Who really was Griselda Blanco? Which the Netflix series doesn’t say

What did you think of the Netflix series?

Karim Madan: I think it is not bad, even very good. We are truly in the spirit of Narcos. But there is one thing that is not believable to me, and that is the physical aspect of Griselda Blanco. When he arrives in Miami, he is still quite damaged. He has gained weight, he is taking medicine. She is nothing short of a Latin bombshell as seen in the Netflix series. In a different way, it would be interesting to play on Griselda’s physical transformation.

She was very beautiful in Medellin and when she came to New York in her thirties. But when she arrives in Miami, she is already an overweight woman.

He is presented as a mentor to Pablo Escobar, and yet he never really entered popular culture as he did. How it happened ?

We have magnified the male figures a bit. I think it’s also about patriarchy, about the macho culture around criminals. And then, indirectly, I think that even the people who worked on this issue unconsciously preferred to focus on male figures, while he remains one of the most important figures in organized crime of the 20th century. So it is true that there is a huge injustice at this level.

And what the series doesn’t show, and what I discovered thanks to your book, is that she is a woman who has grown up in violence between bodies since she was a child.

completely. In fact, to truly understand the character of Griselda – and without excusing her – it must be said that she grew up in Colombia during an era called Violencia. It was the time of the civil war. Every day there were deaths and children literally played among the corpses. And so he grew up, on the streets, around corpses and violent death.

At what age will he commit his first murder?

At the age of twelve, after being kidnapped. He and his friends were wrong. They kidnapped a child who was not from a rich family and therefore preferred to eliminate him to avoid trouble. He is a child who grew up in dysfunctional homes, was sexually abused, and whose mother herself was sexually and physically abused. So it’s still an explosive cocktail. In short, a miracle, she was not going to become Mother Teresa.

And at that moment what character trait can we give him?

He’s very cynical, and above all, I think he has a kind of hatred for the poor, because he lived in the poor. She absolutely wants to escape her bad situation and become one of the richest women in the world. And I think there’s a hatred of society, a hatred of the rich, and a hatred of men. It is firmly rooted in his personal history.

When he left his country, did he aim to become a drug lord or did it happen gradually?

It happens gradually. She learned on the job with her first husband, who was a marijuana dealer. Let’s just say the marijuana business in Colombia is off to a quiet start. It is not a drug used by Colombians. Not something they see as a way to make money or trade.

But they realize that Americans, especially hippies, come to the beach to stock up on marijuana. And so Griselda discovers this very juicy movement. And little by little, together with her second husband, she discovered cocaine. He learned the drug trade pretty quickly on the job.

True, he is still very smart, even if he did not go to school. He knows how to do marketing.

The fact of opening an underwear store between Bogotá and New York is indeed a stroke of genius. It can be said that it was a woman who invented the principle of the mule. It didn’t exist before. Nobody got on a plane with a cocaine bra.

He also invented execution by motorcycle. He developed this method of execution because he noticed that the streets in Medellin are very, very congested and that a motorcycle can get away quickly. And it was he who invented this method, which Escobar would later use throughout his reign, and also a lot during the cocaine cowboy period in Miami.

And when was he in front of the DEA or the police in the United States?

It will take some time though. You should know that when Griselda Blanco started trafficking cocaine in the 1970s, the DEA was still in its infancy. We are far from biometric passports, nothing is computerized, people can enter American territory with fake passports. So he benefits from it. And then, by stopping the mules at the New York airport, it was reported that cocaine was being imported into the United States. The DEA thinks something is up with Columbia.

In the series, she is presented as a woman who is ready to do anything for her children. Was it really like that?

This is a woman who was really ready to do anything for these children. Rather, they especially supported him, rather than the other way around. They were there when he overdosed, being spoon-fed.

Does the series show him as a crack smoker? Was it like that too?

He was a heavy crack user. In addition, this is why the series is not realistic. Everyone knows that a crack causes very quick bodily and physical damage. You can’t take crack for six months to change your physical appearance, it’s impossible. It quickly turns you into a zombie. He was also on a cocktail of antidepressants and anxiolytics. He was also tormented inside by everything he did and everything he saw.

The Netflix series implies that Griselda was bisexual.

Yes. This is very important for him. She is a woman who has had lovers all her life. This did not stop him from gaining respect in the industry.

The series does not lead to his death. After several years in prison, he returned to Medellin, where he lived a quieter life.

He was first arrested in 1984 and deported in 2007. He was killed in Colombia in 2012. He was executed for murder in Florida. But he will get away with it, because there were scandals in the prosecutor’s office, with his best man.

He then lived in Medellin’s shadow for five years until his death.

Yes, absolutely. Besides, we wonder how they haven’t killed him before. Because he had many enemies. He is killed while he is with his daughter-in-law, he was coming out of the butcher’s shop. He is killed by assassins on a motorcycle. He invented the same process. He was allegedly killed in a family vendetta against people he had previously executed and whose children had grown up. Basically, he was part of the Medellin cartel. But he got into trouble with Pablo Escobar and the cartel turned against him because he killed Ochoa’s niece.

Karim Madan is the author of the incredible story of Griselda Blanco, Queen of Cocaine (Hachet).