Emma Coronel, from New York glamor to a tiny Virginia cell: the rise and fall of Chapo Guzmán’s wife

Emma Coronel Aispuro had a glamorous life in New York City, where she enjoyed the benefits of her marriage to drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, also known as El Chapo. Then, in February of this year, she was arrested and jailed in Virginia.

What happened to the queen of the drug cartel world?

The windows of the William Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria are rectangular slats inserted lengthwise in a red brick.

This is where Emma Coronel Aispuro was held in solitary confinement, in a tiny cell.

Inside this prison, says his lawyer Mariel Colón Miro, he reads “romantic” novels to pass the time.

The conditions are a stark contrast to the life you once had.

A few months ago, he planned to launch a clothing line, “El Chapo Guzmán”. The couple have iconic status in Mexico, and the drug lord’s daughter has also made a foray into fashion using her name.

When I spoke to her in New York City during her husband’s trial in 2019, she was wearing jewelry and an expensive watch.

Earlier this year, Coronel, 31, was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and charged with helping her drug lord husband run the infamous Sinaloa cartel.

Guzmán, 64, was sentenced to life in prison and held in a maximum security prison in Colorado.

FBI officials said Coronel conspired to distribute cocaine and helped plan her husband’s escape from a Mexican prison in 2015.

No date has been set for the trial. If found guilty, she could be sent to life imprisonment.

Her story is individual, with an unfaithful husband, a lover and a criminal enterprise.

But it sheds light on the secret world of the drug cartels and the women who inhabit it.

Leaving aside the question of guilt or innocence, analysts who study the world of drug trafficking claim that The colonel has carved out an unusual role.

She was a public figure, businesswoman, and supervisor, helping to control who had access to her husband while he ran the cartel.

Traditionally, the wives of drug traffickers are considered “very sexual” and “non-interventionist,” explains Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, an academic at the University of California at San Diego.

The colonel was different, he said. “It showed that women can occupy positions of power ”.

And wielding power in a drug cartel is risky business.

Derek Maltz, the former special agent of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, notes that “when you are in this business, you will either be caught or you will be killed.”

Coronel showed its “good face” with its plans for a fashion company, but federal investigators were behind it.

“The world was crumbling around him, the walls were crumbling,” says Maltz.

The colonel used to eat chopped iceberg lettuce in Brooklyn Federal District Court during her husband’s trial.

He would sit with friends in the cafeteria, joking about mothers and how to deal with them.

“He has a great personality,” says Miro, his lawyer. “The Emma I know is full of energy, always smiling.”

Coronel, a citizen of Mexico and the United States, met Guzmán when she was 17. They married soon after.

They have two children, Maria Joaquina and Emali. During her husband’s trial, Coronel sat in the courtroom almost every day.

During breaks, she shook in stiletto heels along the marble hallways.

“A diva from Sinaloa”, says Romain Le Cour Grandmaison, a Paris-based security analyst who has spent time in Mexico studying the cartels.

With lipstick, diamonds and jeans tight, embodied the popular image of a “buchona”, the loving partners of a drug dealer.

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera of George Mason University conducted research in Sinaloa, Mexico, where the Chapo Cartel operates.

She defines the term buchona as follows: “They wear very expensive clothes, Louis Vuitton handbags. Everything is overkill, and she is a perfect representation of that image. It’s about appearance, cosmetic surgery. “

One of his most striking features, Correa-Cabrera noted, is his “butt,” which he describes as “extremely curved.”

His glamorous image contrasted with the harsh reality of the Chapo Cartel’s operations.

Guzmán used violence to maintain control over the illegal drug market and reaped the rewards, endowing his wife and family with wealth.

More than 300,000 people have died in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched its war on the cartels.

The victims included Guzmán’s enemies, as well as people close to him.

The body of one of her lovers was found in the trunk of a car, a murder reported as perpetrated by a rival gang.

Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López, Guzmán’s longtime lover, testified against him during the trial.

She was arrested in June 2017 for drug trafficking near the US-Mexico border.

He pleaded guilty and was told he faced a decade in prison. Sánchez, a mother of two, cooperated with prosecutors in a sentence reduction agreement.

In court, dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit, she described her relationship with El Chapo and her work as the leader of the cartel.

He had a nervous tic and blinked often. Guzmán, sitting nearby, seemed impatient and was looking at a clock on the wall.

The colonel was seated in the second row. She combed her long hair with her fingers and that day wore a velvet tuxedo jacket, the same type her husband wore.

Matching jackets they showed the strength of their marriage, says William Purpura, who was Guzmán’s lawyer.

Coronel wanted to message Sánchez wearing matching husband and wife costumes on the day the ex-lover testified.

“It was ‘hell’ for the lover,” Purpura explains. “She said, ‘He’s mine.’

After testifying in court, Sánchez returned to his cell. The colonel went to New York for dinner.

Soon after, the roles changed. Sánchez was released from prison and was released. The colonel was put behind bars and without bail.

Many were appalled at the way Coronel flaunted her lifestyle during the trial and disappointed with how she remained loyal to her husband.

“She’s considered a fool,” explains security analyst Grandmaison.

However, Sánchez doesn’t see it that way.

When his lawyer, Heather Shaner, told him Coronel was in jail, Sánchez showed no sign of joy.

Instead, her lawyer recalls: “She felt sad and said, ‘It’s just another mother who will be away from her children.’

BBC Mundo

Conocé The Trust Project