CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) – Despite her status as the wife of the world’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Emma Coronel Aispuro mostly lived in darkness – until her husband was jailed for life.
Then she was suddenly a presence on social media. There was talk of launching a model line. Even an appearance in a reality show dedicated to the families of drug dealers.
Coronel’s actions did not go unnoticed. And following her arrest Monday on charges that she had a conspiracy to distribute drugs, there were those who wondered: did Coronel, in the spotlight of the spotlight, put a target on her own back?
Her behavior was notable in part because she lived a relatively sheltered life to her part in a grueling trial that attracted international attention. But her actions violate unwritten rules about family members, especially women, who keep a low profile.
Until the trial, ‘Emma remained anonymous, like almost all partners of Sinaloa cartel capos’, said Adrián López, executive editor of Sinaloa’s Noroeste newspaper. Then, ‘she began to adopt a more familiar attitude. … It breaks a tradition of secrecy and a style that exists specifically 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 about the diary of cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada’s son, said a source told her that Coronel ‘s mother, Blanca Aispuro, was worried about the turn of her daughter’s life.
Concerns were also developing among Guzmán’s sons and Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, Sinaloa cartel leader, said Hernández, who was the first journalist to ever interview Emma Coronel.
“Her mother was also worried that a hostile cartel could harm Emma because she was released, was very much in the street, the clubs were excessive in her social life,” Hernández said the source told her. “Her mother was worried that something like this might happen, or that she might become a target of the government.”
___
Guzmán has been married several times; as made clear at his trial in New York, he was far from faithful. As he sits in the courtroom, Coronel hears a woman testify about how she and Guzmán made a dramatic escape from a midnight attack on one of his hideouts by Mexican marines.
She described jumping out of bed, locating a secret hatch and running through a drainage tunnel, a naked Guzmán going on.
“Sometimes I loved him and sometimes I didn’t,” the woman cried.
Coronel was there every day smiling and kissing Guzmán, “but in reality they tell me that Emma was very, very crazy and very hurt,” Hernández said. “And when the trial ended, she decided to take revenge and the way to take revenge was to show her husband what he had lost.”
Coronel, 31, was born in San Francisco but grew up in the mountains of Durango bordering Guzmán’s Sinaloa state in an impoverished area known as the Golden Triangle.
She and Guzmán married in 2007 when she was 18 years old. He was 50 and one of the world’s most powerful drug dealers. “I can not think she really had many options to say no, I will not marry you,” Hernández said.
Coronel’s father, Ines Coronel Barreras, allegedly took the lead in moving the marijuana from the Sinaloa cartel across the border into Arizona. In 2013, he was arrested along with one of his sons and other men in a warehouse with guns and hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the border from Douglas, Arizona.
Emma Coronel’s only public image was for years a photo from 2007, when she was crowned the beauty queen of the festival in Canelas, the city where she grew up. She wears a huge crown and smiles with a closed mouth and looks directly at the camera.
After their marriage, she disappeared from the public eye until in 2011 it was reported that she gave birth to their twin daughters in Los Angeles County. On February 22, 2014, she was with Guzmán and their daughters in the Pacific resort town of Mazatlan when he was captured by Mexican marines.
Guzmán was sent to the maximum security Altiplano prison outside Mexico City while his lawyers fought his extradition. On July 11, 2015, Guzmán escaped through a mile-long tunnel dug into the cell in the shower.
In January 2016, Mexican Marines recaptured Guzman in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The following month, Coronel gave her first interview to Hernández and repeatedly complained about the circumstances in which Guzmán was fed.
Coronel told Hernández that she had escaped from his television at Altiplano Prison.
“If I had known anything, I would not have been able to sleep or eat out of desperation,” she said. “I had no idea.”
Guzmán was extradited to the United States – but not before Coronel was involved in planning another escape attempt that never materialized, U.S. prosecutors said.
Coronel and her designer wardrobe made a splash during the El Chapo trial. Photographers brought each other in the elbow to capture her arrival and departure.
At one point, she was wearing a blue velvet blazer that matched one she had sent to Guzmán that day. Afterwards, she instructed an artist in the courtroom to recreate the tone of solidarity – a souvenir.
Coronel walked confidently across the courtroom. She played with her hair while waiting for the proceedings to begin and sat in friendly conversations with reporters who sat behind her. She carried biscuits and cookies in her purse and sometimes offered snacks to reporters.
Every morning Guzmán looked for her as he entered the courtroom. He smiles and waves hello.
One day she was chatting and laughing in the courtroom with Mexican actor Alejandro Edda, who played Guzmán in the Netflix series “Narcos: México”. In the sixth week of the trial, she brings her 7-year-old twin daughters, dressed in matching jeans and white jackets; their father slaps them softly, as if he wants to play with them.
After Guzmán was convicted – he would be sent away for life plus 30 years – Coronel posted a statement thanking Guzmán’s lawyers and her mother and sister for taking care of the twins while she attended the trial.
She said the trial was difficult. Her name came up in testimony: Dámaso López, one of Guzmán’s former lieutenants, testified that he met several times with Coronel and Guzman’s sons to plan the drug lord’s escape from Altiplano prison. And he said Coronel conveyed messages from her husband.
Coronel was unrepentant. “All I can say about it is that I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she wrote. “I’m not perfect, but I consider myself a good person and have never intentionally hurt anyone.”
___
López, the editor of Noroeste, and Ismael Bojórquez, editor of Riodoce, a newspaper known for its investigation into Sinaloa’s underworld, both expressed shock that Coronel had traveled to and from the US after the trial.
Hernández suspects U.S. authorities saw Coronel’s change in lifestyle and saw an opportunity to put pressure on her, at a time when she might be more open to her husband.
Although Coronel has only posted five photos on Instagram (@therealemmacoronel), she has more than 563,000 followers.
For her latest photo, posted in December, she poses in a white wedding dress, part of a fashion collection. And for a photo posted on her July birthday, she was gorgeous with red lipstick, a black leather jacket – and a crown in her long, dark hair, an echo of the small city beauty she was so long ago .
“Congratulations on my birthday,” she wrote.
____
Torrens reported from New York and Sherman from Mexico City. AP authors Tom Hays in New York and E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.