After the success of Narcos and Queen of the South, Netflix still doesn’t have enough of series about Latin American drug cartels, but the mafia might like the series. The new series Griselda, in which Modern Family star Sofia Vergara delves into the rough life of Griselda Blanco, a drug cartel leader in Miami in the 70s and 80s, is being challenged by a lawsuit by Blanco’s children. They want the premiere scheduled for Thursday to be canceled because the family’s privacy has been violated.
The phenomenon of the mafia protesting against a film about their shady dealings is not new. Before he was embraced by them, the production of the mafia classic ‘ T hey Godfather already similar problems. The American Italians did not want to be ridiculed.
In a soft voice
That fear turned out to be unfounded and that was mainly due to the Godfather himself, Marlon Brando. Famous for his research, Brando was not afraid to contact Russel Bufalino, the head of the infamous Bufalino family. And he was not afraid to teach the Hollywood star the tricks of the trade. Such as the way they walk, and how a threat works best: in a soft voice. Every time Marlon was unsure about something, he called Russel. Ultimately it was T Hey Godfather an absolute hit with the criminal clan.
“No group was more fascinated by, grateful for, and proud of that movie,” former police officer Joe Coffet told the New York Times. “Every time we raided a mafia house we found a goddamn video tape.” In fact; mafioso Salvator ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano revealed that after seeing the movie he even copied famous threats from the film, such as: “I’m making you an offer you can’t refuse.”
Horse head
Even stronger: after T hey Godfather There were a number of incidents reported in Sicily where people found a severed horse’s head. A custom that was unknown in mafia circles before the film.
The fact that the Italian mafia was so charmed by Francis Ford Coppola’s film (based on the book by Mario Puzo) is mainly due to the fact that the Corleone family is portrayed in a rather flattering way with the emphasis on honor, family values and old-fashioned loyalty. Recent series about the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels are a lot rawer.
Black Widow
The expectation is that Griselda also falls into that category. The fact that a woman is the main character does not necessarily make a difference in terms of violence, he showed The Queen of the South already on, and Griselda was certainly no wimp. The woman nicknamed Black Widow and Cocaine Godmother is said to have kidnapped a child from her neighborhood for ransom at the age of 11 and killed her after the bounty failed to materialize, an ex-lover said. The police in her native Colombia hold her responsible for at least 250 murders. Among the dead are her four ex-husbands. “If she didn’t like the way you looked at her, you could be killed,” said US Attorney General Stephen Schlessinger.
It’s not without reason that infamous drug boss Pablo Escobar once said “the only man I’ve ever been afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” The pair knew each other and it is rumored that Blanco taught Escobar the tricks of the trade.
After an unpleasant childhood in Medellín, Blanco escaped with her son Michael Corleone Blanco (the second name refers to T Hey Godfather ) reportedly bankrupt, but with a kilo of cocaine hidden in her bra, to the US in 1964. She soon started a thriving drug trade in Queens, New York. She fled back to Colombia in 1975, only to restart her powder business in Miami in the 1970s.
In a world that was mainly dominated by men, she wanted to prove herself by being twice as hard. Although the journalist Deborah Bonnele, author of the book ‘ Marcas, the Secret Rise of Women in Latin America’s Cartels’ : “When women stand behind the stove in the kitchen and such matters are discussed, they do more than stir the soup.”
Wave of violence
It is telling that after the arrival of Blanco, Miami was flooded with cocaine and a wave of violence, with hundreds of murders per year. The time is known as the Cocaine Cowboy Wars. But for the once poor girl from Medellín, the money flowed in. Her fortune was estimated at billions of dollars.
That could not continue to go well and in 1985 Blanco was arrested, including for three murders on her behalf. Because her hitman Jorge Ayala had phone sex with two secretaries from the Florida Attorney General’s Office, the sentence was only 20 years in prison for “technical reasons.”
In 2004, she was released due to health problems and returned to Medellín. She was shot dead from a moving motorcycle there in 2012 after a visit to the butcher. The attack would have seemed familiar to her. She herself had introduced this type of liquidation in Miami.