Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Griselda Blanco in new film " The queen of cocaine"

Translated by Otis B Fly-Wheel for Borderland Beat from a Proceso article

Subject Matter: Griselda Blanco film
Recommendation: No prior subject matter knowledge required

The pay per view channel "Lifetime" has made a film Griselda: The Queen of Cocaine, based on the real history of Griselda Blanco, the Colombian narco trafficker, who trafficked cocaine into the United States in the seventies and eighties.

Reporter: Columba Vertiz De La Fuente
The renowned actress Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Griselda, known as La Madrina, and will be directed by none other than Guillermo Navarro, who won the Oscar for photography for Pans Labyrinth by Guillermo de Toro.

The feature film Griselda: The Queen of Cocaine premiered last Wednesday in Mexico. Griselda was an important leader of the Medellin cartel and a pioneer in cocaine drug trafficking and participated in the Cocaine Cowboys war in Miami.

Zeta-Jones said about the role:
"This is not the first time that I play a woman of Latin descent, nor is it the first time I play a woman involved in the world of drugs. As an actress, it was very difficult to embody the role of this woman, who is very different from me in many ways, not only culturally, but in terms of the decisions she makes. But I have to say that this was a project done with a lot of passion."

 "We were able to take the story of Griselda to the Lifetime screen and, while there are other Griselda projects on the horizon, which will be performed by Latinas, this woman has occupied my life out of curiosity for many years. I worked hard to get this project to be created. And I had the blessing of working with our wonderful director Guillermo Navarro and incredible actors like Juan Pablo Espinosa. "




The life of this criminal, whom many attribute to having enriched Pablo Escobar, is told through the eyes of his youngest son, Michael Corleone Blanco (that's what he called him in the novel The Godfather). In this film you can see Griselda since she was 17 years old. Then, he used a false passport to go to the United States. As a drug trafficker he used beautiful women or mules to smuggle drugs from Colombia to the United States.

Zeta-Jones plays a very convincing role.  Jenny Pellicer, who plays his lover Carolina; Juan Pablo Espinosa, Griselda's second husband, Alberto; Raúl Méndez, her third husband, Darío; Alejandro Edda, his hit man Rudy; Matteo Stefan, his son Dixon; Spencer Borgeson, his son Osvaldo; José Jillian, his son Uber, and Warren Christie, who plays DEA agent Jimmy.

According to the plot of the film, Griselda lives in Queens, New York, with her three children; She was attracted by the money offered by the world of drugs and quickly contacted local drug dealers. Griselda used beautiful women, old people and children as mules and created suitcases with false bottoms to smuggle cocaine from Colombia. Once she started earning a lot of money, her children left school and instead entered the family business.

Apparently, she was extremely close to her children, who were instrumental in helping her build her empire. At 36, Griselda already accumulated more than 100 million dollars economically, but had to fight against loneliness, insecurity and paranoia.

Later, she moved to the city of Miami, where she further expanded the cocaine empire and her second husband Alberto (Juan Pablo Espinosa) died, giving rise to her nickname: La Viuda Negra. It is said that she murdered him. Blanco's willingness to use violence against her Miami competitors caused her enemies to go out of their way to get her head, so Griselda moved to California to escape the assassination attempts and keep young Michael safe.

By 1985, La Madrina or La Viuda Negra was arrested by DEA agents at her home, detained without bail, and sentenced to more than a decade in prison, where she continued to run her cocaine business. In 2004 she was released from prison and deported to Colombia, where she was finally shot dead in the street and in broad daylight in 2012. She was executed in a type of homicide that is attributed to her having invented: "motorcycle murder".

Griselda: The Queen of Cocaine was produced by Asylum Entertainment for Lifetime with Steve Michaels, Emmy Award winner, Jonathan Koch, Joan Harrison and Alisa Tager as executive producers.

It should be noted that Guillermo Navarro (brother of the producer Bertha Navarro, who has produced several Del Toro films) has stood out in Hollywood as director of photography. In Mexico he worked with Nicolás Echevarría in Cabeza de Vaca (1991), which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Later he moved to Los Angeles, where he collaborated with directors such as Robert Rodríguez and Quentin Tarantino in films like Desperado and Four romos. With Del Toro he also worked in Hellboy. He has been the photographer of Imagining Argentina. He also directed the photography of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, Night in the Museum, Miniespías and Stuart Little.