{"id":1747,"date":"2017-06-20T11:11:20","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T11:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/?p=1747"},"modified":"2017-09-17T14:36:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T14:36:12","slug":"ingobernable-all-past-roads-lead-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/2017\/06\/20\/ingobernable-all-past-roads-lead-to-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Ingobernable: All Past Roads Lead to the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today Medi\u00e1tico is delighted to present an article on the Netflix series <\/em>Ingovernable by\u00a0Pablo Zavala, Ph.D. candidate at Washington University in St. Louis. His primary research focuses on the representation of \u201cthe people,\u201d broadly construed, in Mexican print culture at the beginning of the twentieth century. His dissertation is titled, \u201cForging a People: Visual Culture in Mexico\u2019s Magazines and Newspapers, 1917-1960,\u201d and analyzes avant-garde, socialist, communist, governmental, and artistic outlets in their dialogue between civil society, artists, and the State in the (re)presentation of the people, or the masses. His academic work has explored similar connections in film, literature, and in contemporary cases of femicides in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez and their intermedial representations. His article \u201cLa producci\u00f3n antifeminicidista mexicana: autor\u00eda, representaci\u00f3n y feminismo en la frontera juarense<\/a>\u201d was published in Chasqui in 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIngobernable<\/em>: All Past Roads Lead to the Future\u201d<\/p>\n

by Pablo\u00a0Zavala<\/p>\n

When I first heard about I<\/em>ngobernable\u00a0<\/i>(Ungovernable<\/i>\u00a0Ibarra, 2017) I\u00a0was not immediately drawn to it,\u00a0largely because of\u00a0my own lack of fondness for the excesses of the\u00a0telenovela <\/em>form. But I<\/em>ngobernable,\u00a0<\/em>is a series which makes evident the value of a popular form like the\u00a0telenovela<\/em>\u00a0and even its\u00a0radical potential (L\u00f3pez 1991: 596\u2013606).\u00a0I<\/em>ngobernable<\/em>\u00a0the new Netflix series makes use of both the telenovela and the political thriller format. It follows in the footsteps\u00a0of other Netflix popular Spanish-language series Club de Cuervos <\/em>(Alazraki, 2015), the first one ever created in that language by the online streaming service and Narcos <\/em>(Bernard, Brancato, Miro, 2015-). Kate del Castillo, known worldwide for taking Sean Penn to meet the infamous drug Lord known as El Chapo, stars as Emilia Urquiza, the First Lady of Mexico suspected of having killed her husband President Diego Nava Mart\u00ednez (Erik Hayser). Throughout most of the first season streaming on Netflix since March 24, and already renewed for a second season scheduled to air in\u00a02018, the multiple stories that drive the plot are a combination of Emilia’s\u00a0flight from all those who are pursuing her \u2013the authorities and the government who have effectively declared her guilty of her husband’s murder\u2013, her attempts\u00a0to covertly communicate with her children who are under the surveillance of those pursuing her (both whilst at Los Pinos, the Presidential Palace and elsewhere) and her efforts to\u00a0sort through a web of corruption to find out who killed her husband and why. \u00a0Alone and friendless, she has no other options than to seek out the help of a group of initially\u00a0reluctant\u00a0sympathizers\u00a0(an ex-con, a computer hacker and an activist\/cabrona)<\/em> living in the Mexico City working class barrio of Tepito.<\/p>\n

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In addition to the emotional confrontations proper to the telenovela\u00a0<\/em>form,\u00a0Ingobernable\u00a0<\/em>makes use of other mainstream conventions:\u00a0sex scenes, full-on nudity, action-packed chases, shootouts, betrayal and unfaithfulness. \u00a0Ingobernable<\/em>\u00a0has everything a mainstream audience would expect. It is this\u00a0winning, marketable mix that has made it a success in\u00a0national markets\u00a0and\u00a0internationally.<\/p>\n

Ingobernable’s <\/em>fictional\u00a0president and\u00a0primera dama\u00a0aren’t anything like their real-life counterparts. Emilia\u00a0is very much ideologically-driven, \u00a0and Diego Nava \u2013 the president \u2013 was too, at least until he started to stray. It \u00a0isn’t that Nava\u00a0was particularly\u00a0loved by the people, but Emilia uncovers that he\u00a0was killed (and she was framed) because of a speech he planned to give\u00a0outlining a very progressive and left-leaning political agenda. Almost halfway through the season, the viewer becomes privy to just what the speech\u00a0contained: stopping the war on drugs, closing the southbound borders with the US, cleaning out corrupt governmental agencies and corrupt elements of the army, closing clandestine detention centers, kicking out US agencies from Mexican territory, and ameliorating socioeconomic inequalities. This situation evokes the famous case of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio who, in 1994, was presumably assassinated by the sitting president because of a\u00a0progressive speech he gave. Colosio’s speech represented a shift\u00a0toward the political left, that left\u00a0ripples both in the collective memory as well as in the future of the country\u2019s politics.[1.Indeed, on viewing the speech, which Emilia has retrieved with great difficulty on a memory card from the hotel room where Nava was murdered, Chela, the activist helping her comments, “They killed Colosio for a lot less.”] It was a subversive, counter-hegemonic speech, reminiscent of the sudden left Mexico experienced toward the middle of the 1930s. Diego’s speech, which, it is suggested, reflects the convictions he shared with Emilia on taking up the presidency and planned to give to win back her love, represents something similar.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps surprising that Netflix should take such a controversial topic in Mexico, since it is known that artistic cultural productions that unrealistically portray the Mexican authorities in a good light, do not generally fare well (El Equipo<\/em>, produced in 2011 and cancelled a few weeks later). But Ingobernable<\/em>\u00a0has been a huge success, suggesting that the Mexican consumer may be drawn to the series\u00a0for other reasons which\u00a0outweigh the discrepancy between its\u00a0\u00a0quasi-laudable political fiction and the brutal, corrupt, and inept Mexican (presidential) reality. I think the viewer is justified in such a judgment. I believe that these other considerations include thinking about the past as a way toward the future; a way Mexico could and should be. The left might win the presidential elections in 2018, just like it was about to do in 2006 in an election largely thought to have been hacked by the right. And even US senator John McCain has anticipated this, when he recently stated that if the left were to win in Mexico, then we would all lose<\/a>. Ingobernable<\/em>\u00a0raises a point\u00a0that resonates with many viewers. Another consideration to keep in mind is that the nature of the online streaming service has made the audience an international one, and Netflix shows like House of Cards<\/em> (2013-) have popularized the generic political drama that transcend national issues.<\/p>\n

With respect to this notion of\u00a0past as a way towards the future: I was quite delighted to see that all throughout I<\/em>ngobernable<\/i>‘s first\u00a0season, in the background, the interior of the house at Los Pinos was decorated with artistic prints that I\u2019m studying for my PhD dissertation. The prints were produced by a collective called the Taller de Gr\u00e1fica Popular (TGP; 1938-1960), and are internationally recognized. (It is not clear whether the\u00a0actual presidential palace\u00a0is decorated in this way, although if it were this would be in keeping with Mexico’s history of government sponsorship for even left-leaning artists, examples of which adorn many of its public buildings). For instance, in the office set up for the special prosecutor Patricia Lieberman (Marina de Tavira)\u2013 a strong and no-nonsense woman \u2013 appointed to investigate Nava’s\u00a0murder, hangs a print depicting president L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas (1934-1940), the most progressive president Mexico has had since the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920):<\/p>\n

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Special Prosecutor Patricia Lieberman (Marina de Tavira) looking tough, yet idealistic<\/p>\n

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Ignacio Aguirre. \u201cEl presidente L\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas recibe el apoyo del pueblo mexicano por sus medidas en favor del progreso del pa\u00eds.\u201d 450 a\u00f1os de lucha: homenaje al pueblo mexicano<\/em>. Taller de Gr\u00e1fica Popular: Mexico City, 1960.<\/p>\n

C\u00e1rdenas fulfilled some\u00a0of the promises\u00a0of the Revolution, redistributing land to benefit poorer working campesinos, and \u00a0nationalizing Mexico’s\u00a0oil industry. The print which hangs over Lieberman’s shoulders\u00a0in\u00a0Ingobernable<\/i>\u00a0(where\u00a0C\u00e1rdenas is significantly pictured giving a speech), \u00a0further symbolizes the past-as-future scheme the series seems to insist on; that perhaps, just maybe, we won\u2019t be doomed to live with the neoliberal regimes we\u2019ve had to endure since the early 1990s, and that things could actually go right \u2013or left, rather. And in Ingobernable<\/em>, it is women (Emilia, Patricia) who are\u00a0associated with this optimistic change.<\/p>\n

In the office of the lawyer working with Lieberman, Daniela Hurtado (Marianna Borelli), there\u2019s another print of C\u00e1rdenas:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Luis Arenal. \u201cL\u00e1zaro C\u00e1rdenas y la reforma agraria, 1934-1940.\u201d 450 a\u00f1os de lucha: homenaje al pueblo mexicano<\/em>. Taller de Gr\u00e1fica Popular: Mexico City, 1960.<\/p>\n

And there’s\u00a0a print also in the prosecutor\u2019s office where a symbolic woman protects Mexico from the US, an international tension present in the president\u2019s speech:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In Prosecutor Lieberman’s\u00a0office again, the print is one of\u00a0an array of Taller Gr\u00e1fica Popular prints (top left).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Celia Calder\u00f3n. \u201cLa naci\u00f3n no acepta bases extranjeras.\u201d 450 a\u00f1os de lucha: homenaje al pueblo mexicano<\/em>. Taller de Gr\u00e1fica Popular: Mexico City, 1960.<\/p>\n

Emilia is the driving ideological force behind the\u00a0speech that becomes\u00a0the lynchpin of the show. Like the special prosecutor, Emilia is\u00a0independent and smart. Her\u00a0character is reminiscent of two other very different characters\u00a0that del Castillo has recognized as influences for her character: La Reina del Sur<\/em>\u2019s (2011) Teresa Mendoza, and former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama. Certainly Emilia\u2019s\/del Castillo\u2019s protagonism is welcome in a male-dominated industry (and world). Yet, how\u00a0Ingobernable <\/em>(which can also be translated as ‘uncontrollable’)\u00a0portrays her reminds us of how women have been portrayed in Latin American literature and\u00a0popular culture, from Santa<\/em> (Federico Gamboa 1903) and Do\u00f1a\u00a0<\/em>Barbara<\/i>\u00a0(Romulo Gallegos 1929) to, precisely, La Reina del Sur<\/em>, where women, if strong and independent, can be a danger to society as a whole. For the sake of everyone, let\u2019s hope that the second season continues to explore the role of women in uncovering\u00a0political corruption, and also continues to be\u00a0a worthy watch.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

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L\u00f3pez, Ana M. (1991) \u2018The Melodrama in Latin America: films, telenovelas and the currency of a Popular Form,\u2019 in Landy (ed.), Imitations of Life, 596\u2013606.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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