“The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.”
These words from Pablo Escobar set the tone from the precredits of the Netflix series
Griselda
.
An important member of the Medellín cartel, this Colombian drug trafficker was, for two decades, one of the most feared criminal figures on the entire American continent.
However, despite his “feats of arms”, his power, a TV film with Catherine Zeta-Jones on his life (
Cocaine Godmother
, 2017) and a piece by the rapper Booba paying tribute to him, his story remains unknown compared to that of the famous barons drugs, Escobar or El Chapo.
This meant counting without the creators of
Narcos
who, under the leadership of actress and producer Sofía Vergara, devoted a miniseries to
Madrina
(godmother in Spanish).
The six episodes focus mainly on the creation and management of her empire in Miami, in the 1970s and 1980s, but the entire life of this determined and bloodthirsty woman would have deserved to be told.
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A destiny all mapped out
Born on February 15, 1943, in the port area of Cartagena de Indias, Griselda moved three years later with her mother to the slums of Medellín and grew up in a context of violence such that it would condition her choices from a very young age.
Legend has it that at the age of 11, to obtain a ransom, she kidnapped a young and rich boy whom she killed in cold blood, for lack of response from his parents.
At 14, she ran away from her abusive mother's home, became a prostitute, and stole.
Very quickly, she marries a pimp and forger who gives her three sons... before she has him killed.
Her destiny then changed: at the beginning of the 1970s, she married Alberto Bravo, a drug trafficker, with whom she emigrated to conquer a new market: the United States.
He teaches him everything, introduces him to the tricks of the trade and makes him his right-hand man.
Griselda excels and develops this pioneering sector of cocaine trafficking on American soil.
She hires “mules” from among her former prostitute friends in Colombia to transport the drugs hidden in the lining of their bras that she has specially made.
She amasses a fortune, gaining power as her network grows.
From their New York base, the couple gets Americans addicted, and Griselda herself becomes addicted to the bazooka, the cocaine paste.
With the DEA (the American narcotics squad) on her trail, she fled to Colombia with her private jet in the mid-1970s. She joined her husband who, having embezzled funds, then suffered his lethal wrath: once again , the Black Widow murders her husband.
It is also with this marital murder that the series begins.
Griselda Blanco in the documentary film
Cocaine Cowboys
, by Billy Corben.
Alamy Stock Photo
The intractable drug trafficker
1978 marked a turning point in the life of the ruthless drug trafficker: accompanied by her third husband, Dario Sepúlveda, she flew to Miami.
Physically transformed by her drug addiction, puffy face, dull body, she goes incognito, re-establishes her empire and ends up ruling a world of men who did not want her.
At the height of his “glory”, 1,500 kg of drugs were sold each month by a network of 1,500 dealers.
She spends her fortune, estimated at 1.4 billion euros, on villas and rivers of diamonds, and organizes orgiastic parties for the barons of the industry.
His love of luxury is matched only by his ferocious appetite for blood.
He is credited with more than two hundred murders, including numerous punitive expeditions.
Among his victims: thugs, competitors, but also civilians killed in cold blood by his henchmen, women, children.
“The bad decisions we make in life are either motivated by greed or fear.
Sofia Vergara in Griselda.
Elizabeth Morris/Netflix
Griselda ends up using the same tactics the men used against her, and that seals her fate, says Eric Newman, creator and executive producer of the Netflix series.
Some women are so strongly shaped by the society against which they rebel that even in their attempt at emancipation, they reproduce the patterns they want to abolish.”
Ruthlessly, the “queen of coca” will stop at nothing to establish her power: she is the leader of the Cocaine Cowboys who, from 1979 and for a decade, pitted the police forces in Florida against drug traffickers.
The massacres were so frequent that the morgues, due to lack of space, would have rented refrigerated trucks from… Burger King.
“In her time, the idea that a woman could lead a cartel was unimaginable, simply because of the violence and brutality that the role entailed.
No one thought she was capable of committing the horrors she was guilty of.
There is something fascinating about its mixture of femininity and the worst of masculinity,” says Sofía Vergara who, herself Colombian, has been carrying out this series project for ten years.
If the production “glamorizes” the antiheroine and attenuates her monstrosity to romanticize her moods, her intimacy and her role as mother, Griselda was merciless in reality.
Including with those close to him.
Griselda Blanco alongside drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.
DR
In 1983, she killed her third husband, Dario, after he fled the United States - and Griselda - to reach Colombia with their son Michael Corleone, named in reference to the hero of The
Godfather
.
From the following year, the relations of the “queen of coca” with the Medellín cartel deteriorated: her addictions accentuated her paranoia, and the murders she ordered at the slightest disagreement angered the barons, notably the powerful Ochoa brothers, determined to avenge the assassination of their niece.
Griselda flees Florida for Los Angeles but, after years of tracking, the DEA finally arrests her.
In 1985, she was sentenced to ten years in prison but continued to manage her affairs from her cell.
Despite three new charges of second-degree murder during her incarceration, including that of a 2-year-old child, she narrowly escaped the death penalty, following a formal defect, but saw her sentence increased.
Released in 2004, but expelled from the United States, she returned to Medellín and stood aside.
Not only is the cartel no more, but she prefers to enjoy her wealth discreetly so as not to suffer the same fate as her sons, murdered upon their arrival in Colombia.
Her past fatally catches up with her in 2012. As she leaves a butcher's shop, men on motorcycles shoot her twice in the head in the street.
Ironically, this modus operandi, which she created according to legend, was her favorite for eliminating her enemies.
Griselda Blanco with one of her four sons.
DR
Griselda,
by Eric Newman, with Sofía Vergara and Karol G, starting January 25 on Netflix.