James Schamus described the intention behind Somos. plainly in his May 2021 introduction: people usually placed at the edges of a crime story would occupy its center. That principle belongs to the creator’s account of the series. It also offers a way to read the small jobs and requests in the official episode descriptions, where ordinary obligations coexist with decisions made by people who have far more power.
In the Netflix guide to the six-episode 2021 drama, Anselmo calls veterinarian Érika because his cattle are ill. The same first-episode summary describes the DEA tracing a cartel call to Allende. One request begins with a local livelihood; the other belongs to a U.S. law-enforcement investigation. The juxtaposition raises a question about whose purposes organize a story. The cattle already matter to someone before an investigator has reason to identify the town.
The guide later describes Mrs. Chayo agreeing to work for Héctor and Benjamín delivering a package to the cartel at Héctor’s direction. These are fictional actions. Read together, the descriptions suggest how employment and errands can connect people to a larger operation. They do not by themselves reveal exactly what each character knows, or when. That uncertainty is a reason to ask about unequal knowledge, rather than to assign equal responsibility to everyone who participates in a chain of events.
Schamus identified the 2011 Allende massacre as the historical inspiration and explained that the production combined elements of different stories into new characters. The distinction protects the historical people from accusations based on a television plot. A fictional job or delivery cannot establish what a real resident did, understood or could have prevented.
Co-writer Fernanda Melchor provides a more detailed account of that method in the production notes. She describes starting with a range of complex characters rather than imposing a predetermined plot. The notes identify Érika and Irene as sisters with separate concerns about marriage and motherhood, while Nancy’s wish to play football creates another strand. These details enlarge what counts as relevant experience. A resident can have a professional duty, a family disagreement and a private aspiration at once. Keeping those interests visible makes it harder to reduce every life to its eventual encounter with criminal violence.
The creative work was collective as well. Schamus’s introduction credits writers Monika Revilla and Fernanda Melchor, and directors Álvaro Curiel and Mariana Chenillo, among the team shaping the series. This retrospective examines creator statements, production notes and the episode guide, not the performances or filmmaking of a fully viewed series.
The modest scale of the veterinarian’s call remains useful. It directs attention to a need that has value on its own terms. Following that need is one way to resist turning a community into scenery for the people investigating or threatening it.