You will find an interesting MSNBC interview with Orlando from May 2004 at. Playing himself in the movie, Orlando Tobon, often referred to as the “Mayor of Little Colombia”, in his one-room travel agency in Queens, has worked with many immigrants for more than 15 years, collecting the unclaimed bodies of less fortunate drug couriers, raising money for their burial, helping people to find employment as well as tax preparation.
Starting the film as an employee of a flower factory, pregnant Maria Alvarez, in search of some desperately needed money for her family, takes the risky plunge to become a “drug mule”.Īccording to Dark Horizons Correspondent, Paul Fischer, this film is a “…powerful and painfully honest look at the flip side of the American Dream.” Maria portrays one of the many who look to immigrate to the US for better opportunity with an ambivalence that has them forever longing for their home. This is a distressing though honest view of one young woman’s life-changing and life-threatening journey through the dark and scary world of drug trafficking, taking her from her rural town in Colombia to the streets of Queens, NY.
