Due to its sensitive location on account of lying on the border between Mexico and the United States, Ciudad Juárez has been pushed to the forefront time and again for the perpetual state of tension that it grapples with. In the recent Netflix series Prison Cell 211, we are made to witness an insurgency that breaks out inside a prison in Juárez. While the authorities of either country are constantly confronting each other in a shameless blame game, neither tries to hold themselves accountable for the Frankenstein’s monsters that fatten themselves over the years in the squalor and the degeneration of the prisons. Instead of recapitulating every single narrative moment, this article tries to give meaning to the ones that are not so direct yet very pertinent to make sense of the world we are presented with.
Spoilers Ahead
What Is The Show About?
As a violent riot breaks out in a prison of Juárez, human rights lawyer Juan Olvera gets engulfed in the searing tension and locked inside. The reason for the riot becomes clear. Different agents have eyes on a prominent inmate, Baldor. When America demands Baldor’s extradition, the agent of the North Division Cartel, mysteriously called ‘25,’ causes a hindrance in the plan and reaches the prison-in-charge, Gandara, with the direction to nab him. Baldor is the accountant of the North Division Cartel and 25 requires Calancho and his men to perform this risky handover. However, kingpin of the prison, Calancho outsmarts them and makes Baldor disappear. He hides him inside a hidden prison cell, named Prison Cell 211. Unable to find a way out of the prison, Juan, on the other hand, dresses up as an inmate and tries to win over the trust of the unruly crowd, and more particularly that of Calancho. Calancho demands livable prison conditions, a demand that echoes values of socialism.
Juan’s growing popularity and establishment of his credibility grates on Calancho’s men, especially Calajo. When Calanjo chances upon Juan’s secret, he attempts to rape him. Looking for a quick way to defend himself, Juan stabs Calonjo and leaves him dead. Juan quickly hides his body but another inmate, Yori, sniffs it out. Yori, again, is not to be trusted as he is snitching on Calancho with the police. Juan effectively manages to win the trust of both Calancho and Chivo, Calancho’s right hand, who gladly accept him as one of their own. Soon, Yori gets himself killed by trying to go against Juan, his own betrayal comes to the fore. Other agents of the expatriation deal emerge soon enough. The tussle between Governor Eugenia and the DEA becomes intense over a man called Javi. While Javi’s introduction to the series occurs through his association with DEA agent Shirley, he quickly switches sides upon a lucrative order from the Governor.
Following Yori’s death, the police colonel, Ramirez, does not let Juan escape unless he finds the location of cell 211. When 25 and his men get to Calancho’s sister, kill her, and send her body for him, Calancho retaliated by asking Juan to hack his arm off. This draws the authorities in who send their personnel dressed as paramedics and surgeons. The electricity is blown out, which gives Javi and his team to wheel away Baldor in the dark. Javi advises Juan to escape with him, however, Juan, a changed man, professes his desire to stay back. Knowing what awaits, Caloncho plays the final game by asking Juan to perform the task of killing him. His death stops the deaths of the others. 25 is sacrificed by the North Division Cartel following the events that have transpired. Gandara too runs away as he has left too many trails which would readily frame him. In the end, inside the prison, it all comes down to Juan, as he begins a new line of communication with the Governor.
How is Calancho made into an epic hero?
Prison Cell 211 combines folkloric and religious elements with doctrines of socialism and inaugurates the figure of Calancho. Fuelled by memories of injustice, Calancho is an epic hero who draws all that is conspiring within the bounds of the prison back to himself. He is both the God and the man– for the proletariat class of the prison, he is a charismatic leader, and to the state machinery, he is just a disposable pawn, a cog in the same giant wheel that helps run the corrupted machinery. His grandeur in style is introduced in his introductory image of him reading the “Proletariado y las Grandes.” Even as questionable anarchists huddle around him, in a display of heroic virtue, Calancho shows scrupulous avoidance of any sign of beastliness, in the name of revolution. The dialogues between Calancho and Juan, bordering on digression, point to the transference of the heroic virtue from the old hero to the new hero. The tale of the longstanding triumph of Calancho reads almost cosmic, even if the setting is a modern-day drab prison. Like the doomed epic hero, Calancho is most affected when his only kin, his little sister, is murdered and her body is crashed through the roof of the prison. His sister is his only moral entanglement. Therefore, when that entanglement is cut off, Calancho begins his final act of vengeance. As the display of the final heroic code of action, Calancho remains elusive to the state authorities even in death, as he asks Juan to kill him before they can get to him. He realizes that getting captured would also entail betraying the prisoners. Recognizing Juan’s potential to take his place, Calancho leaves his men under the able power of the young lawyer.
Why Is The Image Of The Rooster Important?
In Episode 2, “More Humane Conditions,” when Juan proposes the idea of controlling the narrative in the press, Calancho recognizes his diplomatic talent. A little later, in the ritual room of Calancho, Juan finds a sacrificial rooster, all dead with the blood collected in a dish. Calancho enunciates the maxim, “When the rooster that crows the loudest dies, the next in line takes its place,” anticipation of Juan’s emergence as the leader of the Ciudad Juárez prison. Even when after Yori almost makes Juan come out as the murderer of Calajo, Calancho asks the two to indulge in a battle of blade fighting, akin to cockfighting (Episode 3: “False Judas”). The other inmates cheer for these two combatants baying for each other’s blood.
In Mexico and the rest of Latin America, cockfighting remains a game of glory. In the episode, the blade game between Juan and Yori stands as a simulation of the real-life cockfighting. In a way, the onlookers of the event are driven by a sense of egalitarianism that is the heart of this blood sport. The distinctions of class and ethnicity fade and what men are left with are just their primitive, violent instincts. The motif of the rooster that emerges first in Episode 2 plays throughout the course of the series with reversals and variations. I read somewhere that birds, especially roosters, are distinctly foreboding in Hispanic culture. In Mesoamerica, a folklore about Jesus narrativizes the rooster’s role of warning the Jews if Jesus attempted to break away from the grave. The bird indicated the resurrection of Jesus. In Episode 5: “Human Rights,” after Juan kills Colonel Ramirez upon learning about Helena’s death, he retires to grieve in Calancho’s ritual room. Here, we see a rooster again. The image of the rooster is perhaps an indication of a resurrection. With the old order growing feeble and things coming full circle, it signals the resurrection of a new prison hero, Juan.
Who is the Judas in the story?
The original ambition of Prison Cell 211 is perhaps to create an epic prison narrative that would function on religious imagery and epic similes. In the episode “False Judas,” Calancho guns down Yori after he plunges a knife in Juan’s back. Cutting through the silence that has fallen on the hallway, he proclaims that only Judas strikes from behind. Therefore, Yori’s annihilation becomes necessary. However, as the title denotes, Yori is the ‘False Judas.’ Although he does strike from behind and violate the codes of a fair fight, it is not him who is the actual betrayer. He is the duplicate one as the real one is the real murderer of Calajo. Even if his act of killing Calajo is done in retaliation for his sexual assault, Juan is still a traitor to Calancho for his act of keeping his identity hidden and conspiring with the police. For all this reason, he is the real Judas, one whose survival necessitates the death of the other.
Conversely, if we see Juan as Jesus in the making, Yori can be understood as the real Judas as well. Since the audience has been privy to the way Juan has been unfaithful to Calancho, we immediately assume him to be Judas, the betrayer to the master. As the narrative progresses, Juan slowly emerges as the hero. Our earlier position of him being a traitor to Calancho is turned on its head when Juan refuses to leave the prison, despite the good advice of Javi, and steps into the shoes of Calancho following his death.
Why does Juan not leave the prison in the end?
Following the death of his wife, Helena, and their unborn child, a disoriented Juan imagines the world outside the prison as hostile and unlivable. Indoctrinated by the heroic virtues of Calancho, Juan refuses to choose that world over the newfound purpose of living and revolting from within the prison. The trajectory his life has taken makes it impossible for him to move back to the starting point. Therefore, the prison life is his new point of departure as he becomes the crowned prince. A new cycle of collusion begins when, in the end, we see Governor Eugenia pay him a visit. This leaves open the possibility of a new installment in the series. However, knowing how the story goes each time the proletariat is exploited, we can rest assured that an overthrow is also just around the corner.
What to expect from the next season?
If there is a chance for Season 2 to be in the works, it has to close the questions that have been broached in the first season. One central mystery surrounding the leader of the North Division Cartel and 25’s involvement in it remains unsolved. The politics of the collusion between the cartel and the prison police is also a strand worth exploring. Given the fact that the entire riot broke out because of him, Baldor might (or might not) make an appearance in the next leg of the series. Would the Mexican State get to Gandara? Although I feel it would add to the drama, leaving the question hanging and not pursuing him at all would be a way to portray the void of the putrid system.
Perhaps in Season 2 we would be supplied with answers to our pressing questions surrounding these elements. At last, it can be expected that Season 2 would entirely be based on Juan’s new leadership. We are eager to see how well he has fit into the shoes left by the inimitable Calancho. A scrupulous diplomat himself, it remains to be seen if Juan upholds and works towards the ideals that Calancho laid his life down for or turns out to be a shrewd diplomat, who is two-timing both parties. While it is true that Juan carved a niche for himself in the prison, he is yet to find resonance and mass acceptance like his predecessor. It also puts to question the nature of the newly formed association between the Governor and Juan. We have had ample evidence of Juan’s scheming nature. The concerns around him, therefore, are a little different than the attitude directed towards Calancho. As Juan is increasingly pulled into this world, he might be just moments away from confronting and re-confronting enemies from his past life as a human rights lawyer.
