Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Caught In The Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas’ on Netflix, A Docuseries Exploring The Sexual Exploitation And Killings Of Women In Mexico  

In Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas, filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez trace the tragic story of women who were lured to Mexico with the promise of work, only to become victims of a wide-ranging and violent sex trafficking operation. The four-episode docuseries, also known in Spanish as El Portal, establishes how a website called Zona Divas controlled those it contracted for sex work, forced them into dangerous and unsafe situations against their will, and retaliated when they fought back or tried to escape, which eventually lead to the deaths of six foreign women. “The man suspected of her murder walked right out of the hotel…” 

CAUGHT IN THE WEB – THE MURDERS BEHIND ZONA DIVAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: Over footage of Mexico City at night, we hear the voice of Kenni Finol. “Look girl, in Mexico, they make a lot of money. I’ve been able to save and send money to my family in Venezuela.”

The Gist: Finol had gone to Mexico to work as an escort after fleeing the terrible economic conditions in her hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela. And she had indeed sent some cash home to her starving family and ailing mother. But by 2018 Finol was dead, a victim of the violence surrounding Zona Divas after she tried to escape the clutches of the site’s founder and his accomplices. 

Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas tracks the stories of Kenni Finol and other women associated with the site, women from South American countries like Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia who were often promised work as models or “escorts” by Zona Divas before having their passports confiscated and the limited terms of their supposedly legitimate contracts completely ignored. While one woman who found work with the site takes a pragmatic view and says she wasn’t mistreated – “Where there are men, there’s prostitution, it’s that simple” – Zona Divas also interviews Candice Miller of Colombia, whose testimony is expressed through an actress playing her. “The reason I’ve requested my identity to be hidden is because in Mexico, women are not protected by the law. Basically, I’m afraid.” And the Venezuelan mother of another Zona Divas victim can only weep as she caresses her late daughter’s photo.

In an archival radio interview conducted with the Mexico City news-talk station MVS Noticias, Zona Divas CEO Ignacio Antonio Santoyo Cervantes, aka “Soni,” denies any wrongdoing. But women interviewed for the docuseries say Soni was their principal recruiter, and that he controlled every facet of the operation, including the use of sexual violence as a means of control. Later episodes of Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas will explore the history of the site, the growth of its influence, and the continuing story of Kenni Fino, who gathered incriminating video and audio evidence before her attempt to escape the website’s dangerous orbit once and for all.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sujo, a Mexican crime drama written and directed by Zona Divas filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. And Netflix also features ÒlòtÅ«ré: The Journey, a series about a journalist’s investigation of sex trafficking in Nigeria.   

Our Take: “Of 100 people, if you come across one dangerous one, you’ve already messed up.” The interviews with Candice Miller in Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas are illuminating – and troubling – as she describes an environment revolving around sex work that would already be extremely dangerous, even if the organization that had trapped her within it was not a notorious international sex trafficking ring. It points to what stands out about the stories of the women interviewed here, the similarities of their circumstances, and how the larger forces of grinding poverty and social unrest in South America were the real drivers that put each of them in these impossible situations in the first place. 

Out of necessity, Zona Divas relies pretty heavily on reenactments and dramatizations, and aesthetically, some of these sections of the docuseries are more effective than others. But this approach also emphasizes the emotional power of its interviews. With the women who were taken up in Zona Divas, with the family members and loved ones of those who were killed, and even with someone like Kenni Finol, one of the women who were killed, whose own voice and social media feeds become a significant part of the emotional conduit that runs through the entire series.

Sex and Skin: Zona Divas includes shots of the website’s pages, which display racy images of the escorts advertised, as well as blurred reenactments of sex acts.  

Parting Shot: The first episode concludes with the description of a chilling encounter with the founder of Zona Divas. “When she denied him service, he said, ‘Do you know who I am? I’m the king, Ignacio Antonio Santoyo. I’m Soni.’”  

Sleeper Star: The voice notes, selfies, and video recovered from Kenni Finol’s phone paint a harrowing picture of a young woman forced into uncertainty by circumstance. “Imagine how badly I need the money to work as a whore. Imagine that. If I didn’t need the money, I wouldn’t do this work. I’d work at a mall, like girls my age normally would.” 

Most Pilot-y Line: “We knew that we’d come to work as escorts,” says a woman in Zona Divas, her face obscured out of fear for her life. “But not in the manner that we’d be forced. As soon as we got here, we were made to record a video, like a contract that we’d be working for them for three months. They took our documentation, our passports. We couldn’t go out unless it was with a driver. They told us, ‘You came here to be our whore. To do what we say.’”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Caught in the Web: The Murders Behind Zona Divas amplifies and strengthens the voices of the victims of an international sex trafficking ring, which from its founder on down seemed to think it could destroy lives and shed blood with total impunity.

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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