After unleashing, Cocaine Cowboys, the first installment in his documentary film saga, over 15 years ago, director Billy Corben is returning to the world of the Miami drug trade in the new six-part docu-series Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami. According to Netflix, the series will focus on “Los Muchachos,” two speedboat champions who became infamous cocaine runners with a reputation for eluding the Feds for years.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Alleged to be the chief U.S. distributors for two of Colombia’s biggest cartels, Cuban exiles Augusto “Willy” Falcon and Salvador “Sal” Magluta were accused of smuggling over 75 tons of cocaine into the U.S. in the 1980s. The high school friends built a reputed $2 billion empire that made Willy and Sal, aka “Los Muchachos,” two of Miami’s biggest celebrities. While law enforcement plotted their takedown, the world champion powerboat racers managed to skillfully outrun and outmaneuver prosecution for decades before the chase finally came to an end. Featuring colorful interviews with those closest to them, their defense team, and the Feds tasked with taking them down, the series paints a vivid portrait of the last of Miami’s “cocaine cowboys.”
Released in 2006, the first Cocaine Cowboys explored how cocaine pushed out marijuana and became the primary import drug for Miami in the ’70s and ’80s. This lucrative influx became so overwhelming that importers had more money than they knew what to do with, which led to shady deals with local officials while also simultaneously boosting almost all of Miami’s economic growth. In the second documentary film, Cocaine Cowboys 2, from 2008, Corben told the story of Colombian-born “Cocaine Godmother” Griselda Blanco, who controlled a violent and lucrative chunk of the American drug market and once tried to organize the kidnapping of John F. Kennedy Jr. so she could duck a possible death sentence. Nice lady.
And now… speedboat champions becoming billionaire drug lords. If we’re being honest, it was bound to end up there eventually. It’s the logical next step.
Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami starts streaming August 4 on Netflix.
