With six episodes, the series Griselda from Netflix, accomplishes two things. On the one hand, explore the criminal and drug trafficking world in Latin America, during the 1970s and 1980s of the last century. At the other end, the twisted figure of the woman that the violent Pablo Escobar called “the only person he feared.” Between both things, the production shows the details of a time of opulence in Medellín and also, a Hollywood version about a feared criminal from Colombia.
But the real story of the drug trafficker is much more twisted and violent than the one that made it to the screen. In particular, because Griselda Blanco, she was not only a colorful figure in the midst of the gang war in the worst era of Colombian violence. She also became a ringleader in her own right and a criminal who killed three of her husbands in succession. If that wasn’t enough, Blanco was the means by which several of the continent’s most brutal drug traffickersthey found lodging and shelter in Medellín and then Miami.
At the same time, the criminal extended its domain and control to Miami, which turned it into a bridge of communication and resources between both countries. By the 1980s and shortly before she was murdered, Griselda Blanco was part of the most prominent drug and weapons trafficking network throughout America. Something that led her to become the center of a large-scale police investigation. and also, the persecution of his enemies in the Colombian underworld.
A woman of enormous cruelty
According to Colombian legal recordsAna Griselda Blanco Restrepo was born on February 5, 1943 in Cartagena. Surrounded by criminals and with a family with strong ties to the country’s drug world, she committed her first murder at the age of eleven. All in the middle of a failed kidnapping in which, in addition, tried defraud the victim’s family. Due to her age, she was not imprisoned in prison.
In 1964, already a mother of three children, she emigrated to the United States illegally and, together with her husband, began selling small stashes of cocaine and marijuana in New York. Despite being barely 21 years old, she was already accused of a series of crimes, including another murder and suspicion of being a member of a minor cartel in Cartagena. Already at that time, she was accused of recruiting young women to send them with shipments of narcotics hidden in their underwear.
Throughout the decade and the first years of the next, Blanco became an important ringleader. Much more so after murdering her husband in 1975, he convinced her that she was hiding earnings figures from him. YesHis reputation as a brutal criminal, capable of murder in cold blood, became infamous. In April of that same year, she was indicted on federal charges, which, together with her crime, made her case the most important and significant cocaine trafficking case in American history. Before being detained, she fled to her native Colombia. Three years later, she would clandestinely return to North American territory, becoming the most influential figure in the drug world.
The Colombian crime empire
By the early 1980s, Griselda Blanco had a long criminal record. To the death of her first husband, the third was added to her execution in the middle of the street. At the same time, her drug empire grew to become one of the largest in the world. It was then that she was nicknamed The Black Widow and she began to fear her. Not only because of her brutality, but also the fact that, according to several of her loved ones, she was obsessed with revenge.
By the end of 1981, Blanco was responsible for the monthly trafficking of 1.5 tons of cocaine to North America. Furthermore, he was at the center of the so-called Cocaine Cowboys Wars, which shook Miami during the late 1970s. In the subsequent five yearsBlanco murdered other criminal leaders, including Cuban drug traffickers Alfredo and Grizel Lorenzo. For these murders, she was almost imprisoned in 2004, but due to a legal technicalitythe case ended up being dismissed.
In the end, death
For the year 2012 and after his empire ended up collapsing Among the pressure from many other leaders of the criminal world, Blanco lived in seclusion in Medellín. At 69 years old, three of her four children had been murdered and The one who was the most ferocious criminal in Colombia, stepped aside from any illegal circumstance.
Despite this, on September 3 she was executed in the middle of the street by a hitman who intercepted her from a motorcycle. Ironically, a type of murder that the cartel she led had become her hallmark. At the time of her death, she had no property other than the house she lived in and some savings. The remains of what had been one of the largest and most dangerous criminal organizations in the world.