To get through the New York Court security check, he had to be stilettos. Emma Coronel, wife of the world’s most powerful drug dealer, Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, monopolized all the spotlight of the pink press during the 11-week trial that eventually sentenced her husband to life imprisonment in 2019. Because of her curvy styling, she became known in the United States as the Kardashian of Sinaloa. She was the wife of the man most wanted, the most dangerous boss. And he was allowed to participate in one reality show in the United States, where other heirs to the drug empire cited Coronel as a source of inspiration. Some were children or cousins of the Colombian or Mexican drug trade. But she was the woman: Mrs. El ChapoOn Monday, the morbid thing that some American television networks have managed to exploit for the intimate life of the drug trafficker has come face to face with reality. Coronel is trapped at Dulles (Virginia) International Airport, which serves the city of Washington. He is accused of participating in international drug trafficking.
Coronel, 31, of dual American and Mexican citizenship, has been charged with trafficking in cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and marijuana, according to a statement from the United States Department of Justice. He will appear by videoconference in federal court in the District of Columbia on Tuesday. In addition, she is accused of helping El Chapo carry out one of the most media escapes in history: his escape from the Mexican high-security prison on the Altiplano, in the summer of 2015. The famous escape with a tunnel connecting the shower connected your cell to a safe house over rails and a motorcycle. According to US authorities, Coronel planned another escape with the people of Guzmán in 2017, shortly before the kingpin’s extradition to the United States.
Coronel met Guzmán Loera at a party on a ranch. She was 17 years old and had just won the Sinaloa beauty queen pageant. He was 51 and was already the master of the largest criminal organization in the world. While she was dancing on the farm with her then boyfriend, a man came up to her and told her the Lord wanted to dance with her. “Of course,” I said to him. Because on the farms, even if you have a friend, you have to dance with all the people who invite you, ”he explained in an interview with the Telemundo network. That and that in the context of the Mexican criminal empire was very expensive to say no to the chief of the chiefs. Coronel is Guzmán’s third wife.
She is also the alleged niece of Ignacio Coronel, one of her husband’s lieutenants. “We are not related,” he noted in the interview, adding that Guzmán “is a good man, he is not violent or rude, I have never seen him say a bad word. His girls love him and are constantly asking about him. “” I don’t know he’s dealing drugs. I’m in love with him, “she always insisted in front of the cameras.
The surname Coronel is too heavy in the criminal history of this country. Another name for Ignacio Coronel was the Crystal king, was number three in the Sinaloa cartel, below El Chapo and Ismael May Zambada – the only member of the group at the time who has not yet been arrested. Coronel was responsible for the major methamphetamine trade to the United States for at least 12 years, until he was killed in a shootout with the Mexican military on July 29, 2010, in Zapopan, Jalisco. One of her sons, Alejandro Coronel Mardueño, Emma’s possible cousin, was also kidnapped and murdered in 2010 when he was just 16 years old by his rivals, the Beltrán Leyvas, who unleashed a wave of violence in the country.
One of the most tense moments for Coronel during the El Chapo trial occurred in January 2019. The Prosecution, with the narco’s wife present at the hearing, presented a series of messages intercepted by the FBI between the capo, his wife. and his lover. In one, the then-leader of the Sinaloa Cartel asked him to buy dye for his mustache and said one of the twin daughters, María Joaquina, was not at all scared. “I’m going to give him an AK-47 [un Kalashnikov] so he can come with me, ”he joked.
Emma Coronel’s words about her husband’s ignorance of her husband’s affairs collapsed in the process. In the messages, Joaquín Guzmán gave him precise instructions on how to communicate. For example, he advised him to use Blackberry phones – because of their encryption – and to contact the cartel technician for help. In one of the other exchanges, Coronel tells El Chapo that he thinks the police will show up at the house. ‘Do you have a weapon?’ Asks the narco. She replies, “Yes, one of you, the one you gave me.” Guzmán asks him to hide her in a safe place. She also advised him to live a normal life, knowing they would use her to locate him. The messages were sent between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012.
And they revealed the public secret, the drug dealer’s infidelity. The FBI named one of its associates, Agustina Cabanillas Acosta, who was arrested in the February 2012 raid and referred to the capo as “my sweetheart.” According to reports, El Chapo also discussed shipments and sales of cocaine and marijuana in the United States with Cabanillas Acosta.
Coronel tried to take advantage of the fame generated around her image, always in the shadow of her husband, promoting a clothing brand and mechandising of all types: caps, sweatshirts, cell phone cases and t-shirts. The name El Chapo Guzmán had been filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and his logo featured a lion’s head along with the three words. She was not the only one in the family to set up a business of this type and she took on one of the narco’s other daughters (she has recognized at least 10), Alejandrina Guzman Salazar, who did the same with El Chapo 701 , for the number the narco had in prison.
In one of the TV commercials on the VH1 network, the appearance on the reality show of Ms. El Chapo was expected to be offered. On the bow of a luxurious white yacht, Coronel appeared smiling, dressed in white with sunglasses covering half of her face. “When the bosses call you, you can’t say no,” said one of the protagonists, Michael Corleone Blanco, the youngest son of Colombian drug dealer Griselda Blanco de Trujillo. Welcome to Cartel Crewthey announced. “She’s a true Latina, loyal to her husband,” added Blanco. Today, the US justice system will evaluate how loyal he was to one of the most powerful drug traffickers who introduced hundreds of tons of drugs into the United States.
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