NARCOS: MEXICO (Carlo Bernard, Chris Brancato, Doug Miro) Ten episodes streaming on Netflix beginning Friday (November 16). Rating: NNN

When Donald Trump paints Mexicans as rapists and criminals, he gets a helping hand from Hollywood.

Look at movies like Sicario and Peppermint or TV series like Breaking Bad and Narcos – content filled with drug runners, assassins and MS-13 like gang members – and consider how Latinx characters exist in the popular imagination.

“If you start thinking about someone else’s rhetoric, it could ruin your day,” says Michael Peña, speaking not just about Trump but anyone who would assume characters in a show like Narcos represent an entire ethnicity.

The actor rose to prominence playing a stereotyped Latino in the Oscar-winning Crash and proceeded to land versatile roles in both gritty and comic films like End Of Watch and Ant-Man. Now Peña stars in Narcos: Mexico, taking over for Pedro Pascal in Netflix’s wildly popular series about the war on drugs.

Peña is eager to dismiss shit Trump says – “There’s no wall that’s built right now and it’s been a couple years”– and put distance between the president’s jargon and the fact-based series the actor is part of. But Peña continues to grapple with what I’m suggesting.

“What has the president said about the person that shot up the synagogue?” he asks, pointing out how quick Trump is to vilify minorities when the opportunity presents itself. “If somebody who’s Black or Latin or Muslim does something, he talks about them. But if somebody who is Caucasian does something, there’s no mention of it.

“Most serial killers are white but nobody really makes a fuss about that,” Peña adds. “And I wonder why that is to be honest. I have no explanation.”

Latinx actors who aren’t among rare stars like Peña, Oscar Isaac or Gina Rodriguez are often limited to bit parts or cartel fare. They make up the most underrepresented ethnicity on U.S. screens. Recent research shows they make up 3 per cent of the roles in movies and 6 per cent on television despite comprising 18 per cent of the population. A good chunk of those roles belong to Narcos, which largely employs Latinx talent in front of and behind the camera.

“I think it’s a success just to have one of the biggest shows on the planet to be Latinx, and half of it in Spanish,” says Peña.

In Narcos: Mexico, which works both as spinoff and prequel, Peña plays famed Mexican-American DEA agent Enrique “KiKi” Camarena.

The first three seasons chronologically cover the rise and demise of Colombia’s Medellín and Cali cartels. But before covering the subsequent transition of power to Mexico’s cartels, the series turns back the clock to the early 80s to lay the foundation with Camerena’s investigative work.

He collected intelligence on the Guadalajara cartel and its founder Félix Gallardo. Diego Luna, a rare Mexican actor who has carved out a remarkable career without relying on cartel content, plays Gallardo, who over the course of the season rises from a smart, unassuming and enterprising marijuana producer to El Padrino, the leader behind Mexico’s nationwide narcotics distribution network.

Following up on season three’s crackerjack series high, the new Narcos is gripping, chilling and harrowing when it counts, but has a difficult time sustaining its focal point. Much like the first two seasons, where chasing Pablo Escobar proved no easy narrative task, the current season is largely ticking off the highlights in Gallardo’s slow rise and varied exploits while Camarena and the DEA watch helplessly, curbed in every effort by a government that has already been bought and paid for.

Narcos: Mexico spends a lot of time in narrative purgatory. While waiting patiently for a long-delayed but inevitable showdown between Camarena and Gallardo, it keeps reminding you why its history is important to what you might call the Narcos Extended Universe.

With fawning fanfare, players from previous seasons make cameos in Narcos: Mexico. Meanwhile the show keeps its eye on a young driver-turned-lieutenant named Joaquin Guzmán (Alejandro Edda), who you may already know will become El Chapo.

The series is eagerly catching up to today’s messy business, all while maintaining a critical eye on the U.S.’s own culpability in the drug war – not just the consumer market but the CIA’s helping hand in distribution.

The series also has a distinctly American gaze while probing matters down south. Yes, Narcos: Mexico is a mostly Spanish-language show, with a mostly Latinx cast and all Latino directors. But its writers and creators are mostly white Americans and their overriding influence is discernible via the white DEA agent narrating the events (you won’t see who it is until the very end).

What that American gaze shares with Trump’s rhetoric is an America-first attitude, which is most evident in how the season distributes empathy amidst an exceptionally high body count. Most victims are Mexican some dispatched ghoulishly, garishly, comically or with light sympathy. American lives get more consideration. The show’s emotional force hits when those lives are at risk and the threat of cartel violence is close to home. This human exchange rate actually informs the whole story arc behind Narcos: Mexico.

I don’t mean to slag Narcos and its creative team, and I certainly believe the show would oppose alt-right rhetoric with its relatively considered content. Narcos is nothing like the dangerously awful Peppermint.

Innocent Latin Americans who would benefit from escaping the drug war have always populated the series. But if there’s an overriding point to Narcos, it’s that the drug war is all-consuming. No character is outside the cartel’s reach, whether they benefit or become collateral damage in the drug trade. Even Mexico’s government is largely considered to be in the cartel’s pocket. So when Trump wants to make broad brush strokes about Mexico, Latinx migrants and the world they come from, Narcos is a handy paint roller.

That’s one reason more varied roles for Latin Americans are needed. Just like the cartels are all-consuming in Narcos, cartel content seems all-consuming on screen.

“Nearly every script I’ve been sent has featured Latin drug dealers, rapists or criminals of some other kind,” wrote Venezuelan filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz, arguing this very point in Vulture. “Even when the filmmakers are Latino, most Hispanics I see onscreen are criminals.”

Of course, there are plenty of exceptions: shows like Jane The Virgin, films like Alfonso Cuarón’s upcoming period drama Roma, Jakubowicz’s own Hands Of Stone and stars like Oscar Isaac who get cast outside the coke trade (though Isaac’s ethnicity is often diluted in his roles). And there’s Peña himself, one of those actors who can sign on to roles that aren’t specifically designed for Latinx actors. He admits to coming a long way from where he was 20 years ago.

“There used to be these things called breakdowns,” says Peña, recalling the casting process he once endured. “They would give you a synopsis of the character and who they were looking for. The first 10 would be Caucasian, then African-American, then blah-blah-blah. It wouldn’t be until the 15th part that it would be open to ethnicities. I still have some of these.”

Peña goes on to explain that even that 15th place call for open ethnicities would require a recognizable actor. “So if you’re a name, the best you could do is 15th place. But you can’t focus on that. You have to strive to be a better actor and hopefully get better jobs.

“It’s really pleasing to me that it’s changing in my lifetime,” he adds, noting some progress for Hispanic actors.

And while Peña’s nabbing roles that weren’t written with a Hispanic actor in mind, he regularly insists on making them more identifiably Latinx with a name change. He was Jesus Martinez in The Lincoln Lawyer, Paco Hernandez in American Hustle, Trini “Gordo” Garcia in Fury, Rick Martinez in The Martian, and so on.

He refers to movies that inspired him as a child as the reason for doing that, like Stand And Deliver, where Edward James Olmos nabbed an Oscar nomination for playing math teacher Jaime Escalante.

“The fact that there was somebody that had a Latin name gave me hope,” Peña explains. “I ended up taking calculus in high school because of that movie. It stuck with me for a long time. I think it’s something that’s small but meaningful.”

@JustSayRad