Brujos
Brujos (2017-2018)
Created, starring, written, and co-directed by: Ricardo Gamboa
Of all the OTV projects released in our early years, Brujos is by far the most ambitious. Running at around two hours, with a massive cast, sprawling narrative, and fantastical special effects, it is an epic tale of three Latinx witches on a quest to fight the descendants of New World colonizers.
Around the time Brujos premiered, Hollywood studios were becoming interested in science fiction and fantasy, genres that are historically very white. Black and Latinx people rarely had the opportunity to star in the genres Hollywood spends the most money producing, but in the 2010s, new streaming platforms saw these genres as critical to enticing new subscribers and broadcast/cable channels saw them as critical to keeping their audiences from migrating to streaming. So we got new superhero shows like Black Lightning and Watchmen, reboots liked Charmed and Rings of Power, and blockbuster films like Black Panther and Shang Chi. Most of these films flattened the cultural specificity of their leads, and many others cast actors of color in “colorblind” narratives where their identities didn’t matter at all.
In this context, Brujos may be one of the most radical series of the decade for giving characters of color complex storylines that refuse to sugarcoat the darkest experiences people of color endure in a white supremacist country, while also avoiding the trap of trauma porn. Through wit, strong directing and acting, Brujos shows its leads coming to terms with who they are in terms of class, sexuality, ethnicity and nationality.
Significantly, the villain in Brujos is white supremacy and colonialism, embodied by nerdy, bloodlusty white men but occasionally characters of color whose bodies they take over or who have offered their bodies to serve the state. The police are not good guys in Brujos, neither are the scientists and entrepreneurs who American upholds as pinnacles of innovation and human achievement.
Brujos is as much a story about solidarity as self-love. People of color have to come together to defeat this force. Ambitiously, writer Ricardo Gamboa expands the narrative to include witches of various races, genders, and sexualities who have to unite across differences to defeat the big bad. This is no small feat for a production budgeted at fractions of the cost of any Hollywood film or series. Few indie creators take this risk, but Ricardo had a political commitment to expanding the audience’s understanding of what justice looks like.
The filming of Brujos is a lesson in what representation looks like. Ricardo was sincere in their commitment to ensuring what viewers see is as real as possible, even in the fantasy genre. For example, in a scene where the leads go to Lakeview East (formerly, Boystown) to find a stripper to join the team who happens to be Asian American, Ricardo went to the neighborhood’s gay strip club to find the actor, and filmed in an Asian-owned bar that regularly serves the queer community. The series is also partially told through lectures heard by the leads, who are PhD students just as Ricardo was at the time of filming. Ricardo cast actual Latin professors – Northwestern’s Ramón Rivera-Servera and DePaul’s Coya Paz – to play those roles.
The release of Brujos was no less focused on cultural and local specificity. When I approached Ricardo about premiering the pilot at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and then screening the series at the Chicago Cultural Center, they agreed. But as native Chicagoan from the south side, they knew that these institutions were not historically welcoming to people like them. So they dropped the series online before we screened at MCA, to give their community the premiere, not the historically white (and deeply problematic) institution. In addition, after the premiere at the Cultural Center, Ricardo organized their own premiere at Latino-owned bar in Pilsen, Chicago’s historically Mexican-American neighborhood on the south side. Sadie Woods, a brilliant Afro-Latinx DJ, spun beats and the packed bar more closely approximated the energy of the series.
Directors Ricardo Gamboa and Reshmi Hazra-Rustebakke at the packed Chicago Cultural Center premiere. (credit: Jaclyn Rivas)
Brujos premiere right after the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, whose rhetoric was stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx. Ricardo wanted to use the large space of the Center to highlight local activist campaigns against hate, and so our premiere was introduced by the Chicago ACT Collective who gave out free signs for any to declare their spaces safe for all.
Brujos producer Robert Stockwell with members of the Chicago ACT Collective, including Silvia Ines Gonzalez.
Sadie Woods DJ’ing the Brujos premiere in Pilsen.
There is so much more to say about this rich text, from Ricardo’s casting of Justin Mitchell (DJ Hijo Pródigo) and writer Isaac Gomez to cameos from local organizer Jenna Anast and prominent sex worker Juju Minx. The story is full of original moments, biting humor, cathartic violence, and pyrrhic victories. It is a classic, and one of the series I most often recommend to OTV newbies!