Cocaine Cowboys

Cocaine Cowboys was a documentary released in 2006. The documentary main focus was on the rise of Cocaine being brought into Miami and the extreme violence that came with the drugs during the 1970-80s. I was utterly shocked by how much violence came along with the drugs, weather it was over money, respect, the drugs themselves or simply because someone pissed the wrong person off the crime was out of control in Miami. This documentary focuses on the city of Miami and the crime and suffering that this city incurred but the Youngers reading delves more into the suffering that the ones actually making the drugs incurred. They were the people from Columbia, Peru, and Bolivia, they were not wicked drug lords they were people simply working for almost nothing just trying to survive or provide for their family. They worked in the worst conditions that was very detrimental to their health. Most seem to ignore the suffering that these people had to endure.
The Youngers article and the documentary put an emphasis on the corruption with the drug trafficking. Youngers says, “…the US government became an accomplice…”and the documentary directly showed the corruptio of Miami’s city law enforcement. Most of the film is about one of the main drug lords who to my surprise was a woman; Griselda Blanco, who was related to more than two hundred murders. The documentary depicts her as completely ruthless. Her main hit man was Ayala who admitted to twenty five murders. I believe the documentary had more power because they were interviewing him through almost the entire film. We got an inside look to a murderer from the Miami drug days. I could not stand how he spoke, which was emphasized in the film, he was proud of himself for being a good murderer. That shows how cold blooded he really was, he viewed murder as a job. Yet, the movie did show how he shot the young child, and how bad he felt for it and when Blanco demanded him to kill the entire family of a different family he refused to kill the children and demanded that his accomplice not kill the kids. So perhaps somewhere in him is a piece of a heart. He explained how he moved because he felt the heat. Gootenberg described how it was like a balloon, when a drug area was being squeezed a different area would inflate with drugs like a balloon being squeezed and the other end blowing up. This film was very good, it gave me a very good picture of why Miami is what it is today and gave me the picture of how big the drugs actually were during the 70-80’s. I had no idea that it was so huge and that so many people died. I also can’t believe how just so recently so many people in one area was so ruthless. How a mother can leave her shot son, how Blanco can order killings like she orders people, how it is just an everyday job to go kill people, the documentary shows how out of control the drug problem was.