Maria Full of Grace

Maria Full of Grace

Maria Full of Grace. Dir. John Marston. Perf. Catalina Sandiano Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Yenny Paola Vega, Patrica Rae, John Alex Toro, and Orando Tobon. You Tube, 2004. Film.

The movie Maria Full of Grace is a production of John Marston featuring a 17-year-old Columbian girl. Tough working conditions and other circumstances are depicted as the major driving forces that push her to drug trafficking. In this world, people like her are treated as mules, which simply imply that like animals, they have to transport their cargos without complaint. The girl lives in a Colombian rural town working under hostile environment. To add to her perils, she has to support her family and gets pregnant from a man she does not love. Apart from entertainment from this award-winning movie, it also provides a rare opportunity to understand global planning issues that may help make the world a better place for all. It addresses the major social issues and disparities between regions that make thousands of Columbian take the risk of transporting drugs, which we learn can cost them their lives.

One of the issues that clearly come out is that of neglect to the family unit that predisposes the members to abject poverty. At the beginning of the movie, Maria is the breadwinner in a family of four people. They are living in a neglected town outside the main city Bogotá in a congested house. Her unmarried sister, mother, grandmother, and a young nephew depend on the merger salary she is earning in a floriculture farm where their health is not a concern of the employer. To add to her peril, a man she does not love impregnates her. Yet even under these circumstances, Maria’s decision to travel abroad is highly resisted. This resistance comes because of the pivotal role her presence plays to support the family. Her case helps to reflect on the thousand families who lose their only means of support when young people looking for way out of poverty end up dead in these errands. She is lucky enough compared with one of her friends who is killed by the drug traffickers when she developed problems when some pellets of cocaine ruptured in her stomach.

The manner of disseminating information concerning employment opportunities also brings out another planning concern. After Maria decides to quit her job following mistreatment by her boss and running away from getting married to a man she does not love, she decides to travel to Bogota to connect with a friend hoping to get a new job. On the way, she lands into a young man who offers to connect her with people with a lucrative job, and she agrees obligingly. Other young people are also attracted to the drug trafficking trap in the same manner following peer communication. For instance, in her epic journey to define a better future for her unborn child, Maria tags along her immature friend Blanca.

This movie helps us to understand the interconnectedness of various regions of the world. In particular, it highlights importance of addressing global problems such as drugs from a global perspective as opposed to dealing with the issue at a micro level. It is a story of the manner in which some selfish tycoons can take advantage of regional disparities to benefit themselves. To mitigate these issues, focus should shift on efforts just placing strict immigration measures to deliberate effort to offset regional disparities. Increasing opportunities for employment and youths’ access to them can be one of the renewed efforts.

Work cited

Maria Full of Grace. Dir. John Marston. Perf. Catalina Sandiano Moreno, Guilied Lopez, Yenny Paola Vega, Patrica Rae, John Alex Toro, and Orando Tobon. You Tube, 2004. Film.

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