Did Griselda Blanco and Pablo Escobar Actually Know Each Other?

The Big Picture

• Griselda Blanco, the Black Widow and Godmother of Cocaine, is the focus of Netflix’s new series, Griselda.
• There is little known about the relationship between Griselda and Pablo Escobar, but they may have crossed paths in Miami.
• Griselda used her invisibility as a woman in the drug world to rise to power, while Escobar led the violent Medellín Cartel.

It’s winter, which means you’ve likely fallen into an abyss of binge-watching TV shows and movies because the outside is gray and bleak. Scrolling through the hundreds of titles of rom-coms, teenage high school drama movies, Seinfeld, and every variation of Love Island you can imagine, there lies Griselda. Netflix’s new series chronicles the life of Griselda Blanco, the Black Widow and Godmother of Cocaine. The show is ruthless and will satisfy any true crime junkie’s itch for violence, murder, and deceit.

Sofia Vergara stars as the titular role and the six-part miniseries travels through all different facets of Griselda’s life as she travels up the ranks of the criminal empire as a cocaine queenpin. Within the first minute of the series, audiences are shown a title card that features a quote from the Godfather of Cocaine himself, Pablo Escobar. That quote reads, “The only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco.” Escobar should sound familiar, as his story was also an incredibly popular hit on Netflix called Narcos. I know what you’re thinking! The Godmother and Godfather of Cocaine had to know each other, right? If you’ve finished watching Griselda, that remains to be seen, but we can take a deeper dive to figure out if the two were connected in the cartel.

What Is the Netflix Mini-Series ‘Griselda’ About?

As the name suggests, Griselda follows the life of Griselda Blanco, a powerful crime boss from the Medellín Cartel. The series starts out with a literal bang, showing Griselda wounded by a gunshot and covered in blood in her home in Colombia. She seeks a safe haven with her three sons at a friend’s house in Miami, Florida and that is where her story and rise to power really begins. She became one of the biggest cocaine distributors and mob bosses in Miami during the 1970s and 1980s, and she had quite a reputation for violence.

Her reign started after she murdered her second husband, Alberto Bravo (Alberto Ammann). There are sources that say it’s possible she murdered her first husband as well, but the series picks up after that happened. It’s the murder and arranged murder of her three husbands that earned her the Black Widow nickname. Once Griselda had Alberto out of the way, she intended to gain a monopoly on the cocaine trade in her area. All along her climb to the pinnacle of success and power, Griselda made countless enemies and left so much blood in her path. A lot of the story shown in Griselda is true, including the murders and very suspect and frightening orgies. Griselda used her identity as a woman to be invisible in the drug world and get anything she wanted or needed.

Who Is Pablo Escobar, the Godfather of Cocaine?

Pablo Escobar might be the most notoriously known drug lord, and for good reason. Escobar started the Medellín Cartel in the mid 1970s and led it with extreme violence. Although Escobar was extremely violent and ruthless as a businessman, he was sometimes referred to as a Robin Hood type figure, which led him to become part of the Colombian Congress in 1982. He ruled through fear and many of the people living in Colombia supported him because they were afraid of being executed. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he became increasingly violent, even going as far as putting a bomb on a plane to kill an informant. He was arrested in 1991, escaped custody in 1992, and was in hiding until late 1993. He was shot the day after his birthday in December 1993 after his hideout was found. The majority of Escobar’s life and rise to prominence was show in the Netflix show Narcos and Escobar was played by Wagner Moura. Even though Pablo Escobar is widely known in the drug smuggling business and is quoted at the beginning of Griselda, Escobar isn’t shown in the Netflix series.

Did Griselda Blanco and Pablo Escobar Know Each Other?

Now I know you’re thinking that Griselda and Escobar had to know each other, especially considering she became the most powerful drug smuggler in Miami and made deals with the Medellín Cartel, which is Escobar’s cartel. The truth is that there is very little known about the two’s relationship together. What we do know is that Griselda and Escobar met each other in Miami during the late 1970s when he was only 15 years old and five years younger than Griselda. He was looking to get into the drug game and because she had more tenure than him, he was trying to use resources to find a way in. There are reports that say Griselda was once a member of the Medellín Cartel, but unfortunately for us, a lot of those reports overlap and contradict each other. It is suspected that because of their same career path, the two would be running in the same circles together, but without much direct interaction. Before she shot her husband, Bravo, Griselda and Bravo were smuggling and transporting cocaine between Colombia and Miami, using aircraft and pilots that were paid for by the Medellín Cartel.

There is some speculation that her nickname, the Godmother of Cocaine, was a direct link to Escobar’s nickname, the Godfather of Cocaine. However, we can also suspect that the nickname only came from her love of The Godfather movies, since she named her fourth son Michael Corleone. The only hard connection that exists is that the queenpin and kingpin of cocaine are both buried in Monte Sacro Cemetery in Colombia. It is likely, based on all the facts we do have and specifically that quote from him, that Escobar respected Griselda’s ability to rise from the ashes and build a lavish life for herself, even if everything she did to get it was violent. So, we have Narcos, and we have Griselda, but don’t hold your breath for a Godfather and Godmother series about the two together.

Griselda and Narcos are both streaming on Netflix.

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