Reality show about the wealthy triggers backlash in Mexico

A new Netflix reality series following the lavish lives of nine wealthy, light-skinned socialites in Mexico City has provoked a backlash from critics who say it’s tonedeaf in a country where most have darker skin and about half the population lives in poverty.

“Trash,” ”filth,“”pathetic,“”classist,“were some of the more polite adjectives Twitter users employed to describe their reaction to the show, ”Made in Mexico.“

Critics are also questioning the timing of the streaming service’s first Mexican reality show, announced a little over a month after the country overwhelmingly elected as president the leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who rails against what he calls an entrenched and corrupt elite and promises to make the poor his top priority.

“In the last elections we showed that we live in a democratic country. Nonetheless, we still suffer terrible atavisms related to classism and, what’s worse, racism,” said Guadalupe Loaeza, who has written several books about the Mexican elite. “More than money, the colour of one’s skin is definitive ... for whether one is accepted or not among the ‘rich boys and girls.”’

“Made in Mexico” producers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

But Hanna Jaff, a 30-year-old, San Diegoborn Mexican philanthropist, speaker and human rights activist, told The Associated Press that she and the other cast members are representative of Mexico as family people with different backgrounds and professions and “our own problems within our circumstances.”

She said the show will offer a positive, intellectual, entrepreneurial vision of the country, in contrast to what’s often seen in media such as Netflix, which hosts a number of violent narco-dramas such as “El Chapo,” about notorious Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin Guzman Loera.

“I wanted the world to see a different Mexico, from a different point of view,” Jaff said. “I think there will always be negative and positive people, no? ... And in truth, the program is not a stereotype.”

At least in early advertising, however, Netflix has been touting it somewhat differently: “Get to know the opulent lifestyles and infamous dynasties of Mexico City’s socialites and the expats vying for a spot in their exclusive social order,” reads the teaser for the show in the app.

Some have also objected to its Englishlanguage title, an affectation common in magazines and advertising aimed at wellto-do Mexicans.

Besides Jaff, at least two other cast members are reportedly American.

The white and the wealthy have long dominated Mexican media, from telenovelas to newscasts to high-society supplements of national newspapers that chronicle fancy weddings, galas and mansions, with hardly a dark-skinned face to be found.