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Subscribe to RSSA video "mockumentary" that shows children as kidnappers, corrupt cops and drug traffickers sparked a fierce debate in violence-torn Mexico. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.
MEXICO CITY -- A video "mockumentary" that shows children as kidnappers, corrupt cops and drug traffickers has sparked a fierce debate in violence-torn Mexico, with some people calling it a needed wake-up call while others described it as political manipulation or even child abuse.
Kids playing the role of businessmen, criminals and corrupt officials are seen robbing, paying bribes and shooting it out in a mock Mexico made up entirely of children, all to the deceptively laid-back tune of the 1970s ballad "Una Manana," or "One Morning."
Produced by a foundation supported by private companies and universities and distributed over the Internet, the video ends with a direct message to the candidates in the Mexico's July 1 presidential race.
A little girl faces the camera and says: "If this is the future that awaits me, I don't want it. Enough of working for your political parties instead of for us. Enough of cosmetic changes."
'Discomforting Kids'
Dubbed "Ninos Incomodos," roughly "Discomforting Kids," the four-minute video opens with a pudgy kid-businessman waking up in the morning dragging on a cigarette, and closes with a kiddie-version of alleged drug lord Edgar Valdez, aka "La Barbie," being dragged off to an overcrowded jail full of children by junior cops.
Little girls carrying purses scream and scurry for cover as boys their own age spray machine guns from huge SUVs and assault-rifle toting little cops run to detain them at gunpoint.
Mexicodelfuturo via AP
A child robber threatens his victim in the mockumentary about life in Mexico.
Despite the video's grim images of knife-wielding, migrant-smuggling, gun-toting kids, all the major candidates had praise for it. Leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called it "well done, it's tough but it's the truth."
Earlier, the candidate of the former governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, Enrique Pena Nieto, wrote in his Twitter account: "I support the message of Discomforting Kids. I hear it all the time on the campaign trail; that 'time is running out.' It's time to renew hope and change Mexico. "
Josefina Vazquez Mota, the candidate of President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party, tweeted that "the video of Discomforting Kids is a call that can't be ignored. I accept the challenge, I want to join you."
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Not everyone was happy, however.
The video's vision of a smog-choked, apocalyptic Mexico where kid cops crack down on tiny anti-corruption protesters while pint-sized lazy or corrupt politicians stand by is manipulative, and no candidate could afford to criticize it, TV critic and newspaper columnist Alvaro Cueva said.
"No sane candidate is going to say, 'I want a future with crime, a future with criminals,'" Cueva said.
He called the video damaging and "a very clear violation of the (electoral) law."
A sense of 'despair'
It is a sensitive question in Mexico, where many people believe the 2006 elections were unfairly influenced by a series of privately produced and sponsored ads that sought to inspire fear of Lopez Obrador, warning Mexicans they could "lose everything" if he were elected. He narrowly lost to Calderon.
"The only thing this video does is to further muddy the election campaigns," Cueva said. "This video does nothing but foment a sense of desperation and despair."
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While the 2006 "fear" ads against Lopez Obrador, sponsored by private business groups, benefited Calderon, Cueva thinks this year's fear-video benefits the presidential front-runner, Pena Nieto, whose PRI party has extensive machines in most states that could help him win in the event of a low voter turnout.
"When one watches this video, one loses any desire to vote, and so it foments a low turnout, and in an environment of low turnout, the winner is the PRI candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto," Cueva said.
www.nuestromexicodelfuturo.com.mx
#NiñosIncómodos
Pena Nieto's campaign was not immediately available to comment.
Others, like former presidential spokesman and political analyst Ruben Aguilar, accepted the private group's arguments that the video is an attempt to make citizens think.
"In this country, everyone thinks the worst, and they can never accept that somebody is doing something good," Aguilar said. "I think it is good, it is intelligent and it can help."
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The group that made the video, headed by Mexican insurance company GNP, took out full-page ads in Mexican newspapers saying it was merely reflecting the concerns of millions of citizens "who want to see themselves living in a Mexico that has left behind crime, corruption poverty, unemployment, drug trafficking."
But some objected to the video's use of children.
"It is unacceptable, scandalous, that they have shown children smoking, armed, kidnapping people with pistols and locking them in trunks," Labor Party congressman Mario di Costanzo said on the floor of Congress on Wednesday.
PRI congressman Miguel Angel Garcia Granados called on the Calderon administration to ban the video.
"We are not going to solve the big problems this country faces with sensationalism and shrillness, and certainly not by using underage children in documentaries," said Garcia Granados.
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Leave a Comment:
John Ford...please feel free to eat all the happy meals you want...courtesy of a liberal...oh, and don't wear your seat belt...please smoke all the cigarettes you want....be sure that all the water you use is polluted, salmonella in all your food....heh, have a blast....
I love when people who use illegal drugs try to convince themselves they aren't the problem....those silly liberals just make no sense.....
I agree so I stick to prescription meds or "legal corporate funded drugs". See not all of us liberals are hypocrites! ;-)
Excuse me, but I am not a liberal and I abuse legal drugs just as well, if not better. It's not even noon and I am on my second pot of coffee. Oh well, back to work.
Finally!! Something the libs and conserves can agree upon. Legal drugs before noon!! Cheers RabbitTrick!!
Were the Fast and Furious guns for the kids? Seems they are the ones speaking the truth.
the US should take over Mexico knock down the borders, let our swat teams take care of the drug and people smugglers, let all the people who want cross the border BOTH WAYS! I will be in Cancun!
Awesome! These kids need help and a future.
It took me a couple minutes to shake it off. BRAVO!
It's the drug demand from the US fueling both Mexico crime and economy at the same time. If US is to legalize drugs and start producing them domestically Mexico is going to be doomed.
Thank God for people who see a corrupt government and are willing to do something. Best video I've seen come out of there. Now if only the good guys will grow some nads and confront the murders and theives who run Mexico. All those kids deserve a chance to grow up in a democratic society with laws that put the cartels and all the other crimminals behind bars and keep them there. When your leadership is corrupt then it just naturally goes down hill and it all becomes an abomination to society.
keep up the good work and fight for your rights and freedoms.....
Somewhere I am sure we can find a reset button to reboot Mexico. Last year, two Federales came onto US soil and shot at a west Texas rancher who was out hunting. In any other country, this along with the encouraging of illegal trespasses would be met with physical force.
It would not be so bad, if they managed to keep it all on their side of the border. In this case, a few examples made out of those violating borders. Hire more Border Patrol, and give them broader abilities to use force, in combating these low-life.
The Mexican Military has invaded our country several times in the recent years and you never hear about it on the lame stream media.
If Mexican officials and politicians find this video insulting and abusive to children, then they have only to look to themselves to fix the problem. After all, this is only a parody of what they have failed to correct in Mexican society.
Is it a "mockumentary" or a "training video?" Hard to tell with the culture down there.
If the Mexican government were not so corrupt and ignorant, there would be no reason to create this ad.
I believe they see themselves in this video, and think if they can sqaush it, they can save face. Boy, has that boat sailed.
They are probably more worried about their bribes and kickbacks than the people that made and appear in this video, or any 'child abuse' they think this portrays. And they totally missed the point of it.
It is a shame such a brilliant video was made to open the eyes of what is happening in Mexico and actually other countries. We can do better, but does not matter what, curruption will never end and politicians will promise and not deliver. I feel for my fellow latinos and Mexican friends.
It's the same EVERYWHERE. They just do it better. No wonder there are so many of them streamer across the border.
Invade mexico! make it anouther state.Tell people its for the children.But hey they have a lot of oil! And miles of beach front property to develope.Get rid of theyre horrible corrupt government and put in one of our corrupt kind of government.
The so called war on drugs is a joke,i dont do drugs but i bet i could ask around and get some within an hour.
I think there is a big difference between drugs,pot dosent seem any worse than cigerettes or beer.But meth and heroin destroy peoples lives.
Out of the mouths of babes comes the truth.
Outstanding video. Its time for American to do a similar video. Wallstreet greed, the war on the middle class, class warfare in general, the war on drugs, racial and gender tensions, crime, failure to build social and technical innovations unless you can make a buck off of it. And I can go on and on.
Mexico needs to wake up and get with the program. You all need to stand up for your country and fight to fix it. Just don't give up and flee to the USA. That's your home! It's funny how you work really hard hear but there you don't care. That's sad :(
So, I wonder how the kids in the United States would look, what would they portray. Would it wake up our politicians.. Probably not!!!! One, who is in charge now would smile that big egotistical smile and blame a the last president.
It's about time that Mexican nationals actually show the truth. There's definitely a symbiosis between supply and demand as far as drugs are concerned, but if there were a better economic market or economic condition or even economic ethical standard in Mexico, don't you think they'd be doing it by now? Big money = big corruption.
It's ridiculous to blame drug users for being the root of the problem, that's like blaming the Johns for the prostitutes. I think it's time that Mexico stand up and start taking care of it's own Nationals instead of pushing off the social welfare onto America and at the same time acting as if American is the problem. America has it's own problems, but you won't see us pushing our indigent into some other country's borders and demanding they be treated like citizens of that country. I think the children in the video were awesome actors and it really hits home because it is a generational issue. FIX IT.
Child abuse? Ridiculous. It's just an uncomfortable taste of reality.
very powerful video awesome job by these kids sad when a countrys children have more common sense than the adults.
Also, Mexico should be something we could be proud of.
All we need to do is pass laws to outlaw the drugs in the US...OH we did that already....and it's working?
The biggest problem is that when they arrest some here the first thing they do is have a negotiation to lower the charges and get any conviction and so they don't have to keep them in jail as long either. I saw one governor in Arizona threaten a States Attorney to lower charges or she was going to cut their funding there. These career criminals just go in and out of the jails. Like so many times and they do the same or worse crimes again. Punishment is not what they say it is here any more. It's more like a restrictive country club in many cases. And these kids have every right to show their concerns there. Only those that feel threatened would say anything bad about this video, maybe it will upset all of the corrupt politicians and they'll not run again for office......like that will happen at all. It just upsets those that see the truth....that's all.
The film makers and probably the childen in the films will be dead in a week. What a filthy disgusting sewer of a country we have to the south of us. Blame the Americans instead of looking at your own corrupt government and bankrupt culture where your children are being lost to drug cartels at an exponential rate. Sure everyone else blames America for their sickening woes, why shouldn't our 3rd world toilet to the south. STOP COMING HERE IF AMERICA IS SUCH A HORRIBLE PLACE, NO VACANCY!