Sumith Prasad
In Netflix’s crime drama series ‘Griselda,’ Amilcar AKA Rafael “Rafo” Rodriguez is one of the most prominent drug dealers in Miami, Florida, when Griselda Blanco arrives in the city. Griselda doesn’t take long to realize that Amilcar is the one who should be on her side for her to build a drug empire in the region. When Rafa Salazar, on behalf of the Ochoa Brothers, sets out to “conquer” Miami, Amilcar and Griselda team up to prevent the outsider’s dominance. Amilcar, however, soon gets arrested by the authorities despite Griselda’s best efforts to safeguard him from the law. In reality, as the show depicts, Amilcar’s life got turned around when he ended up behind bars!
Griselda Blanco’s Predecessor
Amilcar was the son of a Venezuelan police officer. According to a local news channel report aired in December 1981, he sharpened his marksmanship in Venezuela before ending up in Florida. In Miami, Amilcar was a highly influential drug trafficker. “Anybody who is anybody in the drug business on a major scale knows Amilcar and deals with him. So, we suspect that the connections are there for major narcotics deals and back to the drug-related homicides, again, involving Amilcar. He is under investigation for several. Maybe, as many as twenty in Dade County,” an officer said at the time.
Amilcar was also allegedly involved in the deaths of four Venezuelan police officers. At the time of his arrest, he was a multimillionaire. He reportedly rented posh apartments in prestigious addresses such as Brickell Bay Club, Four Ambassadors, etc. Amilcar was arrested in December 1981 after a shootout between him and a group of officers that included local, state, and federal agents. After his arrest, Amilcar was sentenced to life in prison for one count of attempted first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in 1985. He eventually died in prison in 1997 at the age of 51.
Amilcar in Griselda
In ‘Griselda,’ Amilcar is an eminent figure among the drug dealers in Miami who entertained guests at The Mutiny Hotel, a detail that is true. Baruch Vega, a photographer who claimed to have worked undercover for the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to capture South American cocaine traffickers, revealed in an interview given to Bloomberg that he was associated with Amilcar. Amid partying at Studio 54 and jumping into the Champagne-filled hot tubs at The Mutiny, Vega allegedly helped Amilcar’s contacts launder their money.
“He [Vega] also never entirely trusted [Amilcar] Rodriguez, and when the hit man admitted to killing some of their mutual friends as part of a turf war among Miami’s cocaine cowboys, Vega went to the police,” Zeke Faux wrote in the same Bloomberg feature. Faux’s words open a window into the world of Amilcar in his prime. Vega knew him as a hitman. The aforementioned channel report also describes him as a hitman “who does hits for recreation.” In the crime drama series, however, Jorge “Rivi” Ayala-Rivera serves as Amilcar’s top hitman, which can be a fictional detail.
In the show, Griselda gets closer to Rivi when the latter works for Amilcar. In reality, that wasn’t the case. “Blanco acquired Ayala in an interesting way. In April 1981 he, [Rivi’s friend Carlos] Nossa, and three other members of his crew were in the Jacaranda nightclub in Miami when Nossa was warned to get out as a hit was due on a nearby table. Not realizing it was a Blanco hit, Nossa tipped off the potential victims. Realizing they were in serious trouble two nights later the pair met with Blanco promising they would do the hit themselves for nothing,” James Morton wrote in ‘The Mammoth Book of Gangs.’
Amilcar’s real bodyguard was Luis Garcia-Blanco. In the series, Rivi shoots at police officers to safeguard Amilcar while the cops try to capture him. In real life, Garcia shot at officers to safeguard Amilcar, only to get sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Read More: Was Griselda Bisexual? Did She Sleep With Marta Ochoa?
