In Salma Hayek’s “Monarca” on Netflix, three siblings from the Mexican 1% learn how to manage their lives and their family Tequila company between personal vicissitudes, corporate intrigue, and the social constraints that the narrative presents as powerful as any individual initiative.
In August and early September 2019, a marketing campaign appeared for a new product: Tequila Herederos, produced and endorsed by Mexican actress Salma Hayek. As it often happens when celebrities attach their names to luxury spirits, the ads generated some buzz in Mexico, also because for once the national and cultural identity of the actress coincided with the one of the product she was promoting. Although the topic was not explicitly discussed, it probably felt like a nice respite from the cultural appropriation that often commercializes elements of Mexican culinary culture.
Hayek’s Tequila Herederos
It turns out it was Hayek’s ruse to launch her new Netflix series, Monarca. A video that promoted the fictional drink had visual components that probably not many marketing agencies would include: a snake, barrels in flame, a bullet falling into a glass of tequila. Furthermore, the claim “El Sabor de la Traición,” the flavor of treachery, plays on the assonance with the word “tradición,” tradition. Definitely not a connotation that marketers would want attached to any goods…
In the series, Tequila Herederos is the main product of the Monarca corporation, which started from humble beginnings in distilling and bottling to later expand to hotels, constructions, and transportation, among other activities. The script is quite direct in pointing out how in Mexico success in any of these fields may be connected with illicit deals with government officials, private companies, and even drug cartels. The narrative develops around Ana María, one of three siblings that are supposed to inherit the company. Unlike her two brothers, who remained to work with their father, she had left Mexico for the US, where she built a career as a journalist.
The show opens when her father calls her back to share with her his desire to free the company of all the illegal connections that he had thrived on and had allowed him to become a millionaire. However, when the patriarch is killed, the three siblings find themselves forced at facing their family’s past and present practices. Their mother is charged in her husband’s testament to choose his successor. I won’t tell more to avoid any spoilers for the show, which is very well produced and quite entertaining despite (or maybe because) its frequent flirting with novela-style plot and acting.
Ana María
Most of the twists and turns in Monarca are somehow connected with tequila production, as some family members want to bring it back as the core of the company, while others would prefer to focus on other, more remunerative – but shadier – activities. Part of the first few episodes takes place in the gorgeous family hacienda in Tequila, Jalisco state, a colonial style mansion built right next to an agave plantation. In fact, agave is everywhere, starting from the opening titles. In the opening scenes, we see an older man in a Panama hat looking over the agave plantation, drying his sweat with a kerchief. Around him, farmers more or less dressed like him are toiling with hoes around the plants in the semi-dry landscape.
The tequila- and agave-themed metaphors abound. At a certain point, the patriarch takes his granddaughter (Ana María’s daughter, raised in the US) to see farmers taking out the agave from the soil and cutting the leaves from the core. The jimadores, tequila harvester, are presented as salt of the earth. Talking about the plant with her, the patriarch quips: “Six years to grow it and they pull it out of the soil in less than a minute,” a non-so-subtle reference to the uncertainties in their business. He feels that being directly involved with growing and producing will bring the family back to their more honest foundations.
In the opening of the third episode, the matriarch muses, while tasting three different kinds of tequila: “blanco, reposado, añejo. Each one with its virtues and its defects. The blanco is young, immature for some, pure for others. The aging years of the reposado have removed it from its origins, but ultimately it maintains its essence. The wait has been very long for the añejo, but it has developed its identity. Some say that so many years of aging have made it impure, removing it from the agave where it was born. But which is the best? All three are excellent, so I need to congratulate the tequila mistress.” In reality, she is reflecting on the qualities of her three children and on who would be the best to ensure the destiny of the family and the company. In that same episode, we also see a quick montage of tequila production from agave cultivation to harvest, roasting, fermentation, distillation, bottling, packaging, and distribution. The sequence, which would seem taken out of a promotional video, is immediately followed by an explosion that destroys much of the company warehouse. Just to remind us that violence is always lurking behind the pleasure of the drink and the beauty of the place.
Despite the prominent place of tequila in the series, the social and economic issues behind the spirit industry are only vaguely hinted at. The social and political tensions between farmers and distillers/bottlers, between artisanal and industrial productions do not really appear. However, the protest of the truck drivers who find themselves moving goods through the territory controlled by a drug cartel is featured prominently, reminding us of the complicated state of affairs in several Mexican states.
The three siblings in Queen Sugar
From many points of view, Monarca is similar in themes and environments to the HBO hit Succession, which explores the strains and conflicts embedded in generational change when the management and control of large conglomerates is involved. The series is instead quite different from Queen Sugar on Own, which is centered on an African-American family trying to maintain and defend its inherited sugarcane fields in rural Louisiana. Produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, Queen Sugar also looks at the events taking place around three very different siblings. But the similarities end here: the drama looks at a world that is often disregarded, focusing on the systemic injustice that plagues black land ownership, and on the issues of race, class, and gender that are entangled with it. Clashes with the judicial system, with banking and finance, and even with local governance are woven in the narrative and the personal trajectories of the characters. The protagonists of Monarca belong to a very different social class. They were born in wealth, and their issues is to learn how to manage it between personal vicissitudes, corporate intrigue, and the social constraints that, according to the narrative, are as powerful in Mexico as any individual initiative.