Maria Full Of Grace Culture

Colombian culture can tend to be stereotyped when the rest of us outsiders are viewing it. What I have always heard about Columbia usually had to do with stories of cocaine and mountainous warfare – due to cocaine. In this essay I will be discussing the movie Maria Full of Grace and how it explains Colombian culture. I like to veer away from stereotypes, but as most people know unless they have been living under a rock during the past few years, Maria Full of Grace deals with the exportation of drugs into the US via drug mules. I wondered how I might explain that Colombian culture was not just about drugs given this context.
We meet a young Colombian girl named Maria. It is clear immediately that she is a smart girl, someone above the status-quo. Unfortunately she is also someone who is caught up with the naivete, or perhaps curses of her youth and circumstances.
Interestingly we see two aspects of Colombian culture in this film. First we are with Maria, her family and compadres in the rural town she has known all her life outside of Bogotá. Later after a lucky entry, or even an entry full
Maria makes up some story and is able to stay with Carla. Carla seems a bit unsure, but doesn’t want to throw Maria out on the street. This is definitely an area where our US culture and Latino culture clash, especially in an urban area. If a stranger came to my place and said they knew someone from my family and they had nowhere to go I would tell them sorry. And I expect that would happen if I were in the same situation as Maria. In fact I can’t even imagine going to a stranger’s apartment and saying “don’t worry I wont take up too much space in your tiny one bedroom apartment that you already have three adults living in.” I do not in any way fault Maria for this, I just find it fascinating and warm even that she was so accepted, even if warily, into a stranger’s