A new film, Maria Full of Grace, looks at the poverty inside Colombia that drives many young women into drug trafficking.
By DAVID ADAMS
Published August 26, 2004
[Times photo: John Pendygraft]
Jose Edgar Bonilla, 50, carries sugar cane in the agriculturally rich, but drug- and violence-infested Cauca Valley near Cali, Colombia. Bonilla lives a hand-to-mouth existence as a cane worker.
[HBO Films/Fine Line Features]
In Maria Full of Grace, Catalina Sandino Moreno plays a woman who is trained to swallow the inch-long pellets of heroin packed into the cutoff fingers of latex rubber gloves.
MIAMI - If you get upset by airport security in the United States, you should try Colombia. Coming back from Cali recently, photographer John Pendygraft and I took a full 90 minutes to get through immigration and customs.
Everywhere were signs reminding passengers of Colombia's war on terror and drugs. The one that grabbed John's attention most was the offer of a reward for information regarding mulas, or mules, the term Colombians use to describe the mostly young women who are paid to smuggle drugs into the United States in their stomachs.
So, back in Miami it seemed appropriate that evening to catch the new, highly acclaimed movie Maria Full of Grace, which tells the story of a group of women from a poor town in Colombia who succumb to the temptation of becoming mules. (Maria is scheduled to open in the Tampa Bay area Friday.)
The film is one of those rare moments when Hollywood allows a filmmaker to produce a thoroughly authentic piece of work. The film even sticks to Spanish throughout, a Hollywood first. The story is pure fiction, yet it could be a documentary. Sadly, it is the story of so many young Colombian women.
Maria Full of Grace doesn't try to spice up the tale with romantic sex scenes or a dramatic car chase. It doesn't need to. In Colombia, real life is dramatic enough.
John and I caught a glimpse of it as we drove around the Cauca Valley, a rural area that is the scene of Colombia's latest drug war between rival gangs of the so-called Northern Valley Cartel. Residents complained to us that because of "globalization," and the opening up of the Colombian economy over the past decade, the local job market has dried up.
The only jobs are in the fields, cutting sugar cane for $300 a month. Several people told us the same mantra: "You can't make a living doing an honest job."
With few avenues of opportunity open to them, the young men in the valley increasingly rebel against the conservative Catholic mores of their parents. They want to impress their girlfriends with mopeds, jewelry and cool clothes. But they have no money. So they end up being recruited by drug traffickers who pay $800 to $1,000 a month to work in the hills in clandestine drug crystallization laboratories where cocaine base is turned into export-ready powder. Mules can earn $5,000 per trip, flying between Colombia and Miami or New York.
In the film, Maria Alvarez, 17, works in a flower plant, stripping rose stems for a paltry sum. When she gets pregnant and starts to feel the effects of morning sickness, her boss complains when she asks to go to the bathroom. So she quits.
But the situation at home means she has to find work fast. Her stay-at-home sister already has a small baby who needs medicines the family can't afford. Her mother angrily demands that she go back to work and ask her boss for forgiveness.
But Maria has more pride. Instead, she hitches a ride to Bogota and is introduced to a mule network in a billiards bar. The traffickers train her to swallow the inch-long pellets of heroin. The film shows us how the pellets are prepared using the cutoff fingers of latex rubber gloves. There's always the risk that one will break, with often fatal consequences, or that they will begin to be digested or excreted before the mule reaches her destination. The traffickers tell the girls they are financially responsible for the goods they carry.
Maria struggles at first. She practices with grapes. The Colombian actor Catalina Sandino Moreno, in her first film role, is very convincing as she tries to open the back of her throat and slide them down. In interviews she has explained that her natural look in the film comes from her own learning experience. She'd never met a mule, and had no idea what it involved. The writer-director, Joshua Marston, kept parts of the script hidden until the last moment to make the scenes as genuine as possible.
One by one she slips them down - 62 in all.
On the plane to New York, Maria discovers two other girls on the plane are mules. The traffickers like it that way. In case one gets caught, the others represent insurance.
But one of the mules starts feeling unwell. One of her pellets has broken. Maria's stomach also begins to rebel. She goes to the bathroom. But after expelling several pellets, she washes them off and swallows them back down. She can't afford to lose them.
Women make better mules because of the shape of their bodies. Breasts are handy places to conceal drugs, either by padding a bra or strapping the drugs under the chest. Skirts are also useful for hiding drugs strapped to the inside of the thighs.
Officials say it takes all sorts. One man in his 80s died last year after coming through Miami International Airport with 80 pellets in his stomach. Another man was detained after agents found drugs surgically implanted in his thighs. A woman was found to have drugs hidden under a wig glued to her scalp.
Some of those arrested are young Americans who are lured to Colombia by traffickers offering free vacations.
Traditionally we dismiss mules as criminals who deserve to go to jail and learn a lesson about trafficking in poison. But Maria Full of Grace teaches us that there is a social and economic context to their actions. Before we can solve the scourge of drugs it helps to understand the human side of the trade. While poverty reigns in places like Colombia, there will always be more Marias. By the same token, while the demand for drugs in the United States - and the price they fetch - shows no decline, there will always be plenty of dollars to tempt more Marias.
What she carries inside her may be illegal, but she carries it with grace. She is not a bad person. In fact, once in New York her graceful side takes over, spending her money to take care of the tragedy that befalls one of the other girls.
Who are we to judge them from the comfort of our first world lives? Yes, we'd rather they didn't do it, but maybe they deserve greater understanding.
"Every criminal has a story," one law enforcement official warned me.
