Griselda
A Netflix launched Griseldaminiseries that brings Sofia Vergara as the famous godmother of cocaine. Let’s learn the story of this infamous figure, who was also called Black Widow.
The miniseries is inspired by the life of the cunning and ambitious Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco who, with great brutality, created one of the most profitable drug cartels in history.
In addition to Vergara, the cast also includes Alberto Guerra (Narcos: Mexico), Vanessa Ferlito (NCIS: New Orleans) and Alberto Ammann (Narcos).
Griselda is led by the same producers as Narcos, Eric Newman, Doug Miro, Andrés Baiz and Carlo Bernard.
Check out the real story of Griselda Blanco below.
Sofia Vergara in Griselda
Griselda’s real story
Griselda Blanco was linked to 250 murders and sentenced to 35 years in prison for her role in running a drug empire.
The ruthless drug trafficker known as Black Widow (and also as the Godmother of Cocaine) earned $80 million a month in the late 1970s and 1980s in Miami – an astonishing arc for a woman born into poverty in Colombia just a few decades earlier.
When Griselda illegally emigrated from Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, to the United States at age 21, she had already lived an amazing life.
According to varying accounts, she was born into a life of poverty and crime, supported herself through theft, forged documents, and sex work (the latter of which she denied), and ran away from home to escape the physical abuse of her mother and of sexual abuse by her mother’s boyfriend. She also kidnapped a boy and later killed him after the ransom was not paid.
Settling in Queens in 1964, Blanco divorced her first husband sometime before the early 1970s, when she met her next husband, drug dealer Alberto Bravo. Unfortunately for her first husband, the divorce apparently wasn’t final enough for Blanco, and most reports suggest that she arranged his murder several years later.
Bravo introduced Blanco to the cocaine trade, and through a combination of sheer courage, creativity (Blanco created underwear with secret pockets to transport the merchandise), clever tactics (they worked with other drug dealers), and ruthlessness, the duo built the successful and profitable network that would become the foundation of Blanco’s empire.
The business grew and money came in quickly; In 1975, not only was she charged with federal crimes, but so were 30 of her associates. She returned to Colombia to escape the feds, who had been trying unsuccessfully to locate her for years. Blanco was smart: she could radically change her appearance, had subordinates who did much of her dirty work, and could practically disappear at will. Later that year, she had a violent fight with Bravo over money and shot him to death.
By the late 1970s, Blanco was back in the United States and Miami was his playground. A major player in the city’s drug war, as Blanco rose to the top, Miami descended into one of its darkest periods.
Violent crimes increased; so many bodies accumulated that morgues were overwhelmed.
The cunning and fierce Blanco prospered: in her prime, she led a lavish lifestyle, throwing hedonistic parties fueled by sex and drugs and raking in up to $80 million a month from her annual imports of three tons of cocaine. She also seemed to be enjoying the game, naming her fourth child Michael Corleone, after the gangster played by Al Pacino in The Godfather. Blanco’s period at the top was immortalized in films such as Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) and Michael Mann’s Miami Vice (2006).
But despite keeping things in the family, running the lucrative business with his three adult sons, Uber, Dixon and Osvaldo, Blanco fell.
Informants managed to infiltrate her inner circle as Blanco became increasingly unkempt. She had trouble sleeping and ended up fleeing to California in 1984, fearing she would be murdered and arrested.
She wasn’t wrong to have these concerns: just a year later, Blanco was captured by the DEA, who successfully charged her with conspiracy to manufacture, import and distribute cocaine. She was then charged with triple homicide in 1994. But due to a plea deal and health issues, her sentence was commuted and she was released from prison in 2004 and deported back to Colombia, where she appeared to live peacefully and uneventfully.
During her nearly two decades in prison, Uber, Dixon and Osvaldo were all killed, and in 2012, she would meet the same fate. While leaving a butcher shop in Medellín, she was shot twice by an assassin on a motorcycle and died.
Griselda is available at Netflix.
O post Griselda: The true story of the black widow of drug trafficking appeared first on Cinema Observatory.