By AFP | 2025-03-06

BUENOS AIRES -- 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 "One Hundred Years of Solitude," from the ground up for the first-ever screen adaptation of the late Colombian Nobel winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez's epic allegory of life in Latin America.

Another classic of Latin American literature, one which Garcia Marquez claimed to have learned by heart, "Pedro Paramo" by Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo, has been made into a Netflix series.

The political heirs of Marquez and Rulfo are getting a look too, with the best-selling novel "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 "The Bad Girl" and "The House of the Spirits" by Chilean-American 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 Argentine comics are 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 Jose Campanella.

Ditto the 1950s sci-fi comic "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 "The Eternaut," which will premiere on April 30.

The two comics were well chosen as markers of popular culture with distinct political undertones, Argentine communication scholar Leonardo Murolo said.

In a country whose residents 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% 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.

Works such as "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Pedro Paramo" and "The Eternaut" were "markers of Colombian, Mexican and Argentine identity," said Murolo.

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

During its first week, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which premiered on December 11, was one of the three most-watched non-English language series on Netflix.

Billion-dollar investment

The growth of Latin America's cinema industry has 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 said.

For "One Hundred Years of Solitude," Netflix built four different Macondo sets near Ibague, Colombia.

In Buenos Aires, crews used light-emitting-diode panels to create virtual reality backgrounds during the filming of "The Eternaut."

In a sign of its commitment to the local industry, Netflix announced in February that it would invest $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 dramatizations "face the risk of (falling short of the) imaginary world that audiences create with regard to their favorite story," Murolo said. "It's impossible to make everyone happy."