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Did Griselda Blanco and Pablo Escobar meet in real life? What was their relationship?
In the new Netflix series ‘Griselda’, the deceased Colombian drug lord is heard saying that she was “the only man” he was ever afraid of.
January of 2024 saw the release of the immediately popular ‘Griselda’ series on Netflix, based on the life of Colombian drug trafficker Griselda Blanco Restrepo who operated in the 1970s and 1980s, featuring the well-known face of Sofia Vergara.
While Griselda’s life might not have been as widely known as figures like Pablo Escobar, who also has his own story told in Netflix’s excellent ‘Narcos’, her life continues to capture global attention.
However, what people have wondered as they learn more about Griselda is whether these two figures actually knew each other in reality, given that both leaders operated in the drug business, precisely during the same era, and crossing a similar region.
It was notable that at the beginning of the ‘Griselda’ series, there’s a reference to the kingpin: “The only man I ever feared was a woman named Griselda Blanco,” Escobar is heard saying, although he doesn’t appear in the production.
Griselda-Escobar: enemies in the mafia world
As the entertainment portal Collider points out, in real life Griselda and Pablo Escobar did indeed meet. And it was in Miami when the drug lord was a teenager, at the tender age of 15. At that time, in the late 1970s, The Black Widow as she was known, was 20.
Journalist José Guarnizo, from BBC Mundo, claimed to have spoken with one of Escobar’s hitmen, who mentioned their relationship.
“He remembered amid his sociopathy some specific details, such as Pablo Escobar being proud that his first major enemy in the mafia world had been her,” said Guarnizo. Moreover, according to the Colombian portal Semana, Escobar did use the routes established by Blanco for the transportation of cocaine, which became the origin of their conflicts.