CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) – Despite being the wife of the world’s most famous drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Emma Coronel Aispuro lived mostly in obscurity – until her husband went to life in prison.
Then, suddenly, she was a presence on social networks. There was talk of launching a fashion line. Including a participation in a reality show dedicated to the families of drug dealers.
Colonel’s actions did not go unnoticed. And after his arrest on Monday on charges of conspiring to distribute drugs, there were those who wondered: had the Colonel embraced the spotlight on his back?
Her behavior was notable in part because she lived a relatively protected life until her part in a strenuous trial that attracted international attention. But his actions violated unwritten rules about family members, especially wives, while maintaining a low profile.
Until the trial, “Emma remained anonymous like virtually all of the partners in the Sinaloa cartel,” said Adrián López, executive editor of the Northwestern Sinaloa newspaper. Then, “she starts to assume a more celebrity attitude. … This breaks a tradition of secrecy and a specific style within the leadership of the Sinaloa cartel. “
Late last year, Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández – who wrote extensively about the Sinaloa cartel, including a 2019 book on the diary of cartel leader Ismael’s son “El Mayo” Zambada – said a source told her that Colonel’s mother, Blanca Aispuro, was concerned about the direction her daughter’s life was taking.
Concern was also growing among the sons of Guzmán and the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, said Hernández, who was the first journalist to interview Emma Coronel.
“Her mother was also concerned that an enemy cartel could harm Emma because she was released, she was too much on the street, in clubs, excessive in her social life,” Hernández said the source told her. “Her mother feared that something like this could happen or she could become a government target.”
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Guzmán was married several times; as was clear from his New York trial, he is far from faithful. Sitting in the courtroom, Colonel heard a woman testify how she and Guzmán had dramatically escaped a nightly attack on one of their hiding places by Mexican Marines.
She described jumping out of bed, locating a secret hatch and running through a drainage tunnel, with a naked Guzman leading the way.
“Sometimes I loved him and sometimes I didn’t,” said the woman, crying.
Colonel was there every day smiling, sending kisses to Guzmán, “but in reality they tell me that Emma was very, very angry and very hurt,” said Hernández. “And so, when the trial was over, she decided to take revenge and the way to take revenge was to make her husband see what he was missing.”
Colonel, 31, was born in San Francisco, but grew up in the mountains of Durango, on the border with the state of Sinaloa, in Guzmán, in a poor area known as the Golden Triangle.
She and Guzmán were married in 2007 when she was 18. He was 50 and one of the most powerful drug dealers in the world. “I don’t think she really had many options for saying no, I’m not going to marry you,” said Hernández.
For a time, Colonel’s father, Ines Coronel Barreras, allegedly took charge of transporting marijuana from the Sinaloa cartel across the border to Arizona. In 2013, he was arrested with one of his children and other men in a warehouse with guns and hundreds of pounds of marijuana on the border in Douglas, Arizona
For years, Emma Coronel’s only public image was a photograph from 2007, when she was crowned the beauty queen of the festival in Canelas, the city where she grew up. She wore a huge crown and a closed mouth smile, and looked directly at the camera.
After the wedding, 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 his daughters in the tourist town of Mazatlan, in the Pacific, when he was captured by Mexican Marines.
Guzmán was sent to the Altiplano’s maximum security prison outside Mexico City while his lawyers were fighting against his extradition. On July 11, 2015, Guzmán escaped through a kilometer-long tunnel dug for the shower in his cell.
In January 2016, Mexican Marines recaptured Guzman in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The following month, Colonel gave his first interview to Hernández, repeatedly complaining about the conditions under which Guzmán was being held.
Colonel told Hernández that she learned of her escape from Altiplano prison on television.
“If I knew something, I wouldn’t be able to sleep or eat out of desperation,” she said. “I had no idea.”
Guzmán was extradited to the United States – but not before Colonel was involved in planning yet another escape attempt that never materialized, US prosecutors say.
Colonel and his designer wardrobe impacted El Chapo’s trial. Photographers jostled each other to capture their arrivals and departures.
At one point, she wore a wine velvet blazer that matched what she had sent Guzmán to wear that day. Then she commissioned a court artist to recreate the show of solidarity – a memento.
Colonel walked around the courtroom with confidence. She played with her hair while waiting for the procedure to begin and chatted amiably with the reporters sitting behind her. She carried cookies and biscuits in her bag, sometimes offering snacks to reporters.
Every morning, Guzmán looked for her when he entered the court. He smiled and waved hello.
One day, she talked and laughed in court with Mexican actor Alejandro Edda, who played Guzmán in the Netflix series “Narcos: México”. In the sixth week of the trial, she brought her 7-year-old twin daughters, dressed in matching jeans and white jackets; the father clapped softly, as if to play with them.
After Guzmán was convicted – he would be sentenced to life in prison for another 30 years – Colonel posted a statement thanking Guzmán’s lawyers, his mother and sister for taking care of the twins while she attended the trial.
She said the trial was difficult. His name had appeared in testimony: Dámaso López, one of Guzmán’s former lieutenants, testified that he met several times with Colonel and Guzman’s children to plan the escape of the drug lord from the Altiplano prison. And he said that Colonel had transmitted messages from her husband.
Colonel did not regret it. “What I can only say about this is that I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she wrote. “I am not perfect, but I consider myself a good human being and I have never intentionally harmed anyone.”
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López, editor of the Northwest, and Ismael Bojórquez, editor of Riodoce, a news agency known for its investigations into the Sinaloa underworld, expressed shock that Colonel had traveled to and from the United States after the trial.
Hernández suspects that American officials have noticed the change in Colonel’s lifestyle and have seen an opportunity to pressure her at a time when she may be more open to betraying her husband.
Although Coronel posted only five photos on Instagram (@therealemmacoronel), she has more than 563,000 followers.
For her latest photo, posted in December, she posed in a white wedding dress, part of a fashion collection. And for a photo posted on her July birthday, she was resplendent in her red lipstick, a black leather jacket – and a crown in her long, dark hair, an echo of the small town beauty queen that she was so long ago time.
“Happy birthday to me,” she wrote.
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Torrens reported from New York and Sherman from Mexico City. AP editors Tom Hays in New York and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.