The Godmother of Miami Griselda Blanco: A Body of Terror

On Sunday morning, February 15, 1985, Drug Enforcement Agency agent Bob Palombo kissed a Venezuelan housewife on the cheek and told her she was under arrest for conspiring to distribute large amounts of cocaine and marijuana in the.  Since the early 1970s, Palombo had tracked her across continents from to to to, and to.  Finally, he thought, the woman known as la madrina (The Godmother) would stand trial for her crimes and spend the rest of her life in prison.  

Twenty-one years later, on October 27, 2006, Billy Corben’s documentary Cocaine Cowboys hit the theaters.  With its release, the cocaine wars of South Florida in the late 1970s and early 1980s returned to the front pages of theMiami Herald.  The film depicts the rise and fall of key Colombian smugglers and their American compadres who flooded the with cocaine where La madrina declared war.  In his review of the film, critic Owen Glieberman stated: “The Godmother makes Tony Montana look like Mother Teresa.” For almost thirty years, Blanco captured the attention of police due to her ability to avoid prosecution.  Her era served as the inspiration for the hit television series Miami Vice and the film Scarface. This essay analyzes Blanco as a cautionary tale from the War on Drugs. True crime writers, ex-comrades of Blanco, and film-makers sensationalized one of the few women who rose through the ranks to be one of the top distributors for the Ochoa family.   As a subject, Blanco’s alleged psychosis serves as a moral narrative of vice, but her body acts as a vessel through which men gain their street power and credence.