CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) – Despite being the wife of the world’s most famous drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Emma Coronel Aispuro lived mainly in the dark until her husband went to prison. for life.
Then, suddenly, he was present on social media. There was talk of launching a fashion line. Even an appearance on a reality show dedicated to the families of drug traffickers.
Colonel’s actions did not go unnoticed. And, following his arrest on Monday, accused of conspiring to distribute drugs, there were those who wondered: in embracing the spotlight, had Colonel put a target on his back?
His behavior was remarkable in part because he had lived a relatively protected life until he participated in a grueling trial that caught international attention. But her actions violated unwritten rules about family members, especially women, while keeping a low profile.
Until the trial, “Emma had remained anonymous like virtually all members of the Sinaloa cartel hat,” said Adrián López, executive editor of the newspaper Noroeste de Sinaloa. Then, “he begins to adopt a more famous attitude. … This breaks a tradition of secrecy and style specifically within the Sinaloa cartel leadership. “
Late last year, Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández – who has written extensively about the Sinaloa cartel, including a 2019 book about the diary of the son of cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo”, son of Zambada , said a source told her that Colonel’s mother, Blanca Aispuro, was worried about the turn her daughter was taking.
Concern was also raised between Guzmán’s children and Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, said Hernández, who was the first journalist to interview Emma Coronel.
“Her mother was also worried that an enemy cartel could hurt Emma because she was unleashed, she was very much on the street, the clubs, excessive in her social life,” Hernandez said. “His mother was worried that something like this might happen or it could become a target for the government.”
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Guzmán has been married several times; as was made clear at his trial in New York, he has been far from faithful. Sitting in the room, Colonel heard a woman testify as she and Guzmán escaped a dramatic escape from a midnight raid on one of their Mexican Navy hideouts.
He described jumping out of bed, locating a secret hatch and crossing a drainage tunnel, with a naked Guzmán at the head.
“Sometimes I loved her and sometimes I didn’t,” the woman said, weeping.
Colonel was there every day smiling, kissing Guzmán, “but they actually tell me that Emma was very, very crazy and very hurt,” Hernandez said. “And so, when the trial ended, she decided to take revenge and the way to get revenge was to make her husband see what he was losing.”
Colonel, 31, was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the mountains of Durango bordering the state of Sinaloa, in Guzmán, in an impoverished area known as the Golden Triangle.
She and Guzmán got married in 2007 when she was 18 years old. He was 50 years old and one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. “I don’t imagine I would really have many options to say no, I won’t marry you,” Hernandez said.
For a time, Colonel’s father, Ines Colonel Barreras, allegedly took charge of moving marijuana from the Sinaloa cartel to the Arizona border. In 2013, he was arrested along with one of his children and other men in a warehouse with weapons and hundreds of pounds of marijuana on the Douglas, Arizona border.
For years, Emma Coronel’s only public image was a 2007 photograph, when she was crowned the festival’s beauty queen in Canelas, the city where she grew up. He wore a huge crown and a closed-mouthed smile and looked straight at the camera.
After her marriage, she disappeared from public view until it was reported in 2011 that she had given birth to her twin daughters in Los Angeles County. On February 22, 2014, she was with Guzmán and her daughters in the Pacific resort town of Mazatlán when she was captured by Mexican Marines.
Guzmán was sent to the Altiplano maximum security prison located outside Mexico City while his lawyers fought against his extradition. On July 11, 2015, Guzmán escaped through an ancient tunnel that had been excavated to the shower in his cell.
In January 2016, Mexican sailors recaptured Guzman in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The following month, Colonel did his first interview with Hernandez, repeatedly complaining about the conditions in which Guzmán remained.
Colonel told Hernandez that he had learned from television his escape from the Altiplano prison.
“If I had known anything, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep or eat desperately,” he said. “I had no idea.”
Guzmán was extradited to the United States, but not before Colonel was involved in planning another escape attempt that never came to fruition, according to U.S. prosecutors.
Colonel and his design wardrobe took a look at the El Chapo process. Photographers elbowed to capture their arrivals and departures.
At one point, she was wearing a burgundy velvet jacket that matched one she had sent to Guzmán to wear that day. He later commissioned an artist from the courtroom to recreate the show of solidarity: a memory.
Colonel walked safely into the room. He played with his hair while waiting for the paperwork to begin and chatted amicably with reporters sitting behind him. He carried cookies and biscuits in his wallet, sometimes offering snacks to reporters.
Every morning, Guzmán looked for her when she entered the courtroom. He smiled and made a greeting.
One day he chatted and laughed in the room with Mexican actor Alejandro Edda, who played Guzmán in the Netflix series “Narcos: Mexico.” In the sixth week of the trial, she wore her 7-year-old twin daughters, dressed in jeans and white jackets; their father gave them a soft slap, as if he wanted to play with them.
After Guzmán was convicted (he would be expelled for life plus 30 years), Colonel issued a statement thanking Guzmán’s lawyers and his mother and sister for caring for the twins while attending the trial.
He said the trial had been difficult. His name had appeared in the statement: Dámaso López, one of Guzmán’s former lieutenants, stated that he met several times with the sons of Colonel and Guzman to plan the drug chief’s escape from the Altiplano prison. And she said Colonel had relayed messages from her husband.
Colonel is not a penitentiary. “All I can say about this is that I have nothing to be ashamed of,” he wrote. “I’m not perfect, but I consider myself a good human being and I’ve never hurt anyone intentionally.”
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López, editor of Noroeste, and Ismael Bojórquez, editor of Riodoce, a news medium known for his investigations into the underworld of Sinaloa, both expressed the shock that Colonel had traveled from the United States after the trial.
Hernandez suspects U.S. officials noticed Coronel’s lifestyle change and saw an opportunity to pressure her at a time when she may be more open to betraying her husband.
Although Coronel has only posted five photos on Instagram (@therealemmacoronel), he has more than 563,000 followers.
For her latest photo, posted in December, she posed in a white wedding dress, which is part of a fashion collection. And for a photo posted on her July birthday, she was bright with a red lipstick, a black leather jacket and a crown with long, dark hair, an echo of the beauty queen of small towns that made so long.
“Happy birthday to me,” he wrote.
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Torrens reported from New York and Sherman from Mexico City. AP writers Tom Hays in New York and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.