In October 2018, within the framework of the 50th anniversary of the Tlatelolco Massacre, a Mexican series that addressed that disastrous event and its background arrived at the Amazon Prime Video catalog; yes, from a very unique perspective. Instead of telling the facts with documentary rigor or with absolute attention to the members of the 1968 student movement, this Televisa production chose to venture into a subgenre rarely explored in national cinema and television: the thriller political. And now, four years after the success of the first installment, a strange enemyseason 2comes to our screens to shake us with its portrait of perversity in the upper echelons of power.
In the star role, the acclaimed actor is back Daniel Gimenez Cacho. He plays Fernando Barrientos, a fictional character —inspired by the authentic Mexican soldier and politician Fernando Gutiérrez Barrios— who, as head of the National Security Directorate (DNS), paves the way for Luis Echeverría to the presidency. Remember that the first season of a strange enemy It poses a hypothetical scenario in which the violent acts of the summer of 1968, which culminated in the massacre of October 2, were orchestrated mainly by Barrientos, from the shadows; this with the objective that his boss Echeverría (then Secretary of the Interior) became the favorite option of the president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz for the succession.
Now, the recently released second season serves as an ambitious sequel to this House of Cards Mexican. Only instead of shredding a few months of history, he set out to cover six full years; a new six-year term in which the protagonist tests his abilities as the Machiavellian puppeteer of the political life of our country.
A fiction inspired by real events
In an interview with Cine PREMIERE, the creator and sole director of both seasons of a strange enemy, Gabriel Ripstein, confessed to having no memory of when he decided to produce a second batch of episodes, set in the period from 1970 to 1976, when Luis Echeverría occupied the presidential chair. However, he is fully aware that among those involved in the project “there was an impulse to tell the story of this man who becomes president.” And therein lay the greatest challenge.
“This appetite for wanting to cover the six years forced us to make great leaps in time,” says the director. «So it was important to understand how not to lose the dramatic tension when suddenly you cut and it’s already two years later; understand what is happening at the level of the dramatic engine of the story so that it endures. That was a major challenge.”
Part of the drama of the second season lies in the intimate stories of its characters, starting with Fernando Barrientos, his wife Esperanza (Karina Gidi) and their son Armando (Peter of Tavira); a family fragmented by tragedy. Added to this is the possibility of a hostile reunion between Beto (Kristian Ferrer), who was an infiltrated agent of the DNS in the student movement of 1968, and David (Andrew Delgado), one of its former leaders who will find a way to rejoin the fight.
On the other hand, the friction between Barrientos and Echeverría (Antonio de la Vega) will lead to a tacit enmity that —similar to what happened last season— will reverberate in the social and political sphere of the nation. Always under the premise that a strange enemy It is not a documentary, but a fiction inspired by real events.
Echeverria’s Legacy
Talking about the Luis Echeverría regime implied bringing up a variety of true events with strong repercussions in contemporary Mexico. For example, the insurrection of the Partido de los Pobres in the Sierra de Guerrero; the formation of the guerrilla group Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre and the very serious devaluation of the peso in the summer of 1976.
“We felt that the six-year term was full of events,” says Gabriel Ripstein. “That there was a progression and a construction that gave rise to important social phenomena: the emergence of the urban guerrilla, the oil economy… In short, all the things that greatly marked that six-year term and that marked the country from then on.”
One of the key points of a strange enemyseason 2, is his reconstruction of the falcon. That was a massacre forged by the State in 1971 —through the paramilitary group “Los Halcones”— against young university students who were demonstrating in the streets of Mexico City. Ripstein chose to craft a harrowing sequence shot that began with the attackers and then intercut this point of view with that of the assaulted students.
«I found it dramatically interesting to be a viewer who goes in real time with them; to see in the two or three minutes that the shot lasts everything that can happen, all the turns it can take and all the characters that pass the baton. The Falcon passes it to the victim; the victim passes it on to someone who helps him; whoever helps him passes it to an ambulance, which again surprises us with the force of the repression. So ever since I wrote it, I knew that it was a sequence shot and it was written as such”, the director specifies.
The mind behind the president
And what growth did Gabriel Ripstein foresee for the protagonist of the story? Initially, the new chapters of a strange enemy (in the eyes of several viewers) they may end up consecrating Fernando Barrientos as a mere symbol of ambition, cruelty and corruption in the world of politics. But as far as the director is concerned, at least the character played by Giménez Cacho maintains that particularity of not being the fictional representation of a single official; rather, the repository of various characteristics of the ruling class in Mexico.
On the other hand, as a result of the attack against the Barrientos family, Fernando begins the season as someone hurt and beaten, but who will acquire greater clarity about where the true power lies. Is he in the presidential chair and in the spotlight? Or always under water?
«That path and that clarity that I think it takes on seems interesting to me and it seems to me that [Fernando Barrientos] evolves beyond a simple politician who only wants to be president, because I think that at the end of the day the political class can be synthesized much like this: what they want most in life is to be president. But Barrientos maybe not. And that seemed original to me,” Ripstein tells us.
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Although not yet discussed, a third season is not ruled out. After all, the conclusion of this second installment “opens the door for what could be the future of Barrientos in the next administration,” in the words of the director. Certainly the COVID-19 pandemic generated a delay in the production of a strange enemy, season 2, but it does not mean that there is a lack of interest in giving continuity to the arc of the protagonist. Quite the contrary: there is enthusiasm around the possibility that this ‘thrillerized’ recapitulation of Mexican politics will expand even to the present day.
“There is a lot of fabric to cut from. We could continue to the present”, emphasizes Gabriel Ripstein. «López Portillo’s six-year term was also very interesting; A lot of things happened and the country changed. So, again, gasoline, there is. It’s a matter of understanding where this character evolves.”
The six episodes of the second season of a strange enemy They have been available in the Prime Video catalog since September 29. Among the new faces of the cast are Erando Gonzalez (Federico Amaya), Alexander Nones (Alberto Sicilia Falcon), Tomihuatzi Xelhuantzin (Arthur Durazo), Jero Medina (Camilo) and Paulina Davila (Pink Light Joy).
Antonio G. Spindola I have very bad memory. Out of solidarity with my memories, I choose to lose myself too. Preferably in a movie theater.