‘Cappadocia’: the brutal series that reflected the darkest side of Mexico

Long before Vis a Vis and The Orange Is The New Black there was Cappadocia: a place without forgiveness, a series produced by HBO Latin America that aired from 2008 to 2011.

The series told the story of several women who, for different reasons, are serving their sentence in Cappadocia, a women’s prison located in Mexico City.

For many reasons, this series marked a before and after in how television was made in Mexico:

To begin with, it was one of the few series produced outside of the two largest television stations in the country, which gave it greater editorial freedom.

This allowed him to touch on deeply censored topics at that time such as the so-called “War on Drugs” with all its “collateral damage.”

He also spoke about the corruption of the political class and, above all, the impunity with which the Mexican justice system was handled.

All supported by journalistic work, that is, that several of the cases of innocent women who were sentenced in Cappadocia came from real life.

Another point in its favor was its cast, made up of the main figures of the so-called New Mexican Cinema such as:

Ana de la Reguera Dolores Heredia Alejandro Camacho Cecilia Suárez, among many others.

In its first season alone, this series captured 16 million people, with an investment of approximately 500 thousand dollars in each of its 13 episodes.

At the end of the day it was worth the time, investment and effort, since this co-production of HBO and Argos put Mexico on the map of international television productions.

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So it was that Cecilia Suárez, one of Netflix’s favorite figures today. She became the first Spanish-speaking actress to be nominated for an International Emmy.

It’s a bit of a shame that the series didn’t have more than three seasons, it would have been interesting to know how it would have treated everything that happened after 2012 in our country.

But it will always be a great option to revisit and reflect on that dark moment in our past, the open wounds it left in tens of thousands of families and everything that changed.

Cappadocia is available on the HBO Go platform.