*Warning: This post contains spoilers about Netflix’s Griselda.*
THERE’S A GOOD chance you’ll watch Netflix’s limited series Griselda and come away horrified of what you’ve witnessed. You may also already have seen the streamer’s entire Narcos universe and become desensitized to cartel killings and cocaine trafficking. Trust me when I say that whatever you see on Griselda is nothing compared to the actual actions of the woman the show is based on.
The show depicts a portion of the life of Griselda Blanco, the preeminent drug empress of the ’70s and ’80s, who was so vicious she inspired Pablo Escobar to say, “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” This is a man who once bombed a plane in an attempt to kill one person, and Griselda Blanco had him shaking in his chancletas.
The series begins with that Escobar quote to prepare you for what’s to come. Sofia Vergara plays Blanco as she grows her cocaine business from being transported in the lining of women’s underwear to an empire that corners the entire Miami market. She wields a gold-plated Uzi, orders the killings of witnesses in front of their child, has a rival drug dealer’s house bombed, and forces people to strip and crawl around like animals at gunpoint—the typical acts of a megalomaniacal tyrant on enough drugs to tranquilize Cocaine Bear.
The Andrés Baiz-helmed series will quench your thirst for suspense and murder. The real Griselda Blanco’s life may have you choking on shock. While she orders and commits several murders in the show’s six episodes, you can count on two hands how many people die because of her. You’d need every appendage on your body (and probably a few from the corpses she’s littered throughout the world) to account for the murders orchestrated by the real Griselda Blanco, a woman who former Miami-Dade drug homicide detective Al Singleton estimated in 1994 was responsible for at least 40 deaths. People have also gone on record saying she would watch and laugh as her children got high on coke at three years old, once had a woman’s fingernails torn out before killing her, and had every one of her three husbands murdered.
Two of the most gruesome parts of Griselda were inspired by real events. They somehow still come off as tame compared to what actually happened
Griselda killed two-year-old Johnny Castro and enjoyed it
Fictional drug kingpins will inflict unseemly harm on any and everyone except children. A coked-up Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in Scarface had enough of a conscience to kill an assassin he was helping when they were fine with blowing up a car with a child inside of it. In Griselda, Blanco reveals she follows a similar moral code. Jesus “Chucho” Castro (Fredy Yate), one of her drug enforcers, violently turned away her petulant son Dixon (Orlando Pineda) with a punch to the face when the Blanco child tried to get Chucho to take the fall with the cops over him irrationally shooting in the club. As is the case with any entitled child raised with a silver dope spoon under their nose, he demanded his mother punish Chucho for not doing as he was told.
Blanco, already paranoid about one of her confidants possibly leaking information to the police, lets the crack cocaine, alcohol, and unchecked power she enjoyed at her romantic partner Dario Sepúlveda’s (Alberto Guerra) birthday party and orders Chucho’s assassination. Unfortunately, when the attempt is made while Chucho is driving with his son, the assassin misses their intended target and instead kills his two-year-old son. Blanco finds out about the killing on the news, and her face sullenly fills with regret, as would any sane person with a conscience who has to face her children who begin to look at her like a monster.
In real life, she was far from remorseful. According to an extensive 1989 report from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Chucho was so shellshocked by the death of his son that he spent two days walking around Miami with his son’s dead body in his arms before dropping it off outside of a church. Max Mermelstein, a former Medellin cartel boss, told law enforcement investigating Blanco’s crimes that she was happy about killing the child because “it would upset the father.” Another example of how truth is sometimes scarier than fiction.
Griselda had Dario Sepúlveda killed in front of their son
Griselda has a way of rooting some of the titular drug lord’s nefarious actions in her survival from rival drug dealers and the police. It’s a narrative massaging of the truth that paints her as someone corrupted by the life she was forced into rather than a truly sociopathic, violent person. In the season finale, Dario takes their son Michael away from his mother’s violent influence and off to Colombia. Enraged by the man she says she gave everything to—money, purpose, and a child—she threatens to hunt him down and rip his face off.
Her softer side emerges when she contacts one of his relatives she knew he was staying with and calmly asks to speak to him. It’s not clear if she wanted to make amends, reason with him, or deliver one last threat. But, not too long after that phone call, Blanco’s henchmen kidnap her son and shoot Dario dead when he tries to chase after him. Similar to when she finds out her vengeance tour took the life of two-year-old Johnny Castro, she shoots her sons a somewhat remorseful look when they inform her their little brother has been returned and that Dario “had to go somewhere for work.”
While Michael is nowhere near his father’s dead body when he’s killed in Griselda, the real Dario wasn’t so lucky. From Mermelstein’s recollection, Dario’s dalliances with a topless dancer were discovered by Blanco, sending her into a justifiable rage. However, there are no reports of Dario taking Michael away from his mother to save him from her dangerous lifestyle. Apparently, he wanted to send the child to school, which Blanco allegedly did not. One day while driving around with Michael in Colombia, two assailants dressed as Colombian police stopped them and handcuffed Dario before shooting him in the back. “Little Michael was screaming and ran over to embrace his father. But by the time he got there, Dario was dead,” Mermelstein told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
When you sit down tonight and watch Vergara portray the deadliest female drug dealer in history, just be lucky you never came across the real Griselda Blanco.
Keith Nelson is a writer by fate and journalist by passion, who has connected dots to form the bigger picture for Men’s Health, Vibe Magazine, LEVEL MAG, REVOLT TV, Complex, Grammys.com, Red Bull, Okayplayer, and Mic, to name a few.
