Decades after the Latin American literature “boom,” which made magical realism the region’s distinctive hallmark, several of its most notable books are gaining new momentum in the 21st century through series on digital platforms. The yellow flower rain in Macondo, the town from Colombian Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the dreamlike atmospheres of Mexican Juan Rulfo’s Comala in “Pedro Páramo,” or the dishes that affect feelings in “Like Water for Chocolate” by his compatriot Laura Esquivel, can now be seen in streaming adaptations.
Available on Netflix in the first two cases and on Max in the latter, they give new life to that success that began in the 1960s and 1970s, with García Márquez and Rulfo among others, and later extended in time with Esquivel and a second generation of authors recognized for their aesthetic renewal and Latin American perspective. Versions of Rulfo’s own “The Golden Cockerel,” Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa’s “The Bad Girl,” or Chilean Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” have also arrived or will arrive, the latter landing this year on Prime Video with production by Allende herself and Eva Longoria.
“It happened by chance that they all coincided in time, with a difference of months,” said Francisco Ramos, Netflix’s Vice President of Content for Latin America. For the Mexican producer, what unites all the titles is not that they belong to a “boom,” but that “they are very good stories” that “tell very interesting things about the cultures of those countries.”
A Distinctive Contribution
While most cases involve novels, this new phenomenon includes two highly recognized Argentine graphic works not only in Latin America. These are “Mafalda,” the daily strip that Argentine Quino published between 1964-1973 and that Netflix will adapt as an animated series with Oscar winner Juan José Campanella, and the science fiction comic “El Eternauta,” by writer Héctor Oesterheld and illustrator Francisco Solano López.
“They are two very specific works, which also have international reach, so for us it’s also about exporting culture,” explained Ramos during a conversation in Argentina, where he arrived to show the press the first episode of “El Eternauta,” which will premiere on April 30 with actor Ricardo Darín as the protagonist.
“They are interesting [cases] because they are part of popular culture and at the same time, they are not just entertainment, but they also have a political positioning,” said Argentine PhD in communication Leonardo Murolo, a specialist in digital narratives.
For the teacher and researcher, in a country “that constantly debates partisan, militant, or activist politics and that has a critical view of its history and memory,” these titles constitute “a distinctive contribution” to the audiovisual offering.
Very Well-Known Stories
According to a report by the specialized agency Digital TV Research released in 2024, subscribers to streaming services in Latin America will grow by 50% by 2029, to 165 million households. That demand leads companies to look for titles that guarantee viewership. “Platforms produce in large volumes to have constant premieres,” said Murolo. Works like “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Pedro Páramo,” or “El Eternauta” have “indices of ‘Colombianness, Mexicanness, and Argentineness’ that are attractive for generating identification.”
But projects of this type must not only attract local audiences, curious to see “how these very well-known stories are told,” but also have the potential to cross borders. The first season of the series adapting García Márquez’s masterpiece, for example, performed well among Colombians after its premiere on December 11, but also—according to Netflix—in its first week in the catalog, it was positioned in the Global Top 3 among non-English language series and in the Top 10 in 38 countries.
Millionaire Investment
“It would have been very difficult 20 or 15 years ago to carry out productions of this magnitude,” Ramos assured. The construction of four full-size versions of Macondo near the Colombian municipality of Ibagué or the use of “Virtual Production” techniques with an LED wall in the Buenos Aires filming of “El Eternauta,” are examples of the “powerful development” of the audiovisual industry, he added.
Along these lines, Netflix announced on February 20 that it will invest $1 billion over the next four years to produce series and movies in Mexico. However, money does not guarantee the success of any adaptation of a classic, Murolo warned. “It faces the risk of individual imaginaries that audiences have created in relation to their favorite story,” he said. “Satisfying everyone is impossible.”
