VH1’s ‘Cartel Crew’: His Mother Killed 200 People. Now He’s a Reality-TV Star.
Griselda Blanco, also known as la madrina and the “cocaine godmother,” was a drug lord of the notorious Medellín Cartel (yes, the same one headed by none other than Pablo Escobar). She was assassinated in 2012 in Medellín, Colombia, after returning to her home country following a stint in U.S. federal prison. Griselda was, by most accounts, a ruthless woman who killed over 200 people—and that’s just the official estimate.
She was also a mother to several children, one of whom, Michael Corleone Blanco, is the subject of a new VH1 series called Cartel Crew, which follows the lives of narco children and grandchildren as they navigate the aftermath of their parents’ crimes.
We first meet Blanco and his wife, Marie (also a child of drug traffickers) as they’re preparing to launch their clothing and lifestyle brand, called, rather appropriately, Pure Blanco. Although they both swear they’ve left the cartel life behind them, they mention it rather frequently. “That life has always followed me,” Marie explains to the camera, while Michael, who has a tattoo of his namesake, Michael Corleone in The Godfather, is more blunt. “I buried 22 members of my family, including my mother and two brothers,” he says, after revealing he took over Griselda’s business at the age of 16 while she was in prison. However, they’re both optimistic that Pure Blanco will give them the momentum to finally leave the cartel life—whether that prediction is genuine, or just for the benefit of the show’s producers, remains to be seen.