Latin American classics get the streaming treatment

Six decades after Latin America burst onto the international literary scene with magical tales that held up a mirror to the continent, its masterworks are enjoying a new moment as streaming platforms adapt them for the screen.

Netflix built the mythical town of Macondo, the setting of Cien años de soledad ("One Hundred Years of Solitude"), from the ground up for the first-ever screen adaptation of the late Colombian Nobel winner Gabriel García Márquez's epic allegory of life in Latin America.

Another classic of Latin American literature, one which García Márquez claimed to have learned by heart, Pedro Páramo by Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo, has also been made into a Netflix series.

The political heirs of Marquez and Rulfo are also getting a look in, with the best-selling novel Como agua para chocolate ("Like Water for Chocolate") by Laura Esquivel, about the magical powers of food, finding a new home on Max.

Other adaptations in the works include Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa's Travesuras de la niña mala ("The Bad Girl") and La casa de los espíritus ("The House of the Spirits") by Chilean-US writer Isabel Allende, which will premiere this year on Prime Video, with Allende herself and Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria as executive producers.

"It was a coincidence that they all landed around the same time," Francisco Ramos, Netflix's Vice-President of Content for Latin America, told AFP.

For the Mexican producer, the leitmotif is that all "are very good stories" that "tell us very interesting things about the cultures of those countries."

Distinctive voices

While most of the series are based on novels, two famous Argentine comics are also getting the streaming treatment.

Mafalda, the satirical comic strip about an inquisitive six-year-old, who captured the hearts of Spanish speakers worldwide in the 1960s and 1970s, is being turned into a Netflix series by Oscar-winning film director Juan José Campanella.

Ditto the 1950s sci-fi comic El Eternauta ("The Eternaut") about an alien invasion of Buenos Aires.

"These are two very specific works that have had international reach, so it is also about exporting [Argentine] culture," Ramos said in Buenos Aires during a press screening of the first episode of El Eternauta, which will premiere on April 30 and stars Ricardo Darín.

Argentine communications expert Leonardo Murolo said the two comics were well-chosen, as markers of popular culture that also have distinct political undertones.

In a country where people debate politics "all the time and have a critical view of their history," the two comics offer a "distinctive contribution" to the streaming tsunami, he told AFP.

'Well-known stories'

Latin America is one of the biggest growth areas for streaming services in the world.

The number of subscribers to streaming platforms is set to grow by 50 percent by 2029, reaching 165 million households, according to the Digital TV Research forecasting agency.

The surge in demand has prompted platforms to boost their regional content.

Murolo noted that works such as Cien años de soledad, Pedro Páramo or El Eternauta were "markers of Colombian, Mexican, and Argentine identity."

But besides attracting local audiences curious to see "how these very well-known stories are told" they also have the ability to transcend frontiers, he noted.

The first season of Cien años de soledad, which premiered on December 11, was one of the top three most-watched non-English language series on Netflix in its first week.

It also made the top 10 in 38 countries.

Billion-dollar investment

The growth of Latin America's cinema industry has also made it easier to render the continent on screen.

"It would have been very difficult 20 or 15 years ago to carry out productions of this magnitude," Ramos argued.

For Cien años de soledad, Netflix built four different Macondo sets near the Colombian town of Ibague.

In Buenos Aires, LED panels were used to create virtual reality backgrounds during the filming of El Eternauta.

In a sign of its commitment to the local industry, Netflix announced this month that it will invest US$1 billion over the next four years to produce series and movies in Mexico.

But while audiences generally embrace local productions, adapting literary classics is a risky business.

TV dramatisations "face the risk of [falling short of the] imaginary world that audiences create with regard to their favourite story," Murolo said, adding: "It's impossible to make everyone happy."