'Estado de Gracia' Ponders Drug Decriminalization Reed Johnson - Los Angeles Times
go to original August 6, 2012

Karina Gidi stars in "Estado de Gracia," the series about drug legalization, seen in the U.S. exclusively on Cinelatino. (Adrian Ibanez/Once TV Mexico)

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 Calderón caused his country's already escalating violence to go viral. But "Estado de Gracia" is almost certainly the first Mexican fictive 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, whose headquarters is in Coral Gables, Fla., but has 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 that the series' high-quality production values and complex story line, 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 story lines 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 Raúl Méndez, whose devotion to his career has horrific consequences for his family, and a sullenly charismatic bad-boy TV star (Adán 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 as well as showing 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 that running the series before the July 1 election might be perceived as partisan.

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. Last weekend, viewers were given a chance to catch up on the first eight episodes in a two-day marathon. Regularly scheduled episodes 9 and 10 will resume Aug. 6, and 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.

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!