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Medellin City Council protests narco soap opera

By Manuel Rueda, Editorial Director

Sunday, March 21, 2010

City council members in Medellin are taking on the local government for facilitating the production of a TV show that in their view is “deteriorating” the city´s image.

Soap opera Rosario Tijeras tells the story of a mafia hit-woman during the chaotic 1980’s who falls in love with a rich kid from Medellin´s upper class.  The story shows a city pervaded by corruption, drug trafficking, cocaine consumption, and violence as an unlikely love triangle forms between Rosario, her lover, and her lover´s best friend.

Rosario Tijeras is currently shown every night on RCN TV but several organizations in Medellin have expressed their opposition to the program, saying it presents Medellin as a violent drug trafficking capital and gives the city an image that it has tried to get rid of for years.

City council members say that the local government has facilitated the production of this telenovela by allowing RCN producers to shoot at public locations like municipal schools and the local Minorista food market and allowing producers to use the metropolitan police as extras.

City council members also criticize the local government for allowing RCN to publicize the telenovela with posters that have been placed at several locations in Medellin´s metro system.

“It’s ironic that after we have given this administration millions of pesos to work on culture, it is now helping to produce a TV series that goes against all of the initiatives we have taken to change Medellin´s reality,” said council member Ruben Dario Callejas.

RCN producers have defended their TV series saying that it is merely “a fiction story and not reality,” adding that they will help to promote filming locations like the Minorista food market.

But the city council´s complaints appear to be working.

Medellin´s metro said it has cancelled its publicity contract with RCN TV and Education Secretary Andres Gil promised to review how a local school granted producers permission to film at the site.

Earlier this week, Citizen Culture Secretary Luis Miguel Usuga, assured council members that the city government is taking measures to “correct the situation.”