Pubdate: Tue, 07 Aug 2012
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2012 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Reed Johnson
Page: 5

LEGALIZE DRUGS, MEXICAN TV SERIES SAYS

'Estado de Gracia' was judged too controversial to air in its homeland
during election season

Mexican federal legislator Julieta Toscano isn't afraid to say what
some Mexicans have long been thinking: After six years of turmoil and
55,000 people killed in narcotics-related violence, it's time to stem
the bloodshed by legalizing drugs.

Of course, in real life it would be political suicide for most
politicians on either side of the border to stump for
drugs-on-demand.

But Toscano, played by Mexican actress Karina Gidi, is the lead
character in "Estado de Gracia" (State of Grace), a highly addictive
fictional TV series that began airing this summer in the United States
on the Spanish language Cinelatino cable and satellite channel.

Gruesome drug-related plots and scar-faced mafiosos have been staples
of Mexico's melodramatic telenovelas since a 2006 crackdown on
narco-trafficking by President Felipe Calderon caused his country's
already escalating violence to go viral.

But "Estado de Gracia" is almost certainly the first Mexican fictional
TV series about drugs to place more emphasis on character arc,
dramatic nuance and social critique than on exploitationist scenes of
beheadings, torture and the like.

Even so, the Mexican public TV channel that commissioned "Estado de
Gracia" considered the series too inflammatory to run during Mexico's
recently concluded presidential election season.

That allowed Cinelatino, headquartered in Coral Gables, Fla., but with
most of its operations in Mexico City, to purchase the 13-episode
series and air it first.

Although Cinelatino's primary focus is movies, the company's chairman,
James McNamara, said the series's high-quality production values and
complex storyline, the tragic relevancy of the subject matter and the
skillfully neutral handling of a taboo topic sold him on "Estado de
Gracia."

"I think this really did start out on the premise 'Let's do a drama
where we posit from the get-go the concept of 'war against drugs is
not working, so let's wake up, people, and legalize it, thereby reduce
the violence, reduce the collateral damage,' " McNamara said. Still,
the series suggests that decriminalizing drugs, much like the current
war on drugs, could bring its own set of contradictions and deadly
unintended consequences.

Stylistically similar to Steven Soderbergh's 2000 feature film
"Traffic," "Estado de Gracia" jumps among interweaving storylines to
depict the drug trade's insidiously corrupting influence. All the
characters are complex and flawed in some way; there are no cardboard
saints or villains in this shadowy moral universe.

The virtuous congresswoman Toscano, who sparks a screaming match in
Mexico's federal legislature when she proposes legalizing drugs in the
show's first episode, harbors a secret dependency on sleeping pills.
Her seemingly angelic teenage daughter Ximena, played by Sara Cobo
Botello, is loosening up for parties with handfuls of Ecstasy-like
stimulants.

Other major characters include a high-minded Mexican police captain,
played by Raul Mendez, whose devotion to his career has horrific
consequences for his family, and a sullenly charismatic bad-boy TV
star (Adan Canto) who's waging a losing battle with the bottle.
"Estado de Gracia" depicts the impunity that drug lords enjoy under
Mexico's Swiss cheese criminal justice system and shows a reporter's
morally ambiguous role in covering the bloodbath.

Conceived as a verite, documentary like drama that aspires to be a
cross between "The Wire" and "The Shield" (doesn't every serious TV
drama these days?), the series originally was developed by director
and executive producer Carlos Bolado for Once TV (Eleven TV), Mexico's
publicly funded equivalent of PBS or the BBC.

But "Estado" was regarded as such a hot potato during Mexico's
presidential contest that Once passed on running it because station
officials feared the series might be perceived as partisan before the
July 1 election.

Through its first eight weeks, the series has performed well in U.S.
markets, with an average weekly rating of about 150,000 households, a
solid number for a Spanish-language cable TV show that's not news,
sports or a soap opera. The final episode will air Aug. 27.

Cinelatino plans to re-air the series in September with English
subtitles in hopes of attracting more of the English-dominant,
bilingual U.S. Latino audience.

Gidi, the series' star, hopes that "Estado de Gracia" at least may
help open a cultural dialogue between two countries that share a big
problem each tends to blame on the other.

"Americans don't think that we are doing our part of the job very
well. And I think that the Mexican government sometimes answers,
'Yeah, we make the drug, we send the drug, but it's your people that
consume the drug,' " Gidi said. "And I don't know if you guys are
right or if we are right. Or if we both are a little bit right."
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