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As yet another narrative that proves capitalism drives people to do insane (and cold-blooded) things, Griselda is as much an exaltation of the beloved American system as it is a cautionary tale about it. That to get “caught up” in the game of paper chasing is to sign one’s death warrant. Especially when that paper chase involves illegal activity. For, as most of us know by now, only white men in government or high-level corporate management can get away with illegal activity in the long run. A woman like Griselda Blanco, not so much. And, although the miniseries based on her life has many discrepancies between fact and fiction (as is usually the way it goes), what it does get right is the sense of disappointment many immigrants (“legal” or otherwise) ultimately feel upon arriving to the so-called Promised Land. The harsh disconnect between expectation and reality.
For the Griselda Blanco of Doug Miro’s imagination (in conjunction with co-creators Eric Newman, Carlo Bernard and Ingrid Escajeda), she isn’t all that dismayed by it considering the situation she was fleeing in Medellín. One that required killing her husband, Alberto Bravo (Alberto Ammann), in order to leave. As for that plot point about Griselda killing him for forcing her to sleep with his brother, well, it’s just another means for the series to make viewers feel more empathy for someone so ruthless. Instead, what she killed him for was skimming millions off the top of their drug enterprise together. Because if Griselda cared about one thing, it was bitch better having her money. So, in that sense, perhaps she was a true American. Driven and motivated by the power that money entailed. As a woman who felt powerless for so much of her life, that made sense. As they say, money is power.
With every episode directed by Andrés Baiz, his and Sofía Vergara’s participation in the miniseries makes for a very Colombian affair indeed. Though nothing makes it more clichely Colombian than the cocaine itself. Described as so much purer and “tastier” when it comes from the “gateway to South America.” Indeed, per Griselda, that’s really how Blanco gets her foot in the door, attracting the attention of one of Amilcar’s (José Zúñiga) dealers at a club called The Mutiny by offering him a “free sample” to get him hooked. As is the case with most men who encountered Griselda, Amilcar made the mistake of underestimating her and the even worse blunder of trying to steal the kilo from her without paying the price she had originally asked for. Making her get it back by any bloody means necessary. Again, this is all how it transpires in the series, which finds it easier, for storytelling purposes, to place Griselda at the bottom rung of the drug ladder upon her arrival in Miami when, in truth, she was already established and well-known as a dealer when she emigrated to the city.
But that wouldn’t make for as scrappy of a character as portrayed by Vergara. A character who feels as at sixes and sevens in this environment as any other freshly-arrived immigrant. Without that aura about Griselda in the show, her ability to relate to someone like Chucho (Freddy Yate) wouldn’t be as resonant. At the diner where she first meets her soon-to-be bodyguard/henchman, he is berated and belittled by his boss, who tells him to wipe the counter again because it isn’t clean. When the boss walks away, Chucho mutters in Spanish, “Get your eyes checked, asshole.” Griselda takes this as her “in” to relate to him, asking, “You Colombian?” He replies, “Yes, but I came to America to wash dishes.” The sardonic remark speaks to the notion that doing anything “honestly” in this country is a surefire ticket to poverty and obscurity. Griselda knows that, and she also knows how to draw in people like her—“underdogs,” if you will—to endear them to her cause. A cause that, in the end, turns out to be serving her ego. For that’s the thing about power: it makes you hungry for more. Which, of course, plays into narcissism. And what’s more American than that, really? The bill of goods everyone gets sold about “taking what’s theirs.” The lie that everyone can be powerful, or at least has the opportunity to be…if they play their cards right. Usually, though, the only people with the right cards are those that the second episode is named after: “Rich White People.”
It is in this episode that the first major shade is thrown at the U.S. about what a shithole it is. And worse still, one that’s pretending to be a Promised Land. A Third World country in sheep’s clothing, as it were. And that much is highlighted when Griselda calls some sex worker comrades of hers to Miami to smuggle in some cocaína in the patented Griselda way: stuffed in bras. Being that this was still the glory days of no-frills airline travel, it was so much easier to carry off such a trick. And with the help of her trusted friend, Isabel (Vergara’s real-life cousin, Paulina Dávila), leading the pack of other “working girls,” Griselda has a willing army of smugglers at her feet. But that also means she has to house them in the same rundown motel she’s been staying at. The one with the empty pool and questionable sheets. It’s the waterless, dilapidated pool that makes one of the women comment, “What an ugly-looking pool.” “No water, how great,” another responds. She then adds, “I thought the States were more fancy.” But no, turns out, not really. Unless, of course, you belong to the aforementioned rich white people group. The very market Griselda plans to tap into as no other dealer has ever tried to before, figuring they thought South Americans of any variety were too “dirty” to deal with. And yet, just as Griselda knew how to tap into people’s emotions so as to “relate” to them and then lure them onto her side as a loyal subject, she also knew how to tap into her vision for unique business purposes that “the men” in the industry simply didn’t have the intuition or imagination to execute.
By giving rich white folks the “little thrill” of cocaine as funneled to them by their tennis coaches and yoga instructors, they could feel far removed enough from the ickiness of the “overly ethnic” drug dealers normally employed by the cartel. And, talking of the cartel, it is the Ochoas that Griselda brings to their knees in order to gain full control of Miami, forcing a key overlord in the Medellín cartel, Fabio Ochoa (Christian Gnecco-Quintero), to take a meeting with her after drying the city out of all cocaine by using the Marielitos as her footmen to steal the Ochoas’ drugs from their drop points. When Fabio finally meets with her, he admits, “We’ve all been impressed by what you’ve done here. No easy task to tame these American shithole cities. So many egos, so many guns…” And yet, there Griselda was, a woman managing to carve her place in the upper echelons of the business. (Plus, Blanco is an appropriate last name for someone trafficking cocaine, as she put the “white” in white powder.)
Her “enterprising” spirit and “whatever it takes” attitude are, needless to say, the stuff that American capitalist dreams are made of. As Vergara said of Griselda, “She had nothing, no education or tools to survive.” Only her wits, will and balls of steel. That usually leads to the sort of rags to riches potential American capitalism gets off on. That is, when the person in question is not “immigrant trash” like Griselda. But then, nothing is trashier than America itself…as Griselda points out in these shade-drenched moments of dialogue.
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Genna Rivieccio
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