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."