NAKED CITY: FROM JUAREZ WITH BLOW
The new SBS series Housos, set in the public housing belt of western Sydney, prides itself on a supposed lack of political correctness but it’s not hard to see where the script has been “modified” to appease current popular sensibilities. When the show deals with drug use it’s all about cocaine, kilos of the stuff, rather than its more prolific big brother heroin.
Keeping within the Housos genre you would have to ask who can afford cocaine on a disability pension? Maybe they can’t in Claymore but they certainly can in Double Bay and hundreds of other more affluent Sydney suburbs where ‘blow’ is very much part of the social agenda.
Ironically whilst a consciousness now prevails about the ethical importation of products like coffee and chocolate nobody seems to worry about the damage that the cocaine trade reaps in countries such as Mexico. Nowhere is the tragedy more evident than in the northern Mexico city of Ciudad Juarez, arguably the most dangerous city in the world, with 3000 homicides in 2010 alone.
Back in the 80s and early 90s Juarez, which sits just across the Rio Grande from the Texas city of El Paso, was a popular destination for tourists and soldiers from the large American military base there. You could walk across the Bridge of The Americas and buy a bottle of Tequila for $3 and a meal for $2, not to mention a complete dental check up for less than $15!
These days no gringo in their right mind would cross the border into Juarez where murder, muggings and kidnapping prevail and the drug cartels run riot in total defiance of police and military intervention.
Despite the numerous well publicised drug seizures on the part of Australian Customs and the AFP, cocaine is readily available here. We’re not passing judgement on the rights or wrongs of snorting blow but it’s inescapable that if you do buy the product you are perpetuating the misery that the drug wars have brought to countries like Mexico where some 65,000 have been killed since President Felipe Calder declared war on the cartels.
Maybe local coke dealers, those with just a few pangs of conscience, need to market their product with the same gruesome images that now appear on cigarette packets. A little bag of blow could come with assorted pics of decapitations from Juarez and an update of this month’s body count. At least the Housos don’t face that moral dilemma. They can’t afford blood diamonds and they can’t afford blow!
THE HIT LIST: The original master blaster Big Jay McNeely plays the Basement this Friday 4 November along with the very swinging Adam Hall Band and DJs Limpin’ Jimmy & The Swingin’ Kitten. Every Tuesday is cult sinema night at the Mu-Meson Archives where you get to see agreat psychotronic rarity plus slected shorts for only $5 in a truly unique atmosphere. Tuesday 8 sees a screening of the very freaky “The Unseen” .with all the details at www.mumeson.org
