DRUGS, BLOOD AND MONEY
NBC miniseries dramatizes slaying of U.S. agent who ran up against Mexico's
mighty drug lords
As the executive producer of "Miami Vice", he had
made a lot of stylish crime shows with drug lords as central characters.
Made so many that he came to wonder if his capacity for surprise about men's
evils and weaknesses
hadn't been exhausted.
"Then this story came along and got me," Michael
Mann says now, with no small measure of awe. "Imagine American drug
agents working in Mexico, investigating drug kingpins, and not being permitted
to carry weapons.
And officials of the Mexican government so corrupt that they're tipping off
drug dealers to imminent raids. Those
agents were operating without the barest of support. They, not the
kingpins, were the desperados. You had a dead American agent, and the
U.S. government was almost powerless to find his murderers. That man's
story had to be
told. He was a martyr."
The man was 37-year-old Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.
An undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, Camarena
was abducted and murdered, as was his pilot, Alfredo Zavala Avelar, in Guadalajara,
Mexico, in
1985. Their deaths have sparked an investigation that, still ongoing,
has pointed toward culpability in the upper echelons of the Mexican government.
Based on Elaine Shannon's acclaimed nonfiction book, "Desperados", this miniseries
represents "the truth about the United States' drug efforts over our borders,
which is simply that they take
a back seat to diplomacy," says Mann.
However, in its most compelling moments, this is
a story less about real governments than shadow regimes, those
led by Mexican drug lords who, like ancient Aztec kings, sweep across the
land with their own armies, treasures and
edicts - men who are revered and feared as demigods, answerable to no law
but their own.
"Drug Wars" will doubtless infuriate Mexican federal
and local government officials, excoriated here for allegedly stalling the
investigation as Camarena was being tortured and killed, and accepting bribes
that enabled key suspects
to flee. Knowing this, Mann opted not to shoot his production in Mexico.
On this day in late May, he is discussing
plans to shift production of the film from Los Angeles to Spain for the final
two weeks of shooting.
In the meantime, production continues in Los Angeles.
Set decorators transform a Hollywood nightclub into a
dark, smoky Mexican bar. The cameras roll, and Steven Bauer, portraying
Kiki Camarena, rails about the DEA's
powerlessness to a fellow agent.
The director, Brian Gibson, watching Bauer jiggle
some ice in his drink, interrupts. "You're not looking nearly aggressive
or drunk enough, Steven," he says, agitated. "You've got to give us
more of [Camarena's] hardness, that
hard edge of his." In 1983, the Havana-born Bauer played a Cuban gangster
alongside Al Pacino in "Scarface". Yet there have been doubts about
his ability to deliver a believable Camarena.
Bauer nods gravely. Getting Camarena's hard
edge has been a struggle for him. "Brian Gibson said to me, early
in the production," recalls Bauer, "that I didn't have the solidness of this
man I'm playing, his intensity or squareness...
I guess what he said was true. Kiki Camarena was tough, disciplined,
a man's man. I have to find his spiritual core..."
He sounds exhausted. Too many 20-hour days.
Later, in his Hollywood apartment - his first night alone since returning
his 4-year-old son, Alexander, to his ex-wife, Melanie Griffith, after a
week with the boy - he says, "You experience reality with a son around.
It gets your feet on the ground. The flip side is...whenever I'm here,
I'm getting softened."
Bauer has been spending time with DEA agents who
worked closely with Camarena in an effort to grasp the mind-
set of an unarmed man who would dare to battle illicit armies on their own
turf. "I think Kiki's convictions made him
feel almost invulnerable to threats," says Bauer. "[The work] was very
religious to him, like a crusade. One of his brothers had had a drug
problem, and he thought drug lords preyed upon the weak. But he wasn't
foolish. He
knew his life was in danger...He was burned out and wanted to get away from
Guadalajara. He was just three weeks away from a transfer to San Diego
when they got him...I have to be honest with you about this so-called drug
war, and
I'm taking my cues from the agents who trained and inspired me. They
don't feel it's a winnable war."
Around the set, there's much debate over the wisdom
of American drug policy. Dark and sultry Elizabeth Pena,
who plays Camarena's wife, Mika, is equally caught up in the issue.
She lights a cigarette and takes a drag. "I
finally got together with Camarena's wife, very briefly," she says.
"He told her one day, 'I don't think I'm going to make it to 40'. That
didn't terrify him, so long as he could go on believing that, if he did get
killed, his death would bring
some good results...There were heroic ballads written about him in Mexico,
where they don't always appreciate the American presence. But they
admired Kiki's guts, his machismo, in the face of these horrible murderers."
Her face is crimson with fury. As she talks,
the crew prepares to shoot one of the production's damning scenes, a tense
confrontation between three out manned DEA agents and scores of Mexican federales
and state police, who are
providing protection for the private-jet getaway of Northern Mexican drug
lord Rafael Caro Quintero. [Caro Quintero
was recently found guilty of masterminding the abduction and murder of Camarena.]
Director Gibson shouts action,
and the actor portraying Caro Quintero, Benicio Del Toro, embraces a bribed
Mexican cop before evilly waving to the federales and ducking into his jet.
Gibson likes it. "It has that menacing quality I wanted," he says.
But Del Toro, who was born in Puerto Rico, sees his character
in a radically different light. "This script hs been written for Caro
Quintero to be a cut-and-dried bad guy," says Del Toro, "when unfortunately,
he and the problem he represents are much more complex. There were
corridos, those heroic ballads, written about Caro Quintero, too. He
gave money to the campesinos, the farmers, supported their families.
Drugs aren't an issue down there. The poor
are looking for a way to survive."
Michael Mann scoffs at such talk. "I get so
tired of hearing about Caro Quintero as a hero...He's a monster - a
ruthless despot. I'd like to see this movie sending out the message
that foreign governments must reduce corruption
in order to get these traffickers. Corrupt officials are responsible
for Kiki Camarena's death. We can't let anyone
forget that..."
But cynicism is running wild among the cast and
crew as the production winds down. With the seeds of their new knowledge
about international drug trafficing has come a concomitant resignation.
"I was so unaware of the
dimension of the problem," says Steven Bauer. "I know now what Kiki
must have known: that there aren't going to
be any sweet, neat endings to this."
