Last month, the ICE raids which got around 2,000 people arrested in seven counties across Southern California put the eyes not only of the Nation but the world on the latest Immigration policies in America.
On the other hand, the last two weeks here in Mexico, Mexico City to be exact, protests erupted around gentrification policies in some elite areas of the capital of the country involving American citizens or “Gringos”, as they are referred south of the border, where local authorities prioritize the planification and needs of mostly foreign affluent residents over Mexican citizens who lived, worked and built their homes there for years.
In the middle of these situations, as if the producers and talent involved have predicted the events, Netflix released on July 9th worldwide a 12 episode series titled “Los Gringo Hunters”, which based on an article of The Washington Post published in the summer of 2022 dealing with an elite police squad in Mexico trying to solve an immigration problem the media don’t often focus about: American fugitives fleeing south across the border.
Produced by The Washington Post and the Hollywood company Imagine created by Academy Award Winners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, among others, “Los Gringo Hunters” puts faces and personalities on the members of this elite team starting with the top officer, Nico (Harold Torres, from the acclaimed Netflix movie “Disappear completely”), who takes over after his mentor (Dagoberto Gama) gets killed in a mysterious assignment.
Nico gets in trouble from then on because the chain of command gives officer Gloria (Mayra Hermosillo, seen recently as the lead of the Netflix movie “Lo mejor del mundo”), priority to be the head of the squad, so the rivalry and competition appears in the middle of their assignments, creating in the long run a kind of dysfunctional family completed by Beto (Manuel Mansalva, from “Narcos”); Crisanto (Héctor Kotsifakis, recently nominated for an Ariel or Mexican Academy Award for RodrigoPrieto´s “PedroPáramo”); “adopted” gringo Archie (Andrew Leland Rogers) and a latest acquisition, an autistic young officer called Camila (Regina Nava).
The hiring of Camila appears as “a favor” from a top Security Officer from the Tijuana City Department, Ortega (Ariel nominee Gerardo Trejoluna for the Prime Video film “El norte sobre el vacío”), but the good intentions behind one of the “most respected men of the local goverment” dilutes when we become aware not only that he has ties with the mysterious assassination of Nico´s mentor, but the corrupt web of contributors for a gentrification project called “Nueva Tijuana” (“New Tijuana”) managed by an empresario Meyer-Rodriguez (Ariel Winner José María Yazpik) whose daughter was victim of a violent crime and an American Priest (Sebastian Roche).
Counting in the last two episodes with the special participation of Ariel multiple winner Damian Alcazar as a missing piece of the big puzzle of corruption in the old Tijuana, “Los Gringo Hunters” sneaks into the reality of the complicated relation of the two neighbor countries with their own good hombres and the bad: the American fugitives, mostly criminals, who for decades and as seen in movies and the media run down to Mexico to escape from justice, but finding that even with the big corruption existing south of the borders there are local and national heroes just like the Hunters, leaving in the air the Rodney King memorable quote: “Why can’t we all get along”.
Rating: 9/10.
Social media: X:@AlfredoGalindo; Threads: Alfredo Galindo