The uniqueness of Griselda Blanco, whose story became the inspiration for the new Netflix series “Griselda”, is that she was the first woman to create a drug empire – she operated first in New York, then in Florida, mainly Miami. She can only be compared with Mery Valencia de Ortiz, working for the Colombian cartel from Cali, who also achieved a similar scale of drug crimes, but operated without attracting as much attention.
How did it start?
– Griselda was born in 1943 and grew up during what is known in Colombian history as “La Violencia”. There was a de facto civil war between two political parties – liberal and conservative. Almost 300,000 died. people, the streets were flowing with blood, the law was not respected.
Griselda Blanco was an unwanted child. Her father, a latifundist, landowner, chased Griselda’s mother out of the house when he found out that she was pregnant with his child. The woman became a prostitute to have money to live on. Besides, she made a living from street theft.
Growing up in difficult conditions, Griselda quickly turned to crime. She started stealing when she was around 8-9 years old. Various sources say that when she was 11, she kidnapped a boy younger than herself and demanded ransom for him. Over time, she also began to engage in prostitution. Her subsequent treatment of men stems from these experiences. She saw them as torturers, which is why she was able to manipulate them, gain their sympathy and take advantage of the fact that they let their guard down around her. She learned how to survive in a man’s world.
Miami was an important place for her career. The city located on the Atlantic Ocean in the southeast of the state of Florida today does not resemble it at all from almost half a century ago. In the 1970s, it was a quiet place where Americans came to relax. In the second half of that decade, however, it became a target of drug dealers who invested their illegally earned money in hotels, clubs and restaurants.
How did she enter the world of drugs?
– Her first husband, Carlos Trujillo, was involved in the trade in illegal visas, offering them to Latin American immigrants crossing the border with the United States in large numbers at that time. After his murder, she and her second husband, Alberto Bravo, moved to New York together. There she started importing drugs on her own. To smuggle the goods, she used a network of Colombian women working in the sex industry, whom she met when she was involved in prostitution. Her flagship patent was sewing special bras that contained bags of cocaine instead of breast-enhancing pillows. One woman was able to smuggle up to a kilogram of the drug. She also designed special underpants for men who also passed drugs for her.
It is said that Griselda Blanco created the modern drug business and that she taught Pablo Escobar the trade.
In New York, Griselda Blanco saw that the gigantic clientele for cocaine was the bored, satiated, wealthy American middle class. To meet their needs, Griselda introduced the drug to discos, offices and clubs. She distributed it not in the criminal or artistic world, but among lawyers, doctors, businessmen… At that time, it was a much simpler business because the authorities did not yet have specialized anti-drug units, controls at borders and airports were symbolic, and copies in retail sales amounted to thousands percent
What kind of boss was she?
—She was a pretty good psychologist. She experienced poverty and knew perfectly well what people from the lower classes thought and felt. As I mentioned, the first distribution network she created consisted of women working in the sex industry. Griselda Blanco knew that these young, attractive girls were eager to get out of poverty, to make it big. At the same time, they knew how to wrap customers around their fingers and easily establish relationships. La Madrina was able to use this for its distribution needs.
It was also the time of the exodus to the United States of illegal immigrants from Central American countries – Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, but also from Cuba. Ships filled with people who were seeking their fortune in the USA landed on the shores of Florida. These people had nothing to lose, and for Griselda Blanco, persuading them to cooperate was not that difficult. She was certainly distinguished from the competition by her exceptional innovation and the ability to turn difficulties, such as being a woman in a male-dominated world, into something that gave her an advantage.
How did she run her drug business?
At the hands of her triggers, not only those who got under her skin died, but also many random, innocent people, witnesses of these terrible events. She carried out executions almost publicly, e.g. she organized a party at which she single-handedly killed four people whom she suspected of betraying her. Moreover, she was a very suspicious person, and her addiction to unrefined (called Bazooka) cocaine and alcohol only strengthened this trait in her.
Maybe it was due to the fact that she was the only woman so high in the criminal world?
– To gain respect, she had to prove that she was tough and unyielding. This is why her cruelty was greater than that of other bosses. There are no documents relating to her personality, but it can be assumed that she was a psychopathic, suspicious person, prone to manipulation and wanting to exercise total control over her surroundings.
Griselda was unpredictable, and this pissed off her life and business partners. It was her brutal decisions that made public opinion start to pay attention to this industry, which irritated Pablo Escobar incredibly, which cut off its supplies. He even said that she was the only woman he was afraid of. In response to the activities of her group, the authorities began to establish modern units (CENTAC 26), whose sole purpose was to fight the drug trade.
She spent almost 20 years in prison and returned to Colombia. Also into the drug business?
-Officially no. After her deportation in 2004, she hid for some time in a poor neighborhood near Medellin. Estimated 4-5 years. Once she felt more confident, she longed for luxury and moved to a better neighborhood. She lived lavishly by renting properties that were not confiscated from her thanks to the corrupt Colombian police.
In 2012, as she was walking down the street, a motorcycle carrying two hitmen, sicarios, approached her. She was shot twice and died at the scene. It is worth noting that this type of execution was invented by her.
It didn’t look like an assassination paid for by a very powerful agent, although she still had enemies among them. No wonder, since before her imprisonment, instead of paying the powerful Ochoa family for one and a half tons of cocaine, she told them that their courier and family member (Marta Ochoa) took the money and disappeared, while she was found dead near Griselda’s house.
It was suspected that immediately after Griselda Blanco was released from prison, cartel members would want to take revenge on her. However, during her imprisonment, significant changes took place on the map of Colombian organized crime, including: Pablo Escobar was shot and his organization was destroyed, as was the rival cartel from Cali.
What has changed in the drug business since her times?
Moreover, production used to require extensive plantations of redwood (i.e. coca) or marijuana. Only large producers could afford these. Anti-drug services could observe them thanks to satellites and reconnaissance planes, try to track them down, destroy them… However, around 2000, the market was flooded with cheap, synthetic substances that could be created in laboratories on wheels, which was alluded to, for example, in the series “Breaking Bad “. The market of producers and distributors has become noticeably fragmented.
In the past, South and Central American cartels had a rule: let’s not trade drugs in our territory, let’s send it to white people, North America or Europe, let’s protect our people from it. Now that has changed. From interviews I conducted this year, it appears that there are entire villages in Mexico that have died due to synthetic drugs. Relatives of Mexicans work in the United States, send money to the family, who buy cheap drugs and die after using them for a few months. Drama.
Violence?
– Violence and cruelty are inherent elements of the drug business. However, there used to be more rules in this world – then people who were really guilty died. The old drug business leaders tried to reach an agreement with the population – they renovated the church, built a hospital or funded a sports field. However, much changed in 1986, when Kiki Camerena, a DEA agent, was brutally murdered (Drug Enforcement Administration).
These years are more or less the times of the new order. Griselda certainly contributed to this. Blanco did not enter into alliances with the local community. She achieved obedience through the use of terror. Its scale and dimension irritated both gangsters and the authorities. At some point, not only law enforcement services, but also representatives of other cartels were interested in her head.
Who rules the cartels today?
– In Mexico, I went to a prison where I talked to high-ranking members of drug cartels. They seemed like educated, nice people and didn’t look like gangsters at all. However, they were great accountants and specialists in logistics, strategy and market recognition. They could have graduated from good universities.
However, this is one side of the coin. On the other side there are people from the lower social levels. They are the ones who occupy the most risky and at the same time most numerous positions (cannon fodder – crowd. — cannon fodder). They are somewhat doomed to this fate – their local communities have been terrorized by various criminal groups for decades. Often their families, friends, neighbors and schoolmates are involved in the drug business. They also consider such activity to be normal. Talking about free will in their case is pure nonsense. These are people who have inherited certain mental or social patterns and whose lives have been determined for a long time. To a large extent, they are doomed to serve criminal groups that reward a tendency to take risks, lack of empathy, make risky decisions, and bravado.
After our research in Mexico, we called this phenomenon collective trajectory. This is a lack of choice strongly linked to the influence of a place of residence dominated by organized crime and a lack of support from the state. Griselda also became who she became because of the times she lived in and the place where she was born.
Has Colombia retained its status as the center of the global drug trade?
— Colombia was strong mainly in the 1970s-1990s. The cartels from Medellin and Cali were real powers back then. Over time, criminal groups from Mexico, which for years had only acted as intermediaries in transporting drugs from South America to the United States, began to produce them themselves. Today, Mexico is the most powerful narcostate.
Serial “Griselda” is now available on Netflix.
Ph.D. Piotr Chomczyński — conducted research on organized crime and monitored prisons in Mexico. He works at the University of Łódź and the Academy of Applied Sciences in Piła.
