Emma Coronel Aispuro: the life of the wife of Chapo Guzmán

Last month, Emma Coronel Aispuro, wife of Joaquín "el Chapo" Guzmán, became one of the protagonists of her husband's lawsuit.

One witness linked him to the famous escape from the Altiplano prison in 2015. On another occasion, it was revealed that his husband had sent him text messages asking him to hide his weapons before a raid from police. The day that one of Chapo's lovers testified, Colonel and her husband wore red velvet bags, apparently in solidarity and blame for the witness.

Prosecution witnesses described the sordid life of women linked to the cartel. They are often forced to find a balance between the role of lovers and those of their accomplices, but most fail, usually because they want to participate too much in one of two facets. They often end up behind bars or live in hiding.

However, the colonel, the most prominent woman in a trial conducted almost exclusively by men, was the exception.

In three months, prosecutors summoned 56 witnesses to describe her husband in a convincing and thorough way as a vengeful drug trafficker, bloodthirsty murderer and unrepentant womanizer. Coronel attended the court almost every day and became a fixed presence, with an impbadive face, still sitting in second place.

As a result of these testimonies, it is almost certain that her husband will spend the rest of his life in prison. But Colonel, who took advantage of the loot generated over the last 30 years by Guzmán to forge a drug trafficking empire estimated at $ 14 billion by prosecutors, rejects the way he presented it to the courts.

"I do not know my husband as the person trying to teach those who testify against him," Coronel told The Times in several interviews. "I rather admire him for being the person I met and married with."

However, most people would doubt Coronel 's description of her husband, one of the most famous drug traffickers in Latin America and who, according to a witness, was powerful enough to bribe the police. former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

The case against Guzmán is solid: in the last week, a witness told how the capo buried a living man after personally murdering two others. After the prosecution spent more than ten weeks presenting its case, Chapo's lawyers only needed 30 minutes to formulate their defense on Tuesday.

Being his wife, Colonel is not obliged to testify against him, but recent events at the trial have prompted many people to wonder how she could have avoided being charged. Prosecutors refused to answer the reasons why his legal situation was not in danger and the colonel also declined to comment on the court proceedings. The testimonies presented to the audience, if true, contribute to presenting it as the stereotype of the "good wife".

Now more than ever, she is tied to her husband. "If you hear the name" Emma Coronel "and you know who it is, you will think of El Chapo," said Miguel Ángel Vega, reporter at the weekly RíoDoce, in Culiacán.

Coronel, 29, was married in 2007, while she was still a teenager, and became a mother in her early twenties. She has spent more than a third of her life in a marriage where her husband has almost always been imprisoned or on the run.

The trial led Colonel to live in two countries. Her 7-year-old twins study in Mexico and communicate with them through a messaging group.

"I had to separate myself from my daughters to accompany her because I'm the only person in her family who can be here with him in New York," said the colonel.

Since the extradition of Guzmán in January 2017, his twins, Emali and María Joaquina, have seen their father only in court – mostly before the testimony – and during the monitored visits closely.

"He has always been a very present father, watching our daughters," she says of her husband. He describes girls as "worshiping their father, and he loves him."

The twins are the only approved visits to Guzmán, since they did not allow Coronel to visit him, talk to him or call him on the phone.

"I do not consider myself a single mother," said the colonel. "I am more of a mother who at this point does not have the support of her husband but who believes that the family will be fine."

Despite everything, he acknowledged, "Obviously, our life has changed."

The Colonel met Guzmán at a ranch in Durango, Mexico, at the age of 17. Guzmán, then in his forties and well placed on the Sinaloa cartel, had been hiding from the authorities for nearly six years after escaping from prison with a clothes cart in 2001.

Although he's 32 years older than she, since day one has started "a beautiful friendship" between the couple, Colonel told the Times. Then, "over the months, we became friends," he said. "When I was 18, we got married at a very simple ceremony with family and only close friends" It was the summer of 2007.

The colonel, who rarely gives interviews, insists that he has a normal life. Born in California, she grew up in the state of Durango, northwestern Mexico, on the border with Sinaloa, where Guzmán lived. Both states are part of the gold triangle of marijuana production, but its version of the story excludes any mention of drugs, although evidence in her husband's trial has confirmed the old rumor that his father would be a lieutenant of the cartel of Sinaloa.

Instead, she only talks about a "simple and very calm childhood within a loving and united family" and adds that she grew up with two brothers and a sister who was not married to her. ;she likes. Most of her stories mention having won a beauty contest when she was a teenager, but most details of her private life remain a mystery.

Vega, who is also one of the Vice podcast leaders on El Chapo, believes that the couple's love story is authentic. "Imagine a 17-year-old girl who wins a beauty contest and a powerful man trying to win his heart," he said. "I think she's been seduced by power, that name, just her name."

This love story brought her to New York, where she went to a Yankees match while her husband is in jail, went for a walk in Central Park and often dines in the city. one of Brooklyn's most popular sushi restaurants. It's almost impossible to know what she saw in court, if that affected her, despite the appalling details about her husband's behavior.

Recently, the colonel left the lobby of a hotel in Brooklyn. Outside the temperature was 4 degrees Celsius and she was wearing a leather jacket and was going with two friends, a lawyer and her real estate agent. I was expecting a black Camry that would take her to Manhattan where she would take pictures.

The city is not new to her, she said. On other occasions, he visited tourist attractions, such as the Empire State. Still, explore the city "when it's not too cold". When asked about his nightlife in town, Coronel says, "I prefer to sleep." The trial seemed exhausting.

The car is generally happy: it was finally Friday, a day of rest break to sleep and rest. Most recently, Colonel has been a central figure in the drama unfolding in court.

First, prosecutors shared the couple's text messages in 2012, in which they said they were prepared for a possible raid on the house where they were in February.

"Is there no weapon, my love? Does not it have a gun?" Asked Guzman in one of the messages.

"I have one of his, the one he's given me," he replied.

The corporal told him to hide it in a nail (a hidden compartment) of the house.

Then, last week, Dámaso López Núñez, 52, a former prison warden convicted of becoming a high-ranking member of the cartel, testified that Coronel had helped plan her husband's escape from prison in 2015.

According to López, early in the year 2015, Coronel and Guzmán's children met him to teach him the instructions that the head of the prison had ordered to the prison: buy a land and a warehouse near the prison; secure guns, a van and a GPS watch to indicate the exact coordinates of your cell and dig a tunnel from the jail to the warehouse.

In July 2015, Guzmán escaped through a hole dug in the shower of his cell, took a motorcycle and went through the tunnel nearly one kilometer long. One of Coronel's brothers was waiting in the warehouse with a four-wheel drive vehicle, and then they headed for a runway in San Juan. From there, Guzmán flew to his hiding place in the mountains of Sinaloa.

Coronel declined to comment on Lopez's statements badociating her with the flight of her husband. Through all these testimonies, Colonel was not very expressive. It rarely does. He did not make it the day one of Guzman's lovers cried on the bench.

He just lost his temper the day he took his daughters to court in December. That day, the prosecution showed a cart full of AK-47 rifles and a grenade launcher. When he saw the weapons, the colonel rushed out of court, escorting his daughters down a corridor filled with agents.

Without pointing out any incident, the colonel said that he did not like what is going on in court. It was "too much," he said one day. "I hate the drama."

One day after the hearing, Guzmán returned to see the audience. His wife smiled, leaning on the other side of the bench. They stared at their eyes but could not speak and then many agents took him out of the room. She showed a solemn look.

"The situation we are currently facing is difficult and cumbersome," he said in one of his interviews. "However, I have faith and I am convinced that God only gives us obstacles that we can overcome and I am convinced that it will be so."