I was watching National Geographic tonight and I chanced upon this poignant story about a young mother who was subtly coerced by her live-in partner to transport drugs from Panama to Paris, via Costa Rica and Cuba. The drug mule is a young African-American with a young daughter around 4 years old and an abusive partner. He brings her to Panama in the guise of a vacation, but what he really wants her to do is transport cocaine to Paris via Costa Rica and Cuba. She's very soft-spoken and in a way, naive. She's also a bit passive and simply throws caution to the wind. You get angry at her for not finding a way out of her situation but you know she's helpless since her young daughter is thousands of miles away in America, while she's in Panama - and her live-in partner just abandons her in Panama.
Well, what happened to her got me thinking about the other poor Filipino drug mules who now find themselves in a quandary in the different countries they were caught. What's their story? Were they coerced? What kind of personalities do they have to allow themselves into such a sticky situation? That is something I'd love to get to know but well, China kills the convicted drug mules so we will never know. But it surely is an interesting story to investigate so that we can finally unmask the person behind the ugly label - drug mule.
