{ "id": "eppw36dftd", "slug": "somos", "title": "Somos.", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.series", "label": "Series and fictional screen worlds", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.series" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv", "label": "Scripted television and comedy series", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series", "label": "Drama and prestige series (individual series)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series.crime-and-thriller-series", "label": "Crime and thriller series", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series.crime-and-thriller-series" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series.crime-and-thriller-series.organized-crime-and-heist-series", "label": "Organized crime and heist series", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series.crime-and-thriller-series.organized-crime-and-heist-series" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance.screen.series", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 2021 and later: Series and fictional screen worlds", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance.screen.series", "path": [ { "id": "geo.latam", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t2021", "label": "Latin America and the Caribbean · 2021 and later", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t2021" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t2021.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t2021.culture" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance.screen.series", "label": "Series and fictional screen worlds", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.latam.t2021.culture.performance.screen.series" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Somos. is a 2021 Netflix Mexican miniseries created by James Schamus with Monika Revilla and Fernanda Melchor, dramatizing the 2011 Allende massacre by Los Zetas from the victims' perspective, based on Ginger Thompson's ProPublica investigation.", "snippet": "Somos. is a 2021 Netflix Mexican miniseries created by James Schamus with Monika Revilla and Fernanda Melchor, dramatizing the 2011 Allende massacre by Los Zetas from the victims' perspective, based on Ginger Thompson's ProPublica investigation.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.series.series_scripted_tv.drama-prestige-series.crime-and-thriller-series.organized-crime-and-heist-series", "markdown": "# Somos.\n\n**Somos.** is a 2021 Mexican drama miniseries created by James Schamus for Netflix, which tells the story of the 2011 Allende massacre from the perspective of its victims rather than the cartel members or law-enforcement agents usually at the center of drug-war fiction. It was co-written with the Mexican writers Monika Revilla and Fernanda Melchor and is based on the 2017 [ProPublica](https://www.edgepedia.org/propublica) investigation \"How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico\" by the [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.edgepedia.org/pulitzer-prize)-winning journalist Ginger Thompson.[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Format | Six-episode limited series in Spanish; episodes 1 to 5 are approximately 45 minutes long, episode 6 is 71 minutes[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489) |\n| Premiere | June 30, 2021, on Netflix in more than 190 countries[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489) |\n| Source material | \"How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico,\" Ginger Thompson's 2017 ProPublica investigation[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489) |\n| Historical basis | The March 2011 massacre of residents of Allende, Coahuila, by the Los Zetas cartel, triggered by a DEA operation gone wrong[2](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/somos) |\n| Directors | Álvaro Curiel (episodes 1, 2, 5, and 6) and Mariana Chenillo (episodes 3 and 4)[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489) |\n| Cast | A combination of non-actors and professional actors, including Mercedes Hernández, Jesús Sida, and Jero Medina[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489) • [3](https://www.netflix.com/title/81008489) |\n| Reception | IMDb rating 7.1/10 from about 1,500 users; 67% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from six reviews[4](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14719590/) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/somos) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\n#### Episodes 1–5\n\nAllende, Coahuila, 2011, a small town about 34 miles south of the Piedras Negras border crossing. The first episode opens with a warning of imminent death, then jumps back three months to daily life. From there the town unfolds through interlocking storylines, each protagonist the center of their own universe, all of them unaware of the sentence hanging over them [15](https://sofheyman.org/files/pages/SOMOS.-Production-Notes-ENGLISH.pdf).\n\nDoña Chayo pushes her snack cart through the streets, raising her grandson Paquito and holding on to her dignity one sale at a time. On the Linares ranch, the foreman Benjamín struggles to accept his gay son, a slow negotiation between macho inheritance and love. Estranged sisters Irene and Érika circle each other with old grievances. Two teenagers, Nancy and Armando, and their friends Tom and Samuel drift through adolescence. Nancy wants respect and a future, and she finds it, improbably, as a football kicker. Two drug traffickers, Héctor, a Mexican, and Óscar, a Texan, hate each other's guts but must partner up to save their lives [15](https://sofheyman.org/files/pages/SOMOS.-Production-Notes-ENGLISH.pdf). And in a brothel, Flor María, a Central American migrant, is held captive, waiting for a way out that may never come.\n\nNorth of the border, DEA agents [Stephanie](https://www.edgepedia.org/stephanie) and Carlos run an intelligence operation against the Zetas cartel. Their source inside is Héctor and Óscar, who are feeding them information on the Treviño brothers, the cartel's leaders. Carlos promises the two men protection and extraction if the operation is blown. What the audience slowly understands, and the townspeople cannot, is that the information is flowing into a system no one controls: the DEA shares intelligence with Mexican authorities, and Mexican authorities pass it straight back to the Treviños themselves [16](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-30/somos-netflix-review-allende-massacre).\n\nThe Treviño brothers are the series' great formal decision. They never appear on screen. They exist as an invisible, omnipresent evil, invoked in whispers, in the defiant cartel language that titles each episode, in the way conversations die when certain names come up [17](https://www.espinof.com/criticas/somos-netflix-sirve-tablero-ajedrez-masacre-desconocida-allende-villano-oculto-costumbrista). The tension of the middle episodes comes from small journeys: road trips toward Piedras Negras where every mile could be the last, a cart route through town, a young woman's kick at a tryout. Doom hangs over all of it without a single gunshot.\n\n#### Episode 6\n\n**The massacre arrives in the finale, and the series stages it with death kept mostly at a distance or off-screen, which makes it worse, not easier.** The DEA operation is compromised when sensitive information leaks, and the agency does exactly what the viewer has been trained to fear: it abandons its informants. Carlos's promise of protection and extraction evaporates, and Héctor and Óscar are left to their fate [18](https://elcomercio.pe/mag/fama/somos-explicacion-del-final-e-historia-de-la-vida-real-detras-de-la-serie-de-netflix-que-paso-y-que-significa-ending-explained-series-video-nnda-nnlt-noticia/).\n\nThe Treviño brothers' gunmen come to Allende looking for the men who betrayed them and for the $5 million the informants fled across the border with [16](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-30/somos-netflix-review-allende-massacre). They kill Héctor, Óscar, and Benjamín, and then they do not stop. Anyone suspected of knowing anything, of being related to anyone, of simply being in the wrong house, is taken or killed. Firefighters who respond are taken hostage and killed. Tom and Nancy die among the victims [18](https://elcomercio.pe/mag/fama/somos-explicacion-del-final-e-historia-de-la-vida-real-detras-de-la-serie-de-netflix-que-paso-y-que-significa-ending-explained-series-video-nnda-nnlt-noticia/). The violence is gritty and lifelike, devastating precisely because the series spent five episodes making these people real [19](https://uscatholic.org/articles/202109/netflixs-somos-gives-a-human-face-to-unspeakable-tragedy/).\n\nA few survive. Armando makes it home safe and whole. Nayeli crosses the border river with the brothel's owner to start a new life in California. Two children are left abandoned near a church, and the series ends there, on them, with no rescue and no explanation. It does not so much resolve as cease [20](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/) • [18](https://elcomercio.pe/mag/fama/somos-explicacion-del-final-e-historia-de-la-vida-real-detras-de-la-serie-de-netflix-que-paso-y-que-significa-ending-explained-series-video-nnda-nnlt-noticia/).\n\n### Characters\n\nDoña Chayo (Mercedes Hernández) is the town's conscience, an older woman with a snack cart and a grandson to raise, whose daily rounds give the series its moral and physical geography. Benjamín (Alejandro Ruiz) is the ranch foreman whose hardest battle is not with the cartel but with himself, as he comes to terms with his gay son. Héctor and Óscar (Josue Guerra among the leads) are the traffickers whose double game with the DEA dooms the town; one Mexican, one Texan, bound by mutual distrust. Irene and Érika (Arelí González among the leads) are the estranged sisters whose reconciliation is one of the series' quiet threads. Nancy and Armando are the teenagers at the story's heart, one chasing respect on a football field, one trying to grow up in a town that will not get the chance to stay ordinary. Flor María is the migrant woman held in a brothel, the story's most exposed life. Stephanie and Carlos are the DEA agents, written flatly by design or not, whose office in Texas sets the tragedy in motion.\n\n### Interpretations and controversies\n\nThe ending divided critics. The finale keeps most of the killing off-screen, which some praised as restraint and others found evasive; the climax was called inconclusive, failing to satisfy the intrigue the series had built [17](https://www.espinof.com/criticas/somos-netflix-sirve-tablero-ajedrez-masacre-desconocida-allende-villano-oculto-costumbrista) • [20](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/). The larger controversy belongs to the true story: the real massacre happened because United States drug-war intelligence, shared with Mexican counterparts, reached the very cartel leaders it targeted, and the series was explicitly framed by its makers as a claim for justice for the victims [16](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-30/somos-netflix-review-allende-massacre) • [21](https://forbes.com.mx/forbes-life/entretenimiento-netflix-somos-serie-estreno-entrevista/).\n\n### Sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations\n\nThe series is itself an adaptation, of Ginger Thompson's 2017 ProPublica investigation \"How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico\" [1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489). It is a self-contained miniseries with no sequels or spin-offs.\n\n## The historical event behind the series\n\nThe series dramatizes the events of March 2011 in Allende, a small town in the Mexican border state of Coahuila, about 40 minutes from the Texas border. After a DEA operation went wrong, sicarios of the [Los Zetas](https://www.edgepedia.org/los-zetas) cartel attacked the community, killing and kidnapping an indeterminate number of residents. Estimates of the death toll vary widely: the Washington Post essay by co-writer Monika Revilla cites figures between 28 and 300, while Common Sense Media's review refers to 300 to 500 men, women, and children kidnapped and murdered.[6](https://www.washingtonpost.com/es/post-opinion/2021/06/29/somos-serie-netflix-allende-narcoseries/) • [2](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/somos) ProPublica's own announcement of the series describes \"dozens of people dead or missing.\"[7](https://www.propublica.org/article/netflix-is-launching-a-series-inspired-by-a-propublica-story-about-a-u-s-triggered-massacre-in-mexico)\n\nThe massacre remained largely unknown at the time. It first became public in February 2014 through reporting by the journalist Diego Osorno, three years after the events.[8](https://www.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/noticia/2021/somos-serie-de-netflix-filmada-en-la-laguna-para-contar-la-masacre-de-allende.html) Thompson's 2017 ProPublica investigation reconstructed the attack through testimonies from relatives of victims, former local officials, convicted Zetas members, and the DEA agent responsible for the mission.[6](https://www.washingtonpost.com/es/post-opinion/2021/06/29/somos-serie-netflix-allende-narcoseries/)\n\n## Production\n\nJames Schamus, the American screenwriter and producer known for *Brokeback Mountain* and his former role as chief executive of [Focus Features](https://www.edgepedia.org/focus-features), acquired the rights to Thompson's reportage in 2018. He assembled an almost entirely Mexican crew of writers, researchers, cinematographers, editors, actors, and extras, and took intensive Spanish classes to run the writers' room. Filming began in late 2019, was suspended from March to August 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and took place mainly in the state of Durango, near Allende, with some scenes in Coahuila and Los Angeles.[9](https://elpais.com/mexico/2021-05-25/netflix-produce-somos-una-nueva-serie-sobre-la-masacre-de-allende-de-2011.html) • [7](https://www.propublica.org/article/netflix-is-launching-a-series-inspired-by-a-propublica-story-about-a-u-s-triggered-massacre-in-mexico)\n\n**Casting and crew.** Casting director Bernardo Velasco interviewed more than 300 people for the non-professional roles, and the cast mixes non-actors with professionals.[9](https://elpais.com/mexico/2021-05-25/netflix-produce-somos-una-nueva-serie-sobre-la-masacre-de-allende-de-2011.html) • [1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489) The production company was Jaibol Films, produced in association with Symbolic Exchange, with Sandra Solares and Schamus as executive producers and Revilla and Melchor as co-executive producers. Ignacio Prieto was the cinematographer, Victor Hernández Stumpfhauser composed the score, and Soledad Salfate was the editor.[1](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489)\n\n## Approach and title\n\nAlthough based on real events, the series is a fiction. The writers took elements from many real stories and created new characters to represent them, so that residents of Allende would see themselves and their neighbors without the show claiming to recount individual lives exactly.[10](https://about.netflix.com/en/news/somos-james-schamus-unveils-his-first-ever-series) The narrative follows multiple intersecting plots in the days before the massacre: a family affected by separation, a hot-dog vendor supporting her teenage daughter, a rancher trying to steer his addicted son away from the cartel, an alcoholic firefighter, Central American migrants trapped in a brothel, and the cartel's local operator, among others.[11](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=es&nrm=iso&pid=S1405-09272023000200207&script=sci_arttext) The first episode shows the cartel's attack on Allende, and the following episodes develop the storylines of characters who will suffer violence in the finale.[11](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=es&nrm=iso&pid=S1405-09272023000200207&script=sci_arttext)\n\nThe title is the Spanish first-person plural \"somos,\" meaning \"we are\" or \"we exist.\" Schamus added the period after the word so that it reads as an assertion rather than just a title.[10](https://about.netflix.com/en/news/somos-james-schamus-unveils-his-first-ever-series)\n\n## Reception\n\nCritics generally read the series as a deliberate reversal of the narco-series format, in which cartel figures or American agents are the protagonists. The Guardian's review described it as a show that flips the script on cartel crime epics such as *Narcos: Mexico* and *El Chapo*, focusing on who the violence happened to rather than on the perpetrators.[12](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/30/somos-review-the-show-that-flips-the-script-on-brutal-cartel-epics) [The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-hollywood-reporter) called it \"much more a tapestry of a diverse community on the brink of something horrible than a voyeuristic depiction of an atrocity.\"[13](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/somos/s01) Reviews were not uniformly positive: RogerEbert.com gave the season a 40, criticizing the character depth, while Radio Times gave it an 80.[14](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/season-1/critic-reviews) On Metacritic the season holds a Metascore of 60, based on five critic reviews.[14](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/season-1/critic-reviews)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Somos., Netflix Media Center](https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81008489)\n2. [Somos. – Parents' Guide & TV Review, Common Sense Media](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/somos)\n3. [Somos., Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/81008489)\n4. [Somos. (TV Mini Series 2021), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14719590/)\n5. [Somos., Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/somos)\n6. [La serie Somos. de Netflix busca cambiar la narrativa de las narcoseries, The Washington Post (en español)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/es/post-opinion/2021/06/29/somos-serie-netflix-allende-narcoseries/)\n7. [Netflix Is Launching a Series Inspired by a ProPublica Story About a U.S.-Triggered Massacre in Mexico, ProPublica](https://www.propublica.org/article/netflix-is-launching-a-series-inspired-by-a-propublica-story-about-a-u-s-triggered-massacre-in-mexico)\n8. [Somos, serie de Netflix filmada en La Laguna para contar la 'Masacre de Allende', El Siglo de Torreón](https://www.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/noticia/2021/somos-serie-de-netflix-filmada-en-la-laguna-para-contar-la-masacre-de-allende.html)\n9. [Netflix produce 'Somos', una nueva serie sobre la masacre de Allende de 2011, El País México](https://elpais.com/mexico/2021-05-25/netflix-produce-somos-una-nueva-serie-sobre-la-masacre-de-allende-de-2011.html)\n10. ['Somos.': James Schamus Unveils His First-Ever Series and the Harrowing True Story That Inspired It, About Netflix](https://about.netflix.com/en/news/somos-james-schamus-unveils-his-first-ever-series)\n11. [Narrativas transnacionales de la violencia. El caso de Somos, Historia y Grafía](https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=es&nrm=iso&pid=S1405-09272023000200207&script=sci_arttext)\n12. [Somos review – the show that flips the script on brutal cartel crime epics, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jun/30/somos-review-the-show-that-flips-the-script-on-brutal-cartel-epics)\n13. [Somos.: Season 1, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/somos/s01)\n14. [Somos. Season 1 Critic Reviews, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/season-1/critic-reviews)\n15. [https://sofheyman.org/files/pages/SOMOS.-Production-Notes-ENGLISH.pdf](https://sofheyman.org/files/pages/SOMOS.-Production-Notes-ENGLISH.pdf)\n16. [https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-30/somos-netflix-review-allende-massacre](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2021-06-30/somos-netflix-review-allende-massacre)\n17. [https://www.espinof.com/criticas/somos-netflix-sirve-tablero-ajedrez-masacre-desconocida-allende-villano-oculto-costumbrista](https://www.espinof.com/criticas/somos-netflix-sirve-tablero-ajedrez-masacre-desconocida-allende-villano-oculto-costumbrista)\n18. [https://elcomercio.pe/mag/fama/somos-explicacion-del-final-e-historia-de-la-vida-real-detras-de-la-serie-de-netflix-que-paso-y-que-significa-ending-explained-series-video-nnda-nnlt-noticia/](https://elcomercio.pe/mag/fama/somos-explicacion-del-final-e-historia-de-la-vida-real-detras-de-la-serie-de-netflix-que-paso-y-que-significa-ending-explained-series-video-nnda-nnlt-noticia/)\n19. [https://uscatholic.org/articles/202109/netflixs-somos-gives-a-human-face-to-unspeakable-tragedy/](https://uscatholic.org/articles/202109/netflixs-somos-gives-a-human-face-to-unspeakable-tragedy/)\n20. [https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/somos/)\n21. [https://forbes.com.mx/forbes-life/entretenimiento-netflix-somos-serie-estreno-entrevista/](https://forbes.com.mx/forbes-life/entretenimiento-netflix-somos-serie-estreno-entrevista/)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Scripted television and comedy series › Drama and prestige series (individual series) › Crime and thriller series › Organized crime and heist series*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/somos", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/somos.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Somos.\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/somos. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Somos.](https://www.edgepedia.org/somos)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/somos](https://www.edgepedia.org/somos). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Somos.\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/somos. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Somos. is a 2021 Netflix Mexican miniseries created by James Schamus with Monika Revilla and Fernanda Melchor, dramatizing the 2011 Allende massacre by Los Zetas from the victims' perspective, based on Ginger Thompson's ProPublica investigation." }