Griselda Blanco Repestro, One of the biggest drug traffickers in Latin America, her story is remembered in the series “Griselda”, which premiered on Netflix this Thursday (25). The Colombian, who in the series is played by the actress Sofía Vergara, was Pablo Escobar’s mentor, famous drug trafficker founder of the Medellín Cartel.
Nicknamed the “godmother of cocaine”, the criminal was for two decades the main reference in drug trafficking in Latin countries, and was responsible for helping to introduce the illicit drug into the United States. Griselda had three children and built an empire in New York and Miami, but accumulated many enemies and corpses, until she was arrested in the mid-1980s and, years later, murdered.
Born in Colombia in 1943, Griselda Blanco grew up in a violent home and, during a time of extreme poverty, due to a civil war.
There are some versions about his beginnings in crime, but, according to BBCthe most famous is that she started at the age of 11, when she kidnapped a boy from a rich family and shot him to death after his parents refused to pay the ransom.
Watch the trailer for the series ‘Griselda’
‘Godmother of Cocaine’
At age 21, in 1965, Griselda immigrated to New York with her first husband, Carlos Trujillo, and their three children. The couple sold marijuana, but the woman wanted to move into the cocaine market. In 1970, her husband died of cirrhosis, but there were indications that Blanco could have killed him, earning her the nickname “black Widow”.
She started using cocaine during her second marriage, to Alberto Bravo. She specialized as a distributor and, in 1973, opened a lingerie company where the pieces had bags with compartments to facilitate the storage and transport of the drug in “mules” (people used to transport).
Still in New York, she laundered money, involved in human trafficking and acquired power in organized crime, also inciting wars between gangs that began bloodshed. Her second husband would also have been murdered by her, as Griselda believed he was stealing money. In 1983, the third companion was also killed.
In the 1980s, Blanco had already established herself as the “godmother of cocaine”. Back in Colombia, after her criminal scheme, which also involved human trafficking, was discovered on North American soil, she came to supervise the trafficking of 1.5 tons of the drug to the USA.
Prison and death
In 1985, Grisela Blanco was arrested and tried for manufacturing, importing, distributing cocaine and three murders. She spent two decades in prison and was released in 2004 and was deported to Colombia, where she lived under the radar.
On September 3, 2012, at the age of 69, she was shot dead in Medellín after leaving a butcher’s shop, by two men who arrived on a motorcycle. She was rescued, but did not survive.