Drug mule undertaker stars in film

By Janet Ball
BBC News, New York

Sitting at a desk in his tiny travel agency in Jackson Heights in Queens, New York, Orlando Tobon deals with a constant stream of clients - signing forms, shaking hands, and shouting greetings to those passing his door.

Orlando Tobon sends the bodies of drug mules back to Colombia to be buried

He does not look much like a man who would inspire a character in an international movie, but there is more to the Colombian-born travel agent and accountant than first meets the eye.

This unofficial "mayor of Little Colombia" has made it his life's work to send the bodies of drug mules who have died in New York back to Colombia for a proper funeral.

These people make a mistake with their lives, so that's why I try to make a good funeral for them Orlando Tobon

Happening by chance on three unclaimed bodies in the morgue more than 15 years ago, he became aware of the problem of poor Colombians who agree to swallow drug-filled condoms to smuggle them into the US, only for the condoms to burst and for them to die of an overdose.

Since then he has raised the money to send the bodies of more than 400 such people back home.

He shakes his head at the problem, saying that it is extreme poverty that forces people to act as mules.

"The mafia offers $10,000, and in Colombia you can buy a house for $10,000. The people have no money, no jobs, and so they take the chance.

"These people make a mistake with their lives, so that's why I try to make a good funeral for them."

But after years of quietly getting on with this work, he came to the attention of Joshua Marston, the writer-director of the film Maria Full of Grace, a story of a pregnant Colombian girl who travels to New York with her stomach full of heroin.

After the director met Orlando, he wrote a character based on him into the script - and asked him to play it.

'Movie shows it all'

Orlando laughs at the idea that he could have a new life as a film star, but says he has enjoyed the attention it has brought him.

Tobon played himself in the film Maria Full of Grace

"Even when I walk in the street, people stop me to take pictures and talk to me.

"And that's a nice experience for me, because that's never happened in my whole life. I'm very old, I'm 55 years old and it's never happened to me like that."

But then he goes serious again, contemplating a more important impact the film has had, after being played in Colombian cinemas.

He says people have told him it has put them off taking the risk of smuggling drugs.

"After the movie, everything changed. The people when they do this, they think only of the $10,000, but they're never told about the crazy part.

"They can die, they can go to jail, they can destroy their families. But the movie showed everything."

Maria Full of Grace opens in UK cinemas on Friday. It has been on general release in the United States and Colombia since the middle of 2004.