ANTI-METH STORY NOW POWERFUL DOCUDRAMA

Made For Latinos, Movie Springs From A Fotonovela

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
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. Police 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
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 the
booklet's creator, Virginia Madueno, who owns public relations firm
Imagen. "So we thought, 'Aha! A fotonovela.'"

The Central Valley remains a primary distribution point for meth,
according to a U.S. Department of Justice 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 the cartels are looking to expand into other areas with
large populations of illegal immigrants.

'I've seen what it has done'

Immigrant laborers can see setting up a meth lab as a lucrative
alternative to backbreaking work in the fields, but they 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
on 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," said Madueno, who's also a Riverbank councilwoman. "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 available at Latino 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, at nurses' conventions and at
theaters in several states.

When it was shown in the cafeteria of Merced's Margaret Sheehy
Elementary School last month, 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."