Life, rise and fall of the Poquianchis: Luis Estrada brings the story of Mexico's most ruthless assassins to television

“Some of the events narrated here are real.

All the characters are imaginary.”

With that clear warning

The Dead begins

(1977), a novel by Jorge Ibargüengoitia and a classic of Mexican literature, which in a fictional report format narrates the scams, trafficking in women, clandestine burials and murders of the sinister kingdom of the sisters Serafina and Arcángela Baladro.

The story was inspired by the real case of María del Jesús and Delfina González Valenzuela who, in the late forties and early sixties, ran brothels in the states of Jalisco and Guanajuato.

After discovering how they trafficked, enslaved and killed dozens of women, and also some clients of the brothels, they were baptized as Las Poquianchis, the most ruthless murderers of the 20th century in Mexico.

Director Luis Estrada, present at the Churubusco studios in Mexico City, dressed casually, smiling and wearing sunglasses, says that bringing

The Dead

to the movies was a project he dreamed of since he was 15 years old.

The obsession was born in 1976 when his father and director, José Estrada, was working on the adaptation of

Maten al león

, based on another novel by the Guanajuato writer.

At that time he immersed himself in Ibargüengoitia's bibliography, but he always returned to

The Dead Women

, a work that he admits to having read more than 40 times, which he kept next to the bureau and that each vacation was part of his luggage.

“I would take one that I had not read, but if for some reason I didn't like it, I would go back and read

The Dead Women

, as I also did with other books, which are like a safety net, because you know that you are going to return to something that you liked. “I love it,” says Estrada.

Throughout his career, he tried to obtain the rights to the work on more than one occasion, but without luck.

Estrada has managed to materialize the project after making peace with Netflix, the company that produced his most recent film,

¡Que viva México!

, and with which he broke off relations after disagreements regarding its distribution strategy.

Reconciliation came in the form of the rights to his dream project, but with a proposal that would make the director reflect on his way of conceiving audiovisuals and cinema.

Some members of the cast of 'The Dead': Francisco Ramos, Sandra Solares, Alfonso Herrrera, Paulina Gaytán, Arcelia Ramírez and Joaquín Cosío, along with the director (top right). Aggi Garduño

Estrada had been doing adaptation exercises for the work for years, but always considered it “too big and ambitious” to be included in a film, even longer than the more than three hours that

¡Que viva México!

.

For the same reason, Francisco Ramos, vice president of content for Latin America at Netflix, proposed to him to make a series.

He responded, “I'm not

serious

.

Series are television.

“I am a cinema purist.”

The director of

Herod's Law

also says that he even spoke with his colleague Alfonso Cuarón and asked him the question: "Does one stop being a filmmaker if they move to the world of series, of platforms?"

He did not disclose the response of the director of

Rome

, but Estrada is aware of how consumer habits have changed in recent years regarding the consumption of cinema and entertainment.

“I would have liked to be a living dinosaur and think about cinema, on celluloid, with cameras that made noise, and in black and white.

The world changes and if one does not adapt, it becomes extinct, as happened to the dinosaurs.

So, since I don't want to go extinct yet, I said, it's time to talk about it,” he adds.

Estrada, accompanied by the actresses Arcelia Ramírez and Paulina Gaytán, who will play the Baladro sisters, in addition to Alfonso Herrera and Joaquín Cosío, as the Captain and General Bedoya, accomplices of the murderers, says that he was able to realize many years ago that that Ibargüengoitia had written was almost a script that the only thing missing was to film it.

“Ibargüengoitia wrote with images, more than with abstract concepts, with reflections, with interior monologues.

You can almost film her novel as it is written.

She has such a level of detail in the description, of the places, of the characters, she has such effectiveness in dialogue and communication with them and curiously she has a very cinematic structure.

We came to the conclusion that the best thing was to make a series of six films.

For me it was essential that whoever knew the novel found it in our film series and whoever saw the film series and wanted to go to the novel could recognize it,” says the director.

The series, one more adaptation that adds to Netlix's commitment to bringing literary classics to the screen, such as

One Hundred Years of Solitude

or

Pedro Páramo

, will be filmed in locations such as Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, Mexico City and in the Churubusco studios.

Estrada, faithful to his satirical style, which has been reflected in the films

Hell

(2010)

or

The perfect dictatorship

(2014), in which he places Mexican society in front of its worst ghosts, in

The Dead

he appeals to black humor, with the same tone and way in which Ibargüengoitia created and drew a country in front of a “soulless mirror” that It seems to continue to reflect all the evils it faces.

Questioned about what an adaptation of this type contributes in times when violence is on the rise in Mexico due to cases of feminicide, disappearances, trafficking of white women and high rates of violence such as those in Guanajuato, where the events of the book decades ago, the director responds: “That is the essence of satire and it is my favorite genre, as a spectator and as a creator.”

Estrada clarifies that it is not about creating something didactic and that, literally, not even he can assume to give another meaning to what the writer from Guanajuato wanted to give with his story.

“Implicitly what there is is a devastating criticism of this country, of its institutions.

Do you think the Baladro sisters, the Poquianches in real life, could have existed?

It only occurred in a breeding ground of complicity, impunity and collusion with the authorities due to the corruption that continues to exist in this country.

So, I think that makes

The Dead

a fiercely topical topic,” he concludes.

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