Netflix's newest hit crime drama, Outlaw, is based on the real-life story of Brazil's Raquel de Oliveira.
The streaming crime lord biopic is based on Oliveira's 2015 book A número um, telling the tale of Oliveira's life from the streets of Rio de Janeiro to the top of one of the biggest drug cartels in the world.
Oliveira's story has been turned into a blockbuster movie for Netflix by writer/director João Wainer, putting her shocking story to the screen for the first time.
Raquel de Oliveira's Real-Life Outlaw Story
Raquel de Oliveira's life is captured fairly accurately in Netflix's Outlaw film, showing the real-life story of how she climbed the ladder to become one of Rio de Janeiro's most feared drug lords.
Oliveira was born incredibly poor in Rio's Rocinha favela in 1961. Her early life was one sadly typical of many who have grown up in Brazil's poorest neighborhoods. Drugs, sex work, and violent crime were the norm during Oliveira's early life.
Her first home was a makeshift shack in the hills of Rio with a corrugated metal roof and a dirt floor. She describes that part of her life as horrifying, living with a family that was down on its luck and a father who she has since called a "pedophile" (via Yahoo News).
At six years old her father would abandon the family, locking the shack behind him and leaving them in his rearview. She would never see or hear from him again.
It was at this young age that Oliveira would use an illicit drug for the first time, sniffing glue to hopefully subside the ever-present feeling of hunger in her stomach.
She would live like this for several years, before, at just nine years old, she was sold in the sex trade by her grandmother.
Oliveira essentially went through her formative years working within Rio's many brothels. At 11, she was given her first gun by a local crime boss 'godfather,' and then at 15, she would make her first kill, murdering a man in cold blood after he tried to rape her during a drug deal.
Not much later, Oliveira started to pave her path toward becoming the ruthless crime boss she would eventually be known as.
At 25, Oliveira started dating and eventually married renowned drug lord Ednaldo de Souza, or 'Naldo.' Naldo worked as the head of drug trafficking in Rio's largest favela, La Rocinha, during a particularly violent time for the city in the 1980s.
Being this close to someone so notorious in Brazil's drug trade brought Oliveira a certain kind of notoriety as well. Just as Naldo was respected and feared, so was Oliviera.
That is why, following a bloody gunfight with local authorities that left her crime boss husband dead, Oliveira would take over his criminal empire and cement her place among Brazil's most feared kingpins.
During this time, Oliveira became known as particularly ruthless. According to some of her former associates (via Daily Mail), the former Brazilian drug lord would frequently bury her enemies alive if not shooting them down in cold blood instead.
She was not going to let anyone stand in her way, and everyone knew it. However, throughout her entire life up to this point, she was not just involved in the sale and production of drugs but was a frequent user herself, developing a serious cocaine habit over the years.
However, this growing dependency on cocaine would eventually become too much for Oliveira. After years of working at the top of Rio's underworld, Oliveira turned her back on that life, following a rival gang making an attempt on her life in a local Rio bar.
She checked herself into a rehabilitation facility in 2005 and started writing, finding solace in her words on the page.
"Writing gives me pleasure. It takes the place of cocaine. It helps me flee from the pain," Oliveira told AFP (via Global Times) in 2015. She has talked about losing everything, essentially "snorting through" all her resources and realizing she needed help.
Through her newfound passion for writing, Oliveira would discover the Brazillian organization, the International Literary Fair of the Periphery (FLUPP).
The literary festival would push her to begin writing her first book, putting into words the amazing life she had had to that point and making shocking realizations about some of the people she had once called family and friends.
Oliveira is now 63 years old and has been sober for nearly 20 years.
Outlaw is now streaming on Netflix.
