Netflix’s Narcos season 4, which is officially titled Narcos: Mexico, will arrive for the binging on November 16. The series will shake up the setting and cast with a reverse time jump to 1980s Mexico, where Michael Pena plays DEA agent Kiki Camarena and attempts to take down the Guadalajara cartel. The season, as a whole, straddles the expansive reach of drug lord Miguel Felix Gallardo, played by Diego Luna, and does a fine job of highlighting the frustration felt by the DEA during a time when the U.S. didn’t take their plight seriously. Luna recently sat down with Variety to discuss his character, who begins as a corrupt cop and essentially launches the Mexican marijuana and cocaine trades, and he addressed how the show can’t help but reflect on some current events.
Given that Luna played Gallardo, who presided over the Mexico-U.S. border corridors with the assistance of police and military from both countries, he’s gleaned some insight from the experience. Luna firmly believes that, while the system may not be as outwardly corrupt as it once was, nothing as simple as a wall could stop a trade that’s so firmly entrenched in the fabric of both societies. Luna feels that the problem must be tackled from all angles, and a wall would be mostly symbolic, not a solution:
“A wall is not going to stop anything … They’ve put a rapid succession of drug dealers in jail, and that hasn’t stopped anything either because this is a system, a corrupt system, that has seeped into every level of power on both sides of the border….That’s what the series says: that we have to work together towards a solution. It’s not them against us … But I also want to say that this is just a series, and the beauty of this is that hopefully it can trigger curiosity in audiences to go deeper and go research a little more.”
Indeed, Luna hopes that viewers will use Narcos: Mexico as a launching point to dig into documentaries, along with newspapers, while considering that the Trump administration is currently sending thousands of military troops to the border. Further, this new tactic is being taken while both Miguel Gallardo and former (tunneling) Sinaloa cartel head, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman (who briefly appears in this season, also), sit in prison cells. The highly sophisticated cartels that they engineered are unlikely to be affected by a wall, which would only be a quick, dirty, and expensive band-aid on a wound that’s festered for decades. And given that Narcos is speculated to be one of Netflix’s most widely-streamed shows, the numbers are certainly there for viewers to urge a wider solution on such a politically charged issue.
Season 4 of Narcos will arrive on Netflix on Nov. 16.
(Via Variety)
