/ ELIZABETH MORRIS/NETFLIX Sofia Vergara is Griselda Blanco in the Netflix series.
/ ELIZABETH MORRIS/NETFLIX
Sofia Vergara is Griselda Blanco in the Netflix series.
NETFLIX – She was nicknamed the “Black Widow” for good reason. The new Netflix series Griselda looks back at the extraordinary journey and complex personality of Griselda Blanco. To embody the “Queen of Coke”, the platform chose Sofia Vergara. Netflix returns in six episodes – available this Thursday, January 25 – on this true story and the life of this crime baroness renowned for being ruthless. His destiny has already inspired several films including The Queen of Cartelswith Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Griselda Blanco reigned supreme over cocaine trafficking in the 1970s and 1980s between Colombia and the United States, particularly Florida. She was the mentor of Pablo Escobar, another big name in Colombian cocaine trafficking whose life was depicted in the series Narcos. To amass her colossal fortune and build, with her sons, a drug empire, she left behind many corpses.
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After a childhood marked by poverty and violence, Griselda Blanco and her second husband Alberto Bravo, a notorious trafficker, emigrated illegally to the United States in the early 1970s. They launched together from the Queens district of New York a large cocaine trafficking operation between Colombia and the country. Business is going very well, Griselda Blanco notably developed an efficient system of mules transporting drugs in pouches sewn onto their underwear.
Griselda Blanco, the «Queen of Coca»
Indicted and on the verge of arrest, she returned to Colombia in 1975. It was also that year that her second husband was killed with a gun, after a financial disagreement within the couple. At the end of the 1970s, Griselda Blanco returned to the United States with her four sons and became the queen of cocaine trafficking in Miami.
For more than 10 years she reigned terror, taking part in the now famous Cocaine Cowboy Wars. The “Black Widow” does not hesitate to get her hands dirty herself to eliminate the competition. And for good reason, the very lucrative operation brings him according to the Standard 80 million dollars per month.
At the same time, according to many stories, Griselda Blanco also shines for her lifestyle known as “flamboyant”, and the orgiastic evenings she organizes. A world in which she fully integrates her four sons Dixon, Uber, Osvaldo and Michael Corleone, whom she named in homage to the hero of the film The Godfather.
The tragic end of Griselda Blanco
In 1984, however, fearing for her life, she flew to California where she was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration. (DEA). She was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug production and trafficking, then sentenced again for having ordered three assassinations, including a shooting during which a two-year-old child lost his life.
While continuing behind bars to manage her trafficking, she also tried (in vain) from prison to organize the kidnapping of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., son of the American president, to obtain an early release.
Griselda Blanco was finally released from prison in 2004, after just under 20 years behind bars, and deported to Colombia. Yet the extent of her crimes should have seen her serve a life sentence. Indeed, in total, the “Black Widow” would have been responsible for more than 200 murders – some of which she would have committed herself, including those of her two husbands.
The “Black Widow” was finally murdered in 2012 by a biker in Medellin while she was shopping at the butcher.
The mini-series Griselda with Sofia Vergara is online this Thursday, January 25 in full.
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