It is perhaps ironic that even as deregulation and free-market ideology have swept through Latin America, the region's most successful export
remains the target of the most extreme government intervention: illicit drugs. As Latin American drug
exports (primarily cocaine but also heroin and marijuana) have rapidly increased, so have government efforts to suppress them. The United States has led the punitive offensive, providing aid and training to those Latin American security forces charged with waging
"war" on the drug supply, but, strangely enough, it is the United States that let their guard down on a “poor” girl, and let Maria go through, in the movie, Maria Full of Grace (2004), written and directed by Joshua Marston, and produced by Paul S. Mezey.
What is interesting, as shown in Tracy Huling’s article entitled “Drug Couriers”, is that there are reports of a significant increase in the number of women arrested and receiving lengthy prison sentences for acting as drug couriers, or mules. It appears that women’s participation in such drug activity may be rising faster than men’s. National sentencing policies that tie sanctions to drug amounts sometimes affect women too, who play small roles in the dug trafficking industry, and have little or no former criminal activities, and they are almost always sole caretakers of children. They claim to have been tricked by people who planted drugs in their belongings; their lives, as well as their families’ lives are at a risk of dying.
In Maria, Full of Grace, Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) has an extremely complicated relationship with the United States of America. On one hand it offers a lot more choices for her to work. But, on the other hand, it is the very structure that is set up to arrest people like Maria. Maria seems to be escaping poverty via the promise of what the United States of America has to offer, but she actually ends up in a similar situation within that country’s structure, as portrayed in the movie, Maria Full of Grace (2004), which was written and directed by Joshua Marston, and produced by Paul S. Mezey.
Maria Álvarez (Moreno) is a 17-year-old Colombian girl who works in sweatshop-like conditions at a flower plantation to help support her family. However, after finding herself pregnant by a boyfriend whom she does not love, forced to bring in the money for her unemployed sister (a single mother) and being unjustly treated by her boss, she quits and decides to find another job, despite her family's vehement disapproval. On her way to Bogotá to find a new job, she is offered a position as a mule — one who smuggles drugs by swallowing drug-filled pellets. Desperate, she accepts the risky offer, swallows 62 wrapped pellets of cocaine and flies to New York City. After a close call at the US Customs (she was about to be X-rayed, until customs found out she was pregnant), she is set free and sent to a hotel where she is to remove the pellets from her body. The traffickers arrive to take the drugs. To retrieve the pellets from Lucy, a fellow mule who died when one of them ruptured inside of her, the traffickers cut open her stomach, then disposed of her body. After seeing this ruthless world firsthand, Maria decides to escape the drug-trafficking cartel.
As we go through the scene where Maria is at home with her family after work, we notice that her dining room and kitchen and living room are all practically in one room. What is even more interesting is that there are some clothes as well in the background, making it seem to be some sort of closet. She gets into a heated argument with her sister, who is a single mother with a sick child, and cannot go work, because of her responsibilities as a mother. Maria is young and rebellious, and wants to know why her sister cannot just work while her mother, who has a lot more experience in handling children. Coming from a family where she is the sole “bread-winner” at the age of seventeen; an age when she should be in high school. In the end, Maria’s mother intervenes and commands Maria to give her monthly salary for the family’s well being, giving viewers the idea that people like Maria have no control over their lives; they do what their families tell them to.
Maria has heard about captured mules on the news and is wary, but according to Franklin, a smart girl like Maria will have no problem. The decisive factor for Maria is the money: up to $5,000 for one trip, an amount that would forever change Maria’s life. Ángel Páez writes in her article, about how “Poverty creates a fertile recruiting ground”. It is, in fact, the assumption people in poverty tend to make about the money that they sign up for such life-threatening deeds. They believe these deeds will get them enough money to live a better life, but they are sadly mistaken.
The money factor is of big importance to people like Maria, who would do anything to get their hands on such a huge sum of money. If mules are sent to the United States, Europe or Asia, where the drugs have higher value, they can be paid anything between 2,000 and 3,000 dollars. The more the courier travels, the more he/she is paid. Sometimes, the amount that can be earned can even go from US $1,000 to $15,000. One then cannot entirely blame them for entering this kind of business, especially when traffickers usually promise huge amounts of money. The sad part is, at times, it is the traffickers themselves who tip the police about a drug mule to make a smoother way for another one in the same area. A shocking story about Evelyn Changra, who attempted to travel to Buenos Aires with one kilogram of cocaine in her stomach, together with her children, aged 15 and 17, who had also swallowed drugs. She had accepted to perform such a horrifying feat because she had never been offered so much money in her life.
This is not an uncommon situation in the drug industry; at the women’s jail on Riker Island in 1991, the women who were arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for smuggling drugs into the United States, they were several who came clean and presented evidence of hard times such as a small business folding, a husband who left with the money and without the children, or as the “duties” as the sister, daughter or wife of a drug dealer (Huling 15).
Sister Marion Defeis, the Catholic chaplain at Riker’s Island women’s facility, found that there was some sympathy for street dealers who had to take the rap for major traffickers, and for people in poor economic circumstances who voluntarily smuggle drugs in exchange for paltry sums of money. No one connected with law enforcement, however, would acknowledge the possibility that a person could be duped or coerced into carrying drugs across an international border. They wanted to work as a drug courier, for the money.
The Correctional Association study taken in 1992 found out that 96 percent of woman arrested at JFK Airport for drug smuggling, charged with A-I drug felonies and sentenced to life terms in prison under New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws, had no prior criminal record.
Maria seeks out and befriends another mule, Lucy (Guilied Lopez), who tells her everything she needs to know: how to prepare herself physically, how to dress and how to act. She also learns that if even one pellet breaks inside her, she’ll die Lucy has traveled as a mule twice before, and those jobs appear to have given her an economic independence, with an airy, uncluttered home all to herself. However, when Lucy talks about her trips to New York, she sadly confides that she hadn’t the nerve to see her older sister, who lives in Queens. Lucy is shown here teaching Maria (Moreno) the ropes to the life of a drug courier, which in such a profession is absolutely necessary. . According to police sources in Peru, "Those we catch tend to be people who stand out because they are obviously nervous, behave suspiciously, or don’t look as if they could afford a plane ticket. But many do manage to leave the country. It’s impossible to take X-rays of everybody, and it’s also impossible to search all the baggage and every object that could potentially be hiding cocaine."
Maria is alarmed and angry when Blanca (Vega) announces that she, too, is going to be a mule. Blanca, however, will not and cannot backtrack; she’s already taken the money. Although Maria is enraged by Blanca’s decision, it is not uncommon for people in poverty to make such drastic choices. Of the 721 drug smugglers arrested in 2007, 62.4 percent (453) were Peruvian and the rest were foreigners, particularly from Spain (45), the Netherlands (29) and Brazil (18). Over three-quarters of the Peruvian "mules" were poor or unemployed. This tells us how far the drug industry has spread all over the world, addressing the different levels of poverty in South America and Europe. Tracy Huling interviewed several women, the interviews of whom were posted in her article on “Women Drug Couriers”, who had been entered into plea bargains, and were convicted of drug smuggling, and received sentences ranging from three to eight-and-one-third years to life in New York prisons.
According to Ángel Páez’s article entitled “Poverty Provides Growing Number of ‘Drug Mules’” by the number of people willing to take the risk is increasing. In 2007, 452 drug smugglers were arrested, compared to 193 in 2006.
In the final scene, we see that Maria decides to stay in The United States of America instead of leaving with Blanca back to Mexico. She understands that by going back to Mexico, she would get into trouble with the drug traffickers who could kill her. Maria therefore decides to stay in the United States of America and hope to look for a different outlet, where she could earn money to start a new living. She (Maria) is smart enough to realize that being the person that she is, she would not be able to lower her penalty. "Mules" who are willing to cooperate with the justice system can reduce their sentences by up to seven years. But if they refuse to cooperate, they risk being accused of belonging to an international drug trafficking organization, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
No matter how positive she may be about starting a new life in USA, she has a very limited range of choices of jobs to choose from. But even if she took a job as a maid, a waitress, or even a cashier at a fast food restaurant, it would not provide enough money to have a better living. She would be living a life slightly better, if not as bad, as back home.
Due to extreme poverty, many are being driven to do things that a person can hardly even imagine. They agree to do certain tasks, despite the countless risks these bring to other people and to themselves, just to be able to earn money. There are several people in this world, like Maria (Moreno), who would give anything to escape poverty, but would never make so drastic a choice so as to put their life in danger. They are the smarter ones, for living a life of poverty is better than living a life of crime.
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