Summary
- Griselda Blanco, a ruthless cartel mastermind, stopped at nothing for dominance, even executing her own lovers and family members.
- The Cocaine Godmother’s tragic life story blends personal turmoil with cutthroat business tactics in the Miami drug trade.
- Griselda Blanco was married three times and earned herself the nickname the “Black Widow”
The following article contains extensive spoilers for the Netflix series Griselda.Immortalized as the “Cocaine Godmother,” Griselda Blanco proved a cartel mastermind, earning her treacherous reputation as “The Black Widow of Medellín.” Few were so ruthless as Blanco, always on the lookout for an opportunity, showing no sympathy toward anyone she deemed disloyal. This is demonstrated in her own family saga, her paranoia showing itself in the manner in which she dispensed with anyone, even her own lovers, who presented the faintest challenge to her complete dominance, as seen in the six-part Netflix miniseries starring Sofía Vergara, available now.
Those familiar with true-crime documentaries or literature are probably aware of the Cocaine Cowboys era of the Miami drug trade, a nickname that Dade County Prosecutor Bob Kaye defined as a particular variety of sadistic Colombian immigrant hellbent on carving out a piece of the South America-to-Miami drug trafficking pipeline, with an army of hitmen in tow. Blanco was at the top. “She didn’t forget or forgive. She will get you,” her favorite assassin elaborated in the Billy Corben documentary, Cocaine Cowboys, Blanco keeping a list of her enemies, with a price next to their name. With the drug trade being a zero-sum game, capturing a share of the coke market necessitated eliminating rival “entrepreneurs.” For Griselda Blanco, the personal and business sides of her life blurred together in tragic ways, with no one to blame but herself.
The woman known as la Madrina (aka The Godmother), would forge ties only to have them ripped apart. That seemed to be her own doing. Yet the “Billionaire Cartel Lifestyle Brand” persists to this day, just not quite in the fashion she would have envisioned when sitting locked up in a federal penitentiary.
Mother and Father
Though they aren’t featured in the miniseries, Griselda’s parents in real life heavily contributed to her early heel turn. Nothing about her father is known, and little about her mother can be corroborated, even their names not a matter of public record. According to Charles Cosby, an Oakland drug dealer who romantically linked up with Griselda in the period of her incarceration, her relationship with her mother deteriorated rapidly well before her foray into crime or her many troubled marriages. Whatever love between the two that remained was destroyed when Griselda was pummeled by her own mother at age twelve, explaining Griselda’s dark tendencies and lingering trust issues, more or less abandoned to roam the streets as a sex worker, setting the tone that would define her sordid life.
Griselda Blanco
The Godmather, aka la Madrina, Boss of the Blanco Drug Racket
Coming into the world at the worst place, at the worst time, Griselda Blanco Restrepo (played by Sofía Vergara) survived the red-light district and a civil war, honing her skills as a murderer and crime boss. Few that crossed her path escaped unscathed, a lesson her suitors would fail to learn. Her personal character is one of some dispute. Her surviving son, Michael, took documentaries and docudramas to task with the unflattering portrayals of her over the years. But from age eleven, she was a hardened criminal. Her earliest major crime was the murder of a ten-year-old boy that she and her neighborhood friends had taken hostage. From her teen years to her middle age, she was married three separate times, each spouse dying, along with her husbands died three of her four known offspring, directly related to her crime enterprise. Journalist Jeff Leen described her to Rolling Stone as a human being beyond redemption:
In my opinion, Griselda was a stone-cold sociopath, and I don’t buy the fact that she was doing this out of a sense of motherly love for her children or that she was forced into killing in a reluctant way.
Former lover Charles Cosby had conflicting accounts of her, both remembering her as a devoted mother while simultaneously acknowledging her emotionless habits of spreading fear, misery, and intimidation. Despite the obvious metaphorical trail of blood leading back to her house, she constantly evaded murder charges in the US and abroad. Per The Miami New Times, her go-to hitman Jorge Ayala had been engaging in phone sex calls with members of the State’s Attorney staff, the DEA case against her thrown out. Escaping back to her homeland, she would not escape justice for the hundreds of her victims. She herself was executed on the streets of Medellín while shopping, for all to witness. The streaming program depicts her as a single mother struggling to raise a family, when in reality they were pawns in a larger game with no end.
Carlos Trujillo
First Husband/Business Mentor
At thirteen, Blanco would enter into a relationship with someone who would become the first of three wedded partners, father to three sons. Though not featured in the Netflix drama, Carlos Trujillo’s influence cannot be understated. Many years her senior, Trujillo would induct her into the next level of the underworld, Griselda moving up from petty street crime and kidnapping to international crimes, becoming Trujillo’s right-hand woman.
Trujillo’s untimely death of liver failure has sparked rumors she poisoned him to remove him from their burgeoning people-smuggling operations. Blanco picked up on his passport forgeries techniques, then moved on, no longer needing him, although some biographers have speculated that Trujillo meant more to her, and was “her one true love.” Associates of Blanco disagree with the rosy picture, noting that she had him killed without much thought. “It’s that simple, you know,” former friend Cosby said on the VladTV Podcast. For Griselda, putting out a hit was “like ordering fast food.”
Alberto Bravo
Second Husband/Business Associate
Alberto Bravo (Alberto Ammann) may not have had a long presence in her life, but he introduced Blanco to the cocaine trade. Her specialty altered the business. Blanco used female mules, their bras and lingerie stuffed with uncut cocaine straight from the jungles of Colombia. Soon the duo were elbowing in on the Italian mafia, able to use their native connections to eliminate the “middlemen.” As The Washington Post notes, here the Netflix biopic alters the known facts for some dramatic effect. Griselda did not seek refuge in the United States after killing Bravo; she maintained a presence in New York well before Bravo was murdered. Having just been pinched for drug dealing in New York, and possibly fearing her husband cutting her out and stashing a chunk of their lucre without her knowledge, Griselda is alleged to have shot him in the head, taking a long trip to South America as the heat died down back in the States.
Darío Sepúlveda
Third Husband/Former Employee
After the demise of Bravo, Blanco would marry Dario Sepúlveda, the father of her youngest son, and heir apparent of the Blanco clan after her death, Michael Corleone. This relationship bore none of the dynamics of the prior two. Make no mistake about it, Sepúlveda was not her equal, being merely a lowly bank robber, bodyguard, and enforcer on her payroll. Dario soon began to resent her, which ultimately ruined his chance of making it far. The Colombian (as played by Alberto Guerra in the miniseries) challenges his wife, even attempting to take the children away. In an interview with Men’s Health, Guerra described his interpretation of the character and his life path as a kind of inverted soap opera, “Dario lost her to power. He didn’t lose her to another man.” His plotting backfired, as he met a similar fate to his predecessors. Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen’s describe a relationship in chaos in their book Kings of Cocaine. By the early eighties, the couple had grown apart, and both jockeyed for custody of their boy, a personal war amid a myriad of side battles for the drug trade. In 1983, he was killed by police, and Griselda is usually credited as the reason why he was singled out, as shown in the docudrama.
Dixon Trujillo-Blanco
Eldest Son
Lacking the requisite guile (or paranoia) that served his mother so well, Dixon (as depicted by Orlando Pineda) would inadvertently lead to the destruction of his mother’s drug dynasty, convincing his mother to take the bait presented by a DEA agent in 1984. Always seeking to live up to his mother’s name, her oldest son made waves cruising around in Mercedes, donning expensive jewelry, and living the high-life. He would doom the family business by falling victim to a money-laundering sting. Tracking down the exact details of the final days of Griselda and Carlos Trujillo’s oldest son has proven difficult after returning to Colombia after a US prison stint. Some journalists reported he died as early as 2008. There is some dispute about the precise fate of Dixon, Cocaine Cowboys director Billy Corben claiming Griselda outlived two sons, meaning that Dixon lived past 2012, and died in the intervening period before 2020, when brother Michael Corleone confirmed that the rest of the bloodline was wiped out.
Uber Trujillo-Blanco
Second Son
Like his older brother Dixon, and his younger brother Ozzy, Uber (Jose Velazquez) also played a subordinate role in his mother’s crime family, and would only intervene in setting up deals within the larger Colombian cartel. It has been reported that he was also shot to death in Colombia in the 1990s.
Osvaldo (Ozzy) Trujillo-Blanco
Third Son
Following the path of his siblings before him, Osvaldo (Martín Fajardo) succumbed to the curse of the Blanco crime syndicate. Like in King Lear, none of the sons possessed the skills of their parent, Osvaldo picked up on counterfeiting and possessing an illegal firearm. Based on available sources from the US Department of Justice, the third son of Griselda was likely murdered in Colombia as part of a revenge plot, Osvaldo then part of a drug-dealing operation at the time of his death in 1992, carrying on the family business to no avail.
Michael Corleone Blanco
Fourth and Youngest Child
The only son of Dario and Griselda, Michael’s fate is all the more ironic, as his namesake character in The Godfather later warns no one to take sides against the family. He got off lucky, his mother named the family dog “Hitler.” Because of his age, Michael (portrayed by Benson D. Larracuente) was not an integral part of the drug ring at any point in his life. He was left orphaned at age six when his mother was arrested in 1985, his father executed two years prior. He wouldn’t see his mother as a free woman until 2004, Michael yet another victim of his mother’s decades-long crime spree.
But the real life Michael Coreleone did eventually go legit, rejecting the family trade and supposed birthright that his mother had left to him following her demise in 2012. After the dust settled, he witnessed the death of 22 members of his extended family. About that birthright … he didn’t let it go to waste. He wisely transitioned from the life of crime to a more contemporary hustle, selling branded merch, along with getting into filmmaking, launching a hip hop label, and selling weed (legally). The Blanco empire lives on, if only in branding rights.
Catch Griselda, now streaming on Netflix.
