Sofía Vergara to play Griselda Blanco in six-part Netflix series
“The only man I was afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” That’s what notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar once allegedly said about the person who created one of the most profitable cartels in history.
A woman who had people murdered because “she didn’t like the way they looked at her,” Blanco was a ruthless criminal mastermind whose name was one of the most feared in 1970s and 1980s Miami.
Now the notorious drug lord has gotten a Hollywood makeover as Modern Family’s Sofía Vergara teams up with the team behind crime drama Narcos to play the underworld boss.
Filled with dramatic, high-stakes shootouts and neon nouveau riche glamour, the six-part Netflix series Griselda presents the notorious criminal as a hard-working but savvy and ambitious woman.
But the real story of the woman, nicknamed the “godmother of cocaine” and responsible for the murder of her three husbands, is much murkier.
Blanco is featured as a savvy businesswoman in the new series
Born in Colombia in 1943, Blanco was involved in criminal activity from the age of 11, allegedly gunning down a rich boy after she kidnapped him and his parents refused to pay a ransom.
In 1964, at age 21, she immigrated illegally to New York with her three children and husband and began selling marijuana.
“It’s important to remember who Griselda was at the beginning of her life. She was an immigrant raising three children completely alone. She had nothing, no education or tools to survive,” Vergara, also born in Colombia, said. at the BBC.
Showrunner Eric Newman said he wanted to “humanize the complex character” of Griselda Blanco because “every person has an explanation, not an excuse, but an explanation” and as a “single mother fleeing an abusive relationship, she can sometimes be understandable. .
“She’s a woman in a man’s world, she works ten times harder to prove herself and uses her wit and intelligence to outsmart the men around her. People start by supporting her,” added the co -director Andrés Baiz.
“Power made her a monster”
By 1970, Blanco had ordered the murder of her first husband and moved to Miami. There she met her second husband, drug dealer Alberto Bravo, who introduced her to an even darker side of the drug underworld.
Blanco’s propensity for violence and his bold approach to drug trafficking – sending young women from Colombia to the United States with cocaine hidden in their bras and underwear – led to him running the entire criminal enterprise.
Griselda Blanco transported young women from Colombia to the United States with cocaine hidden in their bras and underwear.
As Miami’s drug wars intensified and rival cartels clashed violently, Blanco became more ruthless. In 1975, she shot her husband because she believed he was stealing money from her, and in 1983, she had her third husband murdered after leaving Miami with the couple’s child, Michael Corleone.
Nicknamed the Black Widow for her brutal and ruthless behavior, Blanco’s empire exploded, and by the early 1980s she was one of the richest and most feared women in the world, overseeing the trafficking of 1.5 ton of cocaine to the United States each month.
Griselda Blanco fought against other drug leaders in Miami and often ordered the assassinations of her opponents.
“I really think that when Griselda first moved to Miami, her intentions were only to protect and take care of her family, but along the way she lost herself and the power and money took her away. turned into a monster,” Vergara told the BBC.
In the early 1980s, Blanco rejected a $15 million offer from a rival cartel to give up his empire.
“Relying on misfits”
Although she ruled Miami’s narco empire with an iron fist for two decades, Blanco was keenly aware that as a woman working in an industry run almost exclusively by chauvinistic men, her position was precarious. At one point, she allowed a man to pitch her business because local dealers “would only take a deal if it came out of a man’s mouth.”
After her arrest for murder, Blanco chose to run the company herself and used her outsider position to her advantage.
Griselda used her position as an outsider to gain the trust of others also on the fringes of society.
Between April and September 1980, approximately 135,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States. Known as Marielitos, some of them were already involved in criminal gangs, drug trafficking and contract killings.
Blanco took advantage of this and recruited them to work for her. His cartel developed its own group of hitmen, the Gunslingers, who became known for their motorcycle assassinations.
Blanco “is an outsider and recruits all these other outsiders around her,” Baiz said, and in an industry where trust was hard to earn and even harder to keep, she “knew what she was doing.”
“These characters are all misfits, they don’t fit into the normal norms of society. Griselda knows that and makes them feel like part of her family,” Baiz added.
Sofía Vergara said Blanco probably got away with what she did for so many years “because she was a woman.”
It was Blanco’s misfit status that appealed to Vergara because she “understood” some of what she had experienced.
“I am Colombian, a mother and an immigrant. As a woman, Griselda was judged and today I know that because of my accent I have to work very hard and I have fewer opportunities”, a- she declared.
“A woman could never be so mean”
In the mid-1980s, Blanco’s criminal empire began to collapse, and her reign of terror came to an abrupt end when she was arrested in Irvine, California.
But how did she manage to spend two decades making Miami her drug-fueled playground without getting caught? The team behind the series attributed it to her gender.
“Because she was a woman, she was able to get by when she needed to. No one would expect a woman to run a cartel of that size. People think a woman couldn’t never be so mean,” Vergara said.
And while male-led drug enforcement agencies were adamant that a woman could not be behind the narcotics trade, someone was pursuing exactly that direction of investigation.
Juliana Aidén Martinez plays June Hawkins in the series
Despite being regularly fired and used solely for the purpose of translating Spanish for her colleagues, June Hawkins, an intelligence analyst with the Miami Police Department, intended to arrest Blanco as early as the mid-1990s. 1970s.
Newman called Hawkins a vital part of the story. “She is the mirror of Griselda, she is also a young single mother of Latin origin who works in a world that devalues women. She serves to show the audience that what Griselda chose to do was not her only option.”
What happened to Griselda Blanco?
On February 17, 1985, Blanco was arrested at her home and convicted of manufacturing, importing and distributing cocaine. She was also charged with three counts of first-degree murder and spent two decades behind bars.
During his prison sentence, three of his sons were killed. Once released in 2004, she was deported to Colombia and led a quiet life.
On September 3, 2012, aged 69, she was shot dead by a man on a motorcycle in Medellín. The drive-by shooting was a copy of the style of assassination she invented during her reign.
“Her murder shows the true level of hatred towards her. In 2012 she was a harmless woman, living as a recluse and three of her four children were dead,” Newman told the BBC.
Baiz said the story of the chain-smoking, gun-wielding killer is a “perfect arc.”
“She comes from nothing, goes to incredible heights, but by the time you get to the end of the story, it’s a tragedy that ends in total loss.”
Despite the gripping saga of power that was Blanco’s life, she is often forgotten in the history books. Even Vergara, who grew up in Colombia during the drug trafficking era, said she “never heard of this woman” and that after learning about her life she thought it was “impossible “let it be a true story.
“That’s why I wanted to play Griselda. She is a mother, a villain, a lover and a killer. Above all, she shows how complex humans can be.”
Griselda is on Netflix from January 25.
