Wagner Moura, playing Pablo Escobar in Netflix’s original series, “Narcos,” asks a question to the man whose fate he’s about to decide.
“Plata o plomo?” — silver or lead.
The show alternates between English and Spanish, given half of the story arc of show revolves around two Drug Enforcement Agency agents seeking to contain and ultimately end Pablo Escobar’s narcotic rampage in Colombia during the 1980s.
What would normally amount to a language barrier for American audiences is bridged by subtitles and the alternation of English and Spanish on the show.
But what’s really revolutionary about it is that it works.
Netflix has shown it has the talent and the resources to create original content that goes beyond what’s expected.
“Narcos” continues that. One particular aspect of the show that underscores Netflix’s long term strategy is the show’s casting.
By featuring a group of high caliber and popular actors from Latin America, Netflix is making a play for Hispanic audiences in the United States, but also Spanish-speaking audiences — and potential new customers — outside the country.
Netflix’s long-term strategy seems to have international expansion in its cross hairs.
After Canada, Latin America was Netflix’s number two market for expansion.
Analysts have credited the service’s international growth as a reason for its increase in share value.
Some even foresee more than two thirds of the company’s revenues as one day coming from international customers.
Currently 65 percent of the company’s streaming audience and 69 percent of its revenues come from within the U.S.
With this is in mind, Netflix is being very intentional in crafting programming that is culturally relevant in the countries to which it is expanding, while at the same time making great TV for its customers back at home.
And for Latin America, few narratives are as relevant to its social fabric as the drug wars that to this day continue to ravage countries across the continent.
Narcos comes at time when “El Chapo,” a historical successor of sorts to Pablo Escobar, escaped Mexico’s highest security prison.
Gang violence in Central America launched a wave of refugees to the U.S..
And government corruption seems to pervade almost every level of government in many Latin American countries.
Despite its historical nature, “Narcos” is very much a reflection of these times and an indication that little has truly changed.
The use of Spanish dialogue on the show is almost the cherry on top when considering the other facets of the show.
But it’s a critical one when you consider the effect Latin Americans — and now, Latinos — are having on the cultural landscape in the U.S., as well as the fallout American foreign policy has had on Latin America itself.
edsalas@indiana.edu
