Before Pablo Escobar, there was Griselda Blanco, a woman who built a cocaine empire worth more than $1.5 billion in the 1970s. The Colombian lived in a modest neighborhood in Antioquia during her youth, but hardship and greed turned her into a drug trafficker who later lived out her days in Miami. We know them from films and shows like “The Black Widow” on Televisa and RTI or “Griselda” on Netflix.
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“Griselda” is the latest production based on the life of Griselda Blanco. Sofía Vergara takes the reins of her career, producing and starring in the Latin American Netflix miniseries. The title is inspired by the life of the imposing female figure who lived at the expense of luxury, excess and bloody adrenaline. The series will consist of six chapters, which will be available on the platform from January 25, 2024.
Sofía Vergara plays Griselda Blanco in the new Netflix series “Griselda.” (Photo: Netflix)
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What is the true story of Griselda Blanco?
He had a life of parties lasting up to three days that included cocaine use and unspeakable orgies, Nelson Andreu, a Miami homicide detective, said in a Univision report. Blanco was the “executive boss” of drug distribution between Colombia and the United States, but she also made time to be a lover, a mother to four children from different partners, and a feared murderer who didn't like being called “fat.” says Francisco Javier Cardona, a former Colombian drug trafficker, in the foreign article.
The drug “Cape” left home at the age of 14 in search of the life he wanted. She soon married a visa forger and received Dixon, Uber and Osvaldo with him. When her husband died of liver cirrhosis in the mid-1970s, she made her way to her lover's home in New York. There she began as a designer of women's clothing (specifically for the transport of drugs) and had burriers under her care who traveled by plane to the United States.
The “Cocaine Queen” Griselda Blanco was a pioneer of organized crime and drug trafficking in Miami between 1970 and 1980. They called her “the black widow,” in reference to a poisonous female spider that usually mates with a male and then kills him. . (Photo: EFE)
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Blanco cartel grew over time into a very powerful cartel in Colombia before the emergence of the Cali and Medellín cartels. Let us remember that the latter was led by Pablo Escobar, a man whom Blanco baptized in the drug trade and who was a role model for Colombian drug traffickers.
The romance between Blanco and her lover Alberto Bravo in New York did not work out. He resented their differences at work. Furthermore, the man believed that she had hired one of her hitmen to kidnap her brother. According to biographical authors and the American police, she murdered the man with two shots. However, Blanco never admitted the fact and authorities did not build any evidence of his death.
Photos from the Univision report “The Black Widow.”
He later entered the life of drug trafficker Dario Sepúlveda, with whom he had a child, whom he named after his favorite character from the film “The Godfather”. Some time later, little Michael Corleone sees his father die. His mother always denied responsibility for the murder. “My father picked me up from the dentist and put me in his hands. Then I hear shots, the terror is so great… We fall together, my father falls next to me and I on the right side. “The shooting started like a movie, the church bells started ringing,” said Blanco’s now-adult son in an interview with journalist Carolina Rosario published three years ago.
Griselda Blanco goes to prison after a New York judge issued the arrest warrant. At this point, the head of the DEA, Robert Palomo, became obsessed with the case and decided to give the Colombian woman a kiss on the cheek the day he captured her. The drug trafficker, for her part, fled to California with her mother and son. Bad luck strikes when a stranger calls the police to report that their young daughter is having a relationship with a drug dealer, and the police find a way to find out her whereabouts.
Finally, Palomo manages to give Blanco a kiss on the cheek when he finds her in a house in California on February 17, 1985. She was reading the Bible when they were intercepted. As expected, she denied that her name was Griselda, but rather Patty. But nothing saves her from a 15-year sentence without bail in the city's federal prison.
Griselda Blanco and Charles Cosby in an old photo.
In prison she met Charles Cosby, a drug dealer who admired her too much. There are shots of her lovingly greeting him and photos of them appearing together as a couple. But like déjà vu, Cosby becomes another victim who could be saved. The drug dealer did not hesitate to call the police and agree to testify against his lover. Since the murders had already been proven by the judiciary, Blanco agreed with the authorities that his sentence would be increased by 20 years and no longer. He received his freedom at the age of 61 and managed to prolong his life until he was 69 in relatively happy surroundings in a Medellín neighborhood. In 2012, a motorcycle drives past the butcher shop where Blanco always shopped and murders her.
In 2016, Jennifer López was considered the favorite to star in the film Griselda: The Cocaine Queen (2017), but the role was ultimately given to Catherine Zeta-Jones. “The people who make these films, books, series and everything else need to understand that the moment they do it, they are reliving trauma,” said Michael Corleone during the interview mentioned in the previous paragraphs. “The director quits the project and moves on to another one, but we, the direct relatives (of the drug traffickers), have to live with this stigma and what the film says for the rest of our lives.”
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