Pubdate: Fri, 24 Nov 2006
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
Copyright: 2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Contact:  http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/408
Author: Garance Burke
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

PICTURE BOOK WARNS AGAINST METH TRADE

California Targets Immigrants With Familiar Medium

MERCED, Calif. -- Fotonovelas -- pocket-sized picture books popular 
in Mexico -- have gotten a California makeover that authorities hope 
persuades immigrant laborers to resist the easy-money temptation of 
the methamphetamine trade.

Thousands in the meth-plagued Central Valley have read the bilingual 
graphic-novel story of Jose, a farmworker who creates tragedy for his 
family by working for a drug ring. "No Vale La Pena," or "It's Not 
Worth It," has inspired a Spanish-language docudrama, and police 
agencies from Tennessee to Colorado have requested copies of both projects.

In Mexico, fotonovelas often illustrate life's struggles through 
recurring characters, such as the trucker with a heart of gold, or 
the secretary trying to get ahead. Community leaders in and around 
Merced, about 130 miles southeast of San Francisco, saw them as an 
effective way to reach immigrant workers.

"We were trying to get that message across to a population that has a 
very low literacy level and that's really isolated," said public 
relations executive Virginia Madueno, who created the booklet. "So we 
thought, 'Aha! A fotonovela.' "

The Central Valley, a broad agricultural swath that runs up the 
middle of the state, remains a primary distribution point for meth, 
according to a Justice Department report released last month.

Mexican drug cartels have begun to dominate the trade in the area: 
Merced County Sheriff Mark Pazin said they accounted for more than 80 
percent of meth-production arrests in 2003. The federal report 
suggested that the cartels are looking to expand into other areas 
with large populations of illegal immigrants.

Immigrant laborers can see setting up a meth lab as a lucrative 
alternative to backbreaking work in the fields, but end up exposing 
their families to the dangerous work. It's so common for meth cooks 
to be arrested at home in front of spouses and children that Madera 
County has assigned a social worker to accompany police officers on 
drug busts, Pazin said.

"No Vale La Pena" ends even more tragically. Jose, recruited by a 
drug lord to cook meth, hides his backyard lab from his pregnant 
wife, Maria, only to expose their young daughter, Raquel, to a fatal 
dose of chemicals.

"I've known people related to family members who thought cooking meth 
was an opportunity to get ahead and get a piece of the American 
dream," Madueno said. "I've seen what it has done."

The first run of 15,000 copies of "No Vale La Pena" was soon 
exhausted, said Ben Duran, president of Merced College, who helped 
create the storybook using private-sector donations. More were 
printed, and it's now available at Hispanic supermarkets across California.

"Then we thought, 'What if we make the book come alive?' " Duran said.

Last year, Duran started working on a film based on the same story, 
styled to look like a telenovela, or Mexican soap opera. He played 
the drug kingpin in the project, made with help from the sheriff and 
$100,000 in federal funding. The film has been shown in classrooms, 
nurses' conventions and at commercial theaters.

When it premiered in the cafeteria of Merced's Margaret Sheehy 
Elementary School last month, the children sat entranced. As the 
narrator delivered somber anti-drug declarations in Spanish, a few 
third-graders wiped away tears.

"Kids, I'm here to tell you we don't make any of this up," Pazin 
said. "It is happening here in the Central Valley, in California and 
the U.S. People are getting sick and passing away."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman