Cocaine Cowboys II – Hustlin’ with the Godmother

2008

Madman

R4 DVD

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

This film is the story of two people – Charles Cosby, a young Negro drug dealer, and Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug importer and at one time probably the biggest drug distributor in the United States. We start with Cosby, who narrates most of the story. He is quite unashamed about his drug dealing. He wanted money, lots of it, and drug dealing was the quickest way to get it. He doesn’t try to blame it on the users, he seems completely amoral about the effect his drugs have on the buyers – he’s only in it for the money. He may be a shallow, selfish person but he knew what he wanted.

The big gangs moved into Oakland and he was being squeezed out. He had supply problems.

Now we look at the history of Griselda Blanco, a hard-as-nails woman who was determined to become the biggest dealer in the U.S. She was succeeding through a combination of good supply (this was before the Medellin Cartel really got their act together) and ruthless management of her dealers and distributors. As Cosby put it, if you were late paying money you owed her she would kill you. If she owed you money and didn’t feel like paying, she would kill you. She was currently serving twenty years in prison and Cosby saw an item on TV about her. For some reason he felt compelled to write to her in 1991. Letters led to phone calls and then to visits to her in prison. She helped out his struggling drug dealership and the two became closer. Gradually he rose in the ranks of her organisation, not without resistance from other members of the gang. George Rivi Ayala, a high ranking member of the gang, says Cosby was regarded as an upstart and only had his position because he was Blanco’s kept man. Personally he didn’t like negros and more importantly neither did the Colombian suppliers.

Blanco ran her empire from prison as if nothing had happened. She and Cosby were able to have sex on visiting days (it cost $1500 a time for the guards to look the other way) and she wore exoensive jewellery and makeup. She continued to order the execution of those who displeased her – Cosby himself was nearly a victim when she found he was having sex with another girl. Blanco was attributed with over 200 murders, including three of her husbands.

By the 1990s cocaine use had reached the status of an epidemic in the U.S. FBI agents interviewed for the film discuss their attempts to build a case against Blanco before she got out of prison. Finally just months before she was due out they charged her with three murders. This would be enough to send her to the electric chair. Their case received a major setback when it was revealed that at least two mobsters were having affairs with secretaries in the Florida Prosecutor’s office. This forced the FBI to plea bargain with Blanco’s lawyers and she escaped the chair. She did not escape prison, though, and at this point her empire started to collapse. Many of her senior staff abandoned her organisation. The suppliers in Colombia executed some of her people, set up their own cartel and moved in on the U.S. distribution. On her release from prison Blanco was deported back to Colombia the next day.

Many in her organisation seem to have gotten away with their crimes. Cosby seems quite well-off although he now has a bodyguard, and even Rivi who was one of her hitmen seems to have come out of it well-to-do.

The whole story has an authentic feel to it from the extensive use of newspaper clippings and photos from the time. Having the gangsters tell their own story gives a far more personal feel to the whole sordid business.

There are two annoying notes. The rap tracks seem to feature “mothafucka” rather a lot – this just cheapens the effect. The second is that Cosby’s bodyguard / friend / son-in-law is verbally illiterate. Every, like, third sentence is, like, you know, like “you hear what I’m sayin?” EVERY third sentence. A bit of speech coaching could have made this less irritating. By the end of the film I was ready to shoot him myself. Otherwise, though, it’s a great if worrying film about a major social problem.

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This review will appear in Volume 3 No.1 of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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