Somos’ on Netflix Recounts Tragic Aftermath of Cartel War

Somos is a fictional story based on the investigative report “How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,” written by acclaimed American journalist Ginger Thompson. Her exceptional piece incorporates the stories and testimonies of dozens of people who experienced first-hand the events of March 2011 in Allende, Coahuila, a small community near the U.S. border. Somos is the first TV production to recount the event from the victims’ perspective.

It centers around the experience of violence in a small community in the context of rural life — a subject that’s rarely been explored on Mexican screens before. Somos was created by James Schamus, who also co-wrote the series with Mexican writers Monika Revilla and  Fernanda Melchor. The resulting screenplay exposes the tragic and horrific aftermath of drug trafficking in a small town in northern Mexico. It features interlocking storylines with multiple protagonists, each at the center of their own universe. They all go about their lives, unaware of their imminent death sentence or reprieve.

After reading Thompson’s oral history, filmmaker James Schamus was struck by the complex story surrounding these events and the fact that the tragedy was not more widely known. He immediately started reflecting on ways the story could be told through a different narrative — one centered on the experience of the victims. “I immediately took it as a challenge,” said Schamus, “to reframe real people’s lived experiences in a distinct work — a fictional narrative that would break away from the usual genres that so compellingly mediate our understanding of how violence structures so much of our ‘day-to-day living,’ regardless of how close or distant that violence is from us.” The idea was not to focus solely on how drug trafficking affects the lives of ordinary people in Mexico, but to construct a multiple narrative that would serve as a real discourse on the various forms of violence that characterize modern life.

Check out the trailer below: