Starting next November 2nd the successful series Surviving the Cartel (“Surviving the cartel” (2022)) comes to the AMC Latin America signal. Its creator, Ely Bams, as well as two of its protagonists, Jorge Zárate and Vanesa Restrepo, visited Mexico City to talk about this premiere and some details about the second season, which is about to begin filming.
“The impact of the series has been fantastic because people like the work,” commented Ely Bams, director. “Every time someone enjoys something you put together in your room, scribbling on a piece of paper, it gives you a gratifying feeling.”
The five-episode series arrives for the first time in LATAMa region that in addition to being completely affected by drug trafficking, has also become a source of inspiration for different entertainment projects, and Ely Bams admits to feeling satisfied with the life his program has had.
However, The strength of the show not only came from fiction; Bams told in an interview with MILENIO what he had to do to design an honest project consistent with reality:
“Initially I read 9 books about drug trafficking, I can’t name them because I could get into problems, but I also read another one about terrorism; I wanted to understand how these people become so cruel. “I traveled around Mexico and began to understand the culture, that’s how I decided to write the series.”
“When I finished writing the script, I sent it to a friend, who is a great Mexican journalistso that I read it, analyzed it and made sure that it did not go against the culture because I didn’t want to offend anyone. “I wanted to be honest, that’s how the process was.”
This dedication to the text and to telling a story with a critical eye within this context, has allowed Surviving the Cartel to speak to a wide audience, who find more than just entertainment in the project.
“The first thing they tell me about the series is that it is different, that it is not a series about drug traffickers, because they imagine something else. They usually tell me that from the title they imagine many things: violence, persecutions, death, weapons… But this is not about that,” added the director.
For the second season — which will premiere in mid-2025 — The perspectives of the series’ three protagonists expand and deepen. The impact of each action and how corruptible the human spirit can be is analyzed.
Mexican actor Jorge Zárate (‘Señora Acero’ (2014), ‘Who Killed Him?’ (2024), ‘Hell’ (2010)) explains that within Surviving the Cartel
“Production value is human”that is, the focus goes beyond the superficial. Therefore, the social and economic success of a project whose narrative exists within a context with drug trafficking depends on its critical perspective, not so much on the money with which it is carried out.
“It all has a lot to do with the way the product is idealized.”if there is a critical proposal. But if this proposal is full of an incredible level of cinematography, it is possible that it becomes an apology,” Zárate said in an interview.
“The example of this is (Francis Ford) Coppola, ‘The Godfather’. He tries to criticize the mafia, but it ends up being an apology for the family. We would all like a family like the one in The Godfather, that would take care of us like that, that we would be that united (…) The place that this type of themes should have is that of reflection, so that the director is not the one who excels in its realization cinematographic, but criticism. Surviving the Cartel has a very critical approach.”
For its part, Vanesa Restrepo, Colombian actress who we have seen in productions such as ‘The Girl Who Cleans’ (2021) and ‘Falsa Identidad’ (2018), described that countries like Mexico and Colombia, that have always been affected by drug trafficking, it is only now that they find a way to transform the activities of organized crime into a form of entertainment.
According to the actress, it is distance and time that allow us to talk about something and approach it with perspective.: “The stories were not told because they were happening at that time. Now they are told because they are already part of our history, of our past.”
“Us We had to live that time and live those storieswhile the content generating companies tried to tell other things. They were not going to talk about what was happening because they were also in danger (…) It is our responsibility to be able to tell human stories, in which we are portraying the humanity of the protagonists who generated so much violence at that time.”
“Drug trafficking is a patriarchal activity,” Therefore, it is important that projects like Surviving the Cartel present the interview of other individuals who were always there, but who had not enjoyed a focus.
“I think it is valuable to start seeing the perspective of women within organized crime. But what I really would like is to no longer have to tell these stories. “This would have to be fantasy,” he concluded.
YVI
