Mexican state government refuses to fund film version of Marquez’s book

MEXICO CITY - The government of Mexican state of Puebla has refused to fund the film version of Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel “Memories of My Melancholy Whores” after a complaint was filed by a coalition alleging that the movie would promote child prostitution, a state government report said.

The report said “that it will not support the project or the filming of the movie.”

The Mexico-based Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean announced Tuesday that it has filed a complaint “against whomever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution and the corruption of minors”, the report added.

“Bringing to the big screen the story of an elderly man who decides to give himself the gift of a “night of wild love” with a drugged 14-year-old adolescent glorifies pedophilia and pederasty and, by making the message available to a wide audience, would make it something natural or normal and put the women and girls of our (society) at grave risk,” the coalition said.

On the contrary, Ricardo del Rio, producer and co-director of the film, told a Mexican daily Reforma Tuesday that “the movie’s detractors are censoring a work before it’s been made and without knowing the script or the director’s vision”.

“They’ve simply killed our adaptation. They have dealt us a fatal blow because we can’t film without all the resources. It will be very difficult for this to go forward because it’s now been politicized,” he said.

The $8 million movie version of the Colombian author’s book was to be financed by Mexican firms Televisa and Femsa and by the governments of Mexico, Spain and Denmark, producers said.

The proposed financiers are yet to comment on the issue.

–EFE