hispanically speaking news

Netflix is partnering with Spanish media giant Univision to produce a dramatic political thriller series focused on the assassination of countless journalists in Mexico.

‘Tijuana’ is a new Spanish language series set in a Mexican border town where the assassination of a presidential candidate uncovers deep corruption and danger for reporters covering the story. The drama series is due to start production next month and is being filmed in Tijuana and other locations throughout Mexico.

Univision and its Fusion Media Group noted the goal of this series is “To shed light on the struggles faced by these reports as they try to do their jobs every day.”

Univision further noted “In the time it took to write the first season of Tijuana, 12 reporters were killed in Mexico.”

As a recent New York Times story indicates, Mexico is one of the worst countries in the world to be a journalist today, much of the violence fueled by the narco wars. Over 150 journalists have been murdered and/or have disappeared since 2000. During the administration of current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto at least 33 journalists have been assassinated. Making matters worse is the lack of justice for the murdered journalists. Most crimes against journalists remained unsolved and rarely is justice found for their families.

As a result news reporting is either muted or completely disappearing in certain parts of the country. The journalists covering narco violence are the mostly likely to be killed especially in Sinaloa, the home turf of the Sinaloa cartel and its chief Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.

This is Netflix and Unvision’s second co-production effort. The duo successfully co-produced the‘ El Chapo’ series that premiered in June 2017. The narco drama series premiered first on the Univision network and then globally became available on Netflix. ‘El Chapo’ is one of Mexico’s most binged watched show on Netflix.