed in which a man
named Nicanor is jailed after robbing a bank is visited by his mother in law, in their first
meeting he explains to her what the police are doing to him: ‘tratan de que les diga
dónde escondí los billetes, pero no lo van a conseguir… yo soy más duro que
ellos…’. 202 This comment leads the reader to believe that he has been tortured. This is
confirmed when Nicanor thinks to himself that the witch Hermelinda is his last hope
since ‘ya van tres noches seguidas que me llevan al “pocito”…’, 203 pointing out which
torture he has suffered specifically. As we have seen, these difficult subjects are
softened with mechanisms of humour such as exaggeration. This ‘sugar-coating’ makes
it easier for the reader to deal with torture and discuss it more widely.
Later in the story of Nicanor, his mother-in-law goes to visit him again, but a
policeman informs her that he is in the prison’s hospital. The woman’s comment about
this fact is ‘canallas… deben haberle atizado duro.’ 204 This comment points out that
200
La Familia Burrón, 17191, p. 22.
201
Ibid., p. 29.
202
Hermelinda Linda, 363, p.5.
203
Ibid., p. 10.
204
Ibid., p. 19.
148