The Cocaine Cowboys
Near Miami, Florida
By the late nineteen seventies, Miami had become the front door for cocaine entering the United States. Colombian cartels moved product through South Florida by the ton, and the money washed into banks, car dealerships, and gleaming new condominium towers. It also brought a staggering wave of violence.
On a July afternoon in nineteen seventy nine, gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire inside a liquor store at Dadeland Mall, killing two men in broad daylight and fleeing in a van disguised as a party supply truck. The brazen daylight massacre announced a new era. Griselda Blanco, the trafficker known as the Godmother, ran a distribution empire and was tied to dozens of killings.
Miami's homicide count soared past six hundred a year, and the county medical examiner rented a refrigerated trailer just to store the bodies. Federal authorities eventually created a South Florida drug task force. The flood of cash left a permanent mark on the skyline that rose during those years.
The Cocaine Cowboys era made Miami infamous, a city of fast money and sudden death, and its shadow lingered long after the shooting slowed.
