“The only person who scared me was a woman named Griselda Blanco,” Pablo Escobar, a famous drug lord, reportedly said about the person who started one of the most successful cartels ever.
A woman named Blanco had people killed because she didn’t like how they looked at her. She was a very cruel criminal leader and everyone was afraid of her in Miami during the 1970s and 80s.
The famous drug leader is now being portrayed in a Hollywood movie. Sofía Vergara from Modern Family is teaming up with the people who made Narcos to play the head of the criminal world.
The new series with exciting action scenes and lots of flashy, rich people was released on Netflix on Thursday. Griselda describes the criminal as a clever and determined woman who has faced a lot of hardships.
The real story of the woman known as the “cocaine godmother” and who killed her three husbands is not very clear.
Blanco was born in Colombia in 1943 and started doing bad things when she was 11. She supposedly killed a rich boy after she took him and his parents wouldn’t give her money to let him go.
In 1964, when she was 21 years old, she moved to New York with her husband and three children without permission and started selling marijuana.
“It’s important to remember who Griselda was when she was young. ” She was a person who moved to a new country and was taking care of three children all by herself. Vergara, who was also born in Colombia, said she had no education or tools to survive.
Eric Newman, the person in charge of the show, said he wanted to make the character of Griselda Blanco more relatable. He said that everyone has reasons for their actions, even if they’re not excuses. He also wanted to show her as a single mother who had to run away from a bad relationship, which can be understandable for some people.
She is a woman in a world mostly dominated by men. She works much harder to prove herself and uses her cleverness and smarts to outdo the men around her. “People begin to support her,” said co-director Andrés Baiz.
‘Having power turned her into a terrible person. ‘
In 1970, Blanco told someone to kill her first husband and she went to live in Miami. She met her second husband, Alberto Bravo, who was involved in drug trafficking. He showed her the even more dangerous side of the illegal drug world.
Blanco was very violent and bold in her drug smuggling. She would get young women to smuggle cocaine in their bras and underwear from Colombia to the US. Because of this, she quickly became the leader of the criminal operation.
As the fighting between drug gangs in Miami got worse, Blanco became more cruel. In 1975, she killed her husband because she thought he was taking her money. In 1983, she had her third husband killed after he took their child and left Miami.
Known as the Black Widow because of her mean and cruel actions, Blanco became very powerful and rich in the early 1980s. She was in charge of bringing 1. 5 tons of cocaine to the US every month and was one of the scariest women in the world.
Vergara told the media that he believes Griselda’s original plan was to protect and provide for her family when she moved to Miami. However, she got caught up in power and money which changed her into a bad person.
In the early 1980s, Blanco said no to a $15 million offer from a rival cartel to give up her empire.
Depended on outcasts.
Even though Blanco was in charge of the drug business in Miami for 20 years, she knew it was risky because she was a woman in a male-dominated industry. At one time, she let a man represent her business because local dealers would only make deals if a man was speaking for the business.
After getting arrested for a murder, Blanco decided to take charge of the business and used her position as an outsider to benefit herself.
From April to September 1980, about 135,000 Cubans moved to the US. The Marielitos, some of whom were already in criminal gangs, drug dealing, and murder.
Blanco took advantage of this and hired them to work for her. Her gang created a team of gunmen called Pistoleros, who became known for carrying out assassinations on motorcycles.
Baiz said that Blanco is an outsider who brings other outsiders together. In this industry, it’s hard to gain and keep trust, but Blanco knows what she’s doing.
These characters don’t fit in with society’s usual standards. Griselda makes people feel like they are part of her family, Baiz said.
Vergara liked Blanco because she also felt like a misfit and understood some of what she went through.
I am from Colombia, I am a mother and I moved to a new country. “As a woman, Griselda was judged. Now, I have to work extra hard and I get fewer opportunities because of my accent,” she said.
‘A woman can’t be this bad’
In the 1980s, Blanco’s criminal empire started to fall apart and she was arrested in Irvine, California, ending her time as a powerful criminal leader.
But how did she go 20 years making Miami her drug playground without getting caught. The show’s team says it’s because she’s a woman.
“Because she was a woman, she could do a lot and disappear when she needed to. No one would think a woman could run such a big criminal group. ” “Vergara said that people believe a woman could never be so wicked. ”
And even though men in charge of drug enforcement agencies were sure that a woman could not be involved in the drug trade, there was someone who was investigating that possibility.
In the 1970s, June Hawkins, a female analyst in the Miami police, was determined to catch Blanco, even though her colleagues didn’t take her seriously and only used her to translate Spanish.
Newman said that Hawkins is a very important part of the story. She is like Griselda, a young single mom of Latin background working in a world that doesn’t treat women well. She shows audiences that Griselda had other choices besides what she did.
What happened to Griselda Blanco.
On February 17, 1985, Blanco was taken from her home by the police and was found guilty of making, bringing, and giving out cocaine. She was also accused of three counts of the worst kind of murder and spent 20 years in prison.
While she was in prison, three of her sons died. After she was set free in 2004, she was sent back to Colombia and lived a calm life.
On September 3, 2012, at 69 years old, she was killed by a man on a motorbike in Medellín. The drive-by shooting was a copy of the way she used to kill people when she was in charge.
“Her murder shows how much people hated her. ” In 2012, she was a lonely woman who kept to herself, and three out of her four children had passed away,” Newman told the BBC.
Baiz said the story of the chain-smoking, gun-wielding killer is a “perfect pattern”.
She starts with nothing, has great success, but at the end of the story it’s a sad ending with complete loss.
Despite having a very interesting and powerful life story, Blanco is often not remembered in history books. Even Vergara, who grew up in Colombia during the time when drugs were being trafficked, said she had never heard of this woman. After learning about her life, she thought it was impossible that this was a true story.
“I wanted to play Griselda because of this. ” She does a lot of things at once: she is a mother, a villain, a lover, and a killer. She demonstrates better than anyone else how complicated people can be.