Drug trade isn’t glamorized, but ‘Somos.’ has Hollywood’s mark
Based on Ginger Thompson’s 2017 oral history, “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,” “Somos.” tells the story of a 2011 mass killing in Allende, in the Mexican state Coahuila about 40 miles from the Texas border town of Eagle Pass. (The period is part of the title, for declarative existential emphasis: “We are.”)
In 2018, Thompson’s tapes and reporting, originally co-published by ProPublica and National Geographic, became the basis of an Audible podcast, “The Making of a Massacre,” which also used actors and theatrical underscoring. Created by James Schamus and written in collaboration with Mexican screenwriter Monika Revilla and novelist Fernanda Melchor, “Somos.” frankly fictionalizes in its pursuit of the truth — an attempt to represent the spirit of the thing, if not the letter.
The short version is that, having obtained inside intelligence on the leaders of the deadly Zetas cartel, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shared information with Mexican counterparts, who passed it on to the leaders themselves. As the traffickers who provided the intel fled across the border with $5 million of Zetas money, gangs arrived in Allende and kidnapped and killed anyone suspected of betrayal, along with family members and people who happened to be in the way.
Now streaming on Netflix, the six-episode series “Somos.” follows the lines of that story, even as it fills them in with invented people and plotlines. It is a sprawling affair, stitched together from intertwining threads; most of the characters are working through quotidian issues that might support a drama that had nothing to do with a massacre. It bucks a long-standing trend in drugtrade stories by looking closely at the victims rather than glamorizing the victimizers, and that in itself deserves a salute.
The nature of the source material combined with the nature of making moving pictures almost assures that “Somos.” will be drawn to tropes of Hollywood (and New Hollywood) Westerns.
Schamus cast nonprofessional actors in several important roles, and their contained performances reinforce an apparent intention to keep things low-key as long as possible. Notable among the amateurs are Jimena Pagaza as Nancy, a high-spirited school girl; Jesus Sida as Paquito, a sort of luckless town simpleton; Natalia Martinez as Aracely, the mother of his child; and Salvador
Montenegro as faithful ranch foreman Silverio.
From Thompson’s article and other reports, it would seem that the integration of the cartel and the town was more complex than represented here, where the good and the bad characters mostly fall on one side or the other of the line. Because you know from the start that bad things are going to happen — it says so on the title card that opens the series — you just keep your fingers crossed that the characters you like, and there are many to choose from, get out of the series alive.
Directed by Alvaro Curiel and Mariana Chenillo, with crisp cinematography by Ignacio Prieto, the series is at once well-constructed and slightly less than convincing. When A True Story That Needs to Be Told meets This Would Make a Great Movie, the movie always wins.
The finale is rough going, though the death and destruction for the most part take place at a distance or off-screen; the filmmakers wisely do not overplay the violence. Because “Somos.” doesn’t so much resolve as just cease, like gunfire, one might wonder what we’ve learned here, beyond that a good person can do only so much in the face of an army carrying guns and machetes. And, meaning no disrespect to the hard work of those who put it together, one may just feel glad that it’s over.