by Elaine Carey
75. United States v. Dominique Orsini, 424 F. supp. 229, 1976. See also Nadelmann, Cops Across Borders, 436–56.
76. United States v. Joseph Anthony Martinez-Carcano, stenographer’s transcript, 101–9.
77. Ibid., 100–120, 120–25, 128–32.
78. Ibid., 410–80.
79. Peter G. Bourne, “The Great Cocaine Myth,” Drugs and Drug Abuse Newsletter 5, no. 5 (1974), 37. See also Kevin A. Shabat, “The Local Matters: A Brief History of the Tension Between Federal Drug Policy and Local Policy,” Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice 1, no. 4 (Winter 2007), at http://globaldrugpolicy.org/1/4/index.php, accessed January 28, 2011.
80. Richard DeGrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
81. Blanco was not the first female cocaine boss. Blanca Ibañez de Sanchez, a Bolivian, worked with other traffickers to develop a route from Bolivia to Cuba to New York in the early 1960s. For more information, see Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine, 247–86.
82. United States v. Griselda Blanco, U.S. District Court of Southern New York, 75-CR-429, stenographer’s minutes, 665–92.
83. Ibid., 306–10.
84. Richard Smitten, The Godmother: The True Story of the Hunt for the Most Bloodthirsty Female Criminal of Our Time (New York: Pocket Books, 1990). In places, the evidence in the court documents disputes aspects of Smitten’s work, but his account remains a comprehensive source on Blanco.
85. The term “cocaine cowboys” was also used by law enforcement officers. See Statement by Michael Horn, chief officer of International Operations, DEA, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, July 19, 1997.
86. Owen Gleiberman, “Cocaine Cowboys,” Entertainment Weekly, October 25, 2006.
87. José Guarnizo, La patrona de Pablo Escobar: vida y muerte de Griselda Blanco (Bogotá: Planeta, 2012). Guarnizo conducted interviews with Blanco’s former employees, who argued that she institutionalized the use of sicarios.
88. De Palma, Scarface; and Miami Vice, television series, Michael Mann Productions, 1984–1989.
89. Public Broadcasting Service, “The Godfather of Cocaine,” Frontline, February 14, 1995, transcript at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/1309.html.
90. Moore, The French Connection; and Smitten, The Godmother. After his novel Twice Killed (New York: Avon Books, 1984), Smitten moved away from fiction following his work with Mermelstein to publish The Godmother, followed by his and Ellis Rubin’s Kathy: A Case of Nymphomania (Hollywood, FL: Lifetime Books, 1993).
91. Max Mermelstein with Robin Moore and Richard Smitten, The Man Who Made It Snow: By the American Mastermind Inside the Colombian Cartel (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990). Smitten used information from Mermelstein in his book on Blanco. Mermelstein argued that Blanco enjoyed having a few drinks and talking about her use of violence. Smitten, The Godmother, 96–100.
92. The Medellín cartel was composed of Pablo Escobar, José Gonzalo Rodríguez, and the Ochoa brothers: Jorge, Juan David, and Fabio. Fabio mostly worked in the United States. The Ochoas were an upper-middle-class family who turned to cocaine. The coca came from Bolivia and Peru; the cartel processed it in Colombia, and American pilots flew it from Colombia to a drop island in the Bahamas.
93. Francisco Adriano Armedo-Sarmiento, aka Eduardo Sanchez, aka Pacho el Mono, aka Elkin, aka Francisco Velez, et al., Defendants-Appellants, nos. 1276–82, 1284, and 1309; 76-1113, 76-1119, 76-1124, 76-1127, and 76-1148, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, argued August 20, 1976, decided October 28, 1976. Certiorari denied March 7, 1977. See 97 S.Ct. 1330, 1331, United States v. Parra, Gomez, Botero, Cabrera, etc., United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 75-CR-429.
94. United States v. Griselda Blanco, United States District Court of Southern New York, stenographer’s minutes, July 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 1985, 75 cr. 429.
95. John E. Harris, an expert on extradition, testified at the trial. John E. Harris, director, Office of Internal Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, International Cooperation in Fighting Transnational Organized Crime: Special Emphasis on Mutual Legal Assistance and Extradition, in UNAFEI Annual Report for 1999 and Resource Material Series no. 57 (Tokyo: UNAFEI, 2001). See also Huseyin Durmaz, “Extradition of Terror Suspects and Developments in Extradition Process,” in Understanding and Responding to Terrorism, ed. Huseyin Durmaz et al. (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2007), 66–83.
96. Marco Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence: A History of Colombia, 1875–2002 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006); Gonzalo Sánchez and Donny Meertens, Bandits, Peasants, and Politics: The Case of “La Violencia” in Colombia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001); and Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946–1953 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).
97. Donny Meertens, “Victims and Survivors of War in Colombia: Three Views of Gender Relations,” in Violence in Colombia, 1990–2000: Waging War and Negotiating Peace, ed. Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez G. (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001), 153.
98. Smitten, The Godmother.
99. The sons were born as follows: Dixon on April 2, 1960; Uber on November 15, 1961; and Osvaldo on May 5, 1962.
100. Smitten, The Godmother, 1–19.
101. Photograph from the author’s private collection. Guarnizo, La patrona de Pablo Escobar; and Alonso Salazar, Pablo Escobar: el patrón del mal (Bogotá: Aguilar, 2012).
102. Diamond also represented Blanco’s son Michael Corleone in a narcotics arrest in 2011. Francisco Alvarado, “In the Black Widow’s Shadow,” Broward New Times, October 13, 2011.
103. United States v. Griselda Blanco, stenographer’s report, 75 CR 429, 5–17. In the documents, all accents and tildes are excluded. The quotation appears as it was in the document.
104. Ibid.
105. Cecil was the DEA agent in charge of Chile; he worked numerous cases in South America. See United States v. Rafael Lira, no. 716, 74-2567, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, April 14, 1975; and United States v. Griselda Blanco, no. 1187, 85-1423, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, November 10, 1988.
106. United States v. Griselda Blanco, stenographer’s report, 75 CR-429, 7–76.
107. For information on the limited success of Operation Banshee and other conspiracy cases, see Kenney, From Pablo to Osama, 91–95.
108. Smitten’s book is based on information from Carmen Cabán, yet it was Gloria who was the star witness. Carmen was also arrested. Smitten’s account in The Godmother differs from the testimony given by Gloria. The surname Cabán was unaccented in the court documents.
109. United States v. Griselda Blanco, stenographer’s report, 20–30.
110. Ibid., 43.
111. Ibid., 50–60.
112. Smitten’s informant was Carmen Cabán, but Gloria testified in 1985, not Carmen.
113. Smitten, for his book, interviewed Carmen, who he argues was also a lover of Cabrera. This was not confirmed in Gloria’s testimony. Cabrera was married to a woman named Elsa who lived in Colombia in the 1970s.
114. United States v. Griselda Blanco, stenographer’s report, 639–948.
115. United States v. Griselda Blanco, no. 1187, 85-1423, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, November 10, 1988.
116. Mermelstein, The Man Who Made It Snow, 159–61.
117. “Top Drug Dealers Named by Police: One Woman Is Among the 13 Believed to Rule City Narcotics Trade,” New York Times, December 9, 1975.
118. Ibid. Leroy “Nicky” Barnes and Frank Lucas controlled the Harlem drug trade in the late 1960s and 1970s. Both have been featured in contemporary popular culture. Barnes was the subject of a documentary by Marc Levin, Mr. Untouchable, Blowback Productions, 2007. Lucas was the muse for Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Universal Pictures, 2007, in which Denzel Washington plays Lucas.
119. “Top Drug Dealers Named by P
olice: One Woman Is Among the 13 Believed to Rule City Narcotics Trade,” New York Times, December 9, 1975.
120. Wiretap transcripts, United States v. Alberto Bravo et al., United States District Court, Southern District, S75 CR-429.
121. Ibid.
122. United States v. Griselda Blanco, stenographer’s report, 75 CR-429, 457–79.
123. Ibid., 75 CR-429, 491–506.
124. United States v. Francisco Adriano Armedo-Sarmiento.
125. Judgment and Probation Commitment Order, folder 1, 75 CR-429. Her judgment was passed on March 1, 1976. On December 21, 1976, she was released.
126. United States v. Griselda Blanco, stenographer’s report, 75 CR-429, 529–609.
127. Ibid., 609–12.
128. Judgment and Probation Commitment Order, November 8, 1985, USDC-SDNY, Criminal Case files, folder 1, 75 CR-429.
129. Terrence E. Poppa, Drug Lord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin (El Paso: Cinco Puntos Press, 2010). Depictions of Blanco in narconarratives differ greatly from those of male drug traffickers such as Pablo Acosta in Terrence Poppa’s Drug Lord. Acosta’s drug and alcohol addiction is a cry for intervention. His sexuality, and those of other traffickers, is rarely mentioned and never associated with alleged psychosis. Rather, these are signs of virility and strength. Instead, Acosta’s colleagues ensure that he gets clean so all could return to the lucrative business of trafficking. Although Patrick Radden Keefe wrote about Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s (El Chapo) affinity for women as well as Viagra. Patrick Radden Keefe, “The Hunt for El Chapo,” The New Yorker (May 5, 2014), http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/05/140505fa_fact_keefe?currentPage=all
130. Available at www.CharlesCosby.com.
131. Billy Corben, Cocaine Cowboys 2: Hustlin’ with the Godmother, Magnolia Pictures, 2008.
132. “Searching for the Godmother of Crime,” Maxim, July 23, 2008, 96–98.
133. Martin A. Berrios, “Michael Corleone Blanco: The Son of Cocaine Cowboys’ Griselda Blanco Speaks!” at http://allhiphop.com/2008/08/04/michael-corleone-blanco-the-son-of-cocaine-cowboys-griselda-blanco-speaks, accessed August 4, 2008.
134. Guarnizo, La patrona de Pablo Escobar.
135. Journalist Jennie Smith, conversation with the author, October 5, 2012. Smith lives in Medellín. Also see Jennie Erin Smith, Cocaine Cowgirl: The Outrageous Life and Mysterious Death of Griselda Blanco (n.p.: Byliner Originals, 2013), Kindle edition, at https://www.byliner.com/originals/cocaine-cowgirl?hbl, accessed October 6, 2013. Smith found that prior to her death Griselda lived with a woman, Carmen, and her family. Carmen and Blanco had known each other for years and were rumored to be lovers. After Blanco’s murder, Carmen and her relatives continued to live in Blanco’s house until Michael, Blanco’s son, forced them from the home.
136. Jenny Smith, conversation with the author, October 5, 2012.
137. “No Antiwoman Job Bias in the Narcotics Trade,” New York Times, April 22, 1975.
138. Kathy Burke, telephone interview with the author, February 4, 2011.
139. Drug Enforcement Administration and Metro-Dade Police Department, reported in U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Border War on Drugs (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1987), 9.
CONCLUSION
1. “The Gangster Matriarch of L.A.,” Daily Beast, September 13, 2010. It is not lost on me that León, like the Hernandez family, was rumored to have connections to the Mexican Mafia (la Eme).
2. Christine Pelisek, “Federal Indictment Targets Street Crime Family,” LA Weekly, June 27, 2008.
3. Ibid.
4. Sam Quiñones, “Outside the Law,” Los Angeles Times, March 30, 2008.
5. “Woman’s Link to Mexican Drug Cartel a Saga of Corruption on U.S. Side of the Border,” Washington Post, September 12, 2010. The coverage also contained a detailed description of Garnica’s contacts. This is not the first female customs agent involved in drugs; I have found such cases dating to the 1950s.
6. See for example, Carey, “ ‘Selling Is More of a Habit than Using’ ”; and Elaine Carey, “Women with Golden Arms: Narco-Trafficking in North America, 1900–1970,” History Compass 6, no. 1 (2008): 774–95.
7. Carey and Cisneros Guzmán, “The Daughters of La Nacha,” 23–24.
8. Bureau of Social Hygiene, Series 3, Rockefeller Archive, Tarrytown, New York. See also California Legislature, “Report on Drug Addiction in California by the State Narcotic Committee” (Sacramento: California State Printing Office, 1926), box 230, New York Academy of Medicine; and Dr. Charles Winick, “Some Observations of the Life-Cycle of Addiction and of the Addict,” United Nations Bulletin: Drug Addiction and Narcotics (January 1964), at http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1964-01-01_1_page002.html.
9. Cisneros Guzmán, “Las tres jefas,” 125–38.
10. Julio Scherer García, La reina del Pacífico: es la hora de contar (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2008).
11. Abadinsky, Organized Crime. Discussion with Elaine Carey, January 20, 2011, Queens, New York.
12. See Rafael Rodríguez Castañeda, ed., El México narco (Mexico City: Planeta, 2009), 13–17.
13. James D. Calder, “Mafia Women in Non-Fiction: What Primary and Secondary Sources Reveal,” in Contemporary Issues in Organized Crime, ed. Jay Albanese (Monsay, NY: Criminal Justice Press, 1995), 111–40.
14. Nancy Campbell, Using Women, 71.
15. Anderson, “Dimensions of Women’s Power in the Illicit Drug Economy”; Block, “Aw, Your Mother’s in the Mafia”; Howard Campbell, Drug War Zone; Dunlap and Johnson, “Family and Human Resources,” 175–98; Denton, Dealing; and Maher and Curtis, “Women on the Edge of Crime.” Also, I have relied on informal conversations with colleagues Ellen Boegel, Ric Curtis, Larry Sullivan, and Barry Spunt of John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
16. Herlinghaus, Violence Without Guilt, 4.
17. Roark, The Coin of Contraband. Garland Roark Papers, box 14, Correspondence and “Coin of Contraband,” East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin University.
18. Dominic Rushe, “HSBC Sorry for Aiding Mexican Drug Lords, Rogue States, and Terrorists,” Guardian, July 17, 2012.
19. Hennessy, “Open Secrets,” 310–22.
20. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras; Astorga, El siglo de las drogas; and Élmer Mendoza, Un asesino solitario (Mexico City: Tusquets, 1999). For information regarding Marquez, see Reed Johnson, “Art in a Gangster’s Paradise: Culiacan’s Painters and Writers Illuminate the Mythology Surrounding Mexico’s Drug Lords,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2003. Gabriela Polit Dueñas, Narrating Narcos: Culiacán and Medellín (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013).
21. For arguments made over and over in the history of narcotics, see Courtwright, Dark Paradise; Gootenberg, Andean Cocaine; and Musto, The American Disease.
22. Kenney, From Pablo to Osama.
23. Felipe Aljure, “El tercermundo no existe,” presentation at Narco-Epic Unbound, April 5, 2008, Pittsburgh; and Felipe Aljure, director, El colombian dream, Cinempresa, 2006.
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