A Mexican style punishment
Domestic punishments in Mexico as in most countries are varied and date to ancient times, but there are some that stand out and are were more frequently used, some of the most notable are:
Kneeling while holding a heavy rock in each hand with arms outstretched horizontaly by the sides.
Getting hit upide the head with the knuckles or the hard handle of a quirt.
Getting kicked in the legs and shins with a hard toed sandal or huarache.
Being whipped with a short two tailed disciplinary whip.
In Mexico domestic disciplinary punishment at home was carried out mainly by the mother as the father was away from home most of the day.
Contrary to what one may believe, mothers were particularly strict and severe, sometimes crossing the line of brutality
Back in the old days (1950s and earlier) mainly in the southeast states of Mexico, it was the norm that women stayed home taking care of the children while the man of the house went to work, it was hard labor in the fields and that meant they were absent from 4:00 a.m. in the morning up to almost 9:00 p.m. and even later.
Women had to deal with disciplining their sons, it was tough love because punishments were very severe, even brutal by today’s standards, mothers gained respect from their sons through fear.
Even a minor infraction could bring a severe punishment from her, that meant getting your lower legs kicked with her hard soled dance huarache sandals and getting a severe whipping with a disciplinary quirt.
My granma passed her quirt on to my mother but she never used it on any of us, later mom gave me the quirt as a present because she knew I liked it, she doesn’t know that my husband is now the recipient of its painful discipline.
Disciplinary quirts had a small handle because they were meant to be used by the small hands of a woman and would be really unconfortable to be used by a male.
My disciplinary quirt’s handle is just three inches long and tear drop shaped, that is the part of the handle that you hold in your hand and it is small, a five inch long shaft protrudes from the bulbous handle and it has a loop at the end where the leather thongs are afixed.
The handle is made of woven raw hide and is loaded to make it heavy so it can be used as a small club for hitting the head.
It was a common paternal practice to hit a boy in the head with the knuckles as a quick punishment, but mothers used the handle of the quirt for a similar punishment.
Sharp blows to the head could be applied using the flexible shaft as a very short whip or use it as a club to hit the head with the tear drop shaped handle.
The shaft was mostly used to whip the shoulder blades, arms and thighs producing deep and painful bruising while the handle was used to strike upside the head.
The usual punishment for getting home late or staying out later than you were allowed was a good kicking in the legs with the hard toed dance huaraches of your mother.
Dance huaraches were hard and stiff with a thick sole made of several layers of rock hard leather, women wore them for sunday dances held at the town main square.
This huarache sandals were made by artisans and sometimes they nailed a bunch of nails at the tip of the sole and back of the heel to act as tap plates, some of the nail heads protruded a little and when getting kicked in the chins it was easy to get hit with the underside of the sole while trying to avoid a kick causing the nail heads to tear the skin which was worse than a direct hit with the hard toe of the sandal.
Some time ago I acquired a beautiful pair of mexican platform huarache sandals for folk dance, these were very common back in the 1970s and mainly used at college or high school dances by the girls of the dance class to portray a modernized look of old time folk dance.
The cool thing about this type of dance shoes is that they were made of laminated wood that was glued together with a resin to make them harder and heavier to sound louder on concrete floors, as they were used to dance outdoors at the school concrete square and most folk dance is like european clog dances, there’s a lot of stomping and you need to make a lot of noise with your feet.
I knew this type of platform dance shoes were heavy and hard but I was surprised when I actually did hold them in my hands, they are quite heavy and the wood is very hard.
I put them on and walked a bit in them, the footbed is covered with thick orange leather tacked to the platform by large round head brass nails.
The cushioned footbed is very confortable and allows wearing them for long periods of time for dance practice, the sound they made with my every step was very loud, in fact louder than any of my other wooden sandals.
I like kicking since I can remember, maybe due to hearing about my grandma’s kicking punishments because my favorite spot for kicking is the shins, It gives me such a rush to wear a heavy pair of wood sandals, with them on my small size 36 feet can make a grown man squirm in pain.
I couldn’t wait to use them to give my hubby a good kicking, I always make sure that the punishment fits his crime, I had to wait for quite a while until he did something that was worthy of getting a good kicking.
This time I had everything necessary to give him a punishment in the old fashioned mexican way, I had a pair of hard toed dance huaraches a discipline quirt and getting ahold of two heavy rocks was no problem.
A few days ago my husband did one of the things that I hate the most, he very seldom calls when he is going to be late with his friends at the pool table or other places he uses to go with them.
I have no problem if he goes to drink a beer or two with them, but I want to know if he’s going to be home late, so I don’t worry unnecessarily, but sometimes he doesn’t call because his friends taunt him when they catch him calling to tell me he will be late.
I’ve told him to eat his pride because it is very important that I know where he is at and when he will be home, but I guess it is his macho pride that makes him not to call me and get punished instead of losing face with his friends.
A few days after his fault I did hold a mexican style punishment for my stubborn husband, I started with a good kicking to his legs followed by penance time on his knees holding an almost one pound rock in each hand while getting more quirt lashes and kicks to his butt plus a couple of exquisitely painful kicks to the underside of his heels, my granma used to do this to my uncles when they went to far away places without permission and came home late, it is incredibly painful and if the kicks are given hard it can be incapacitating because the heels are left so tender that the victim can barely walk.
I left him kneeling until he could no longer keep his arms outstreched, next it was time for him to bend over the chair for a good hard eight minute quirt whipping, afterwards he got more kneeling time while holding the rocks, then one more minute of quirt lashes bent over the chair and finally a last minute of kneeling time holding the heavy rocks.
A little while after the punishment my husband complained that my new sandals had hurt him terribly, even more than my 7 inch heel asian style clogs, which I use whenever I feel he needs a very painful kicking.
He is supposed to accept the punishment I give him and he must agree that the severity I employ varies accordingly with the seriousness of his offense.
I told him that his complaining was proof that he didn’t accept his fault fully and he would have to go back to the punishment room, I told him that not calling me when he was going to be late was a serious offense because I worried unnecessarily, furthermore he showed that he didn’t care about me or what I felt, and not accepting a painful punishment for it was a serious offense in itself so he was going to get an even more severe kicking for his total lack of respect for me.
He had already put his underwear on but there was no escape for him and I delivered a long eight minute kicking, I finished him off with 22 hard shin kicks and four hard kicks to the underside of both heels, these new sandals are my favorites now, heavy and very hard, they have an authority that none of my other kicking sandals have.
He howled piteously from the sharp pain in his shins he surely learned a lesson this time!
If you want to check out this punishment you can visit my page at the links section.