CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) – Despite her status as the wife of the world’s most notorious drug lord, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, Emma Coronel Aispuro lived largely in obscurity – until her husband was imprisoned for life.
Then suddenly she was 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.
Coronel’s actions did not go unnoticed. And in the wake of her arrest Monday on charges that she conspired to distribute drugs, there were those who wondered: In embracing the spotlight, had Coronel put a target on her own back?
Her behavior stood out in part because she had lived a relatively sheltered life until her participation in a grueling lawsuit that drew international attention. But her actions violated unwritten rules about family members, especially women, who went unobtrusive.
Until the trial, “Emma had remained anonymous, as had practically all partners of Sinaloa cartel caps,” said Adrián López, editor-in-chief of Sinaloa’s newspaper Noroeste. Then she “starts to take on more of a celebrity stance. … This breaks a tradition of secrecy and a style that falls specifically within the leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel. “
Late last year, Mexican investigative journalist Anabel Hernández – who has written extensively about the Sinaloa cartel, including a 2019 book on the diary of cartel leader Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada’s son – said a source told her Coronel’s mother, Blanca Aispuro, was concerned about the turn her daughter’s life would take.
There was also concern among Guzmán’s sons and Sinaloa cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, said Hernández, who was the first journalist to ever interview Emma Coronel.
“Her mother was also concerned that an enemy cartel could harm Emma because she was let go, spent a lot of time on the streets, the clubs, excessive in her social life,” Hernández told her. “Her mother was concerned that something like this would happen or that she could become a target of the government.”
Guzmán has been married several times; as was made clear at his trial in New York, he has been far from loyal. While sitting in court, Coronel overheard a woman testify how she and Guzmán dramatically escaped from a raid in the middle of the night on one of his hideouts by Mexican Marines.
She described jumping out of bed, finding a secret hatch, and running through a discharge tunnel, with a naked Guzmán leading the way.
“Sometimes I loved him and sometimes I didn’t,” the woman said tears.
Coronel was there every day smiling and kissing Guzmán, “but in reality they tell me that Emma was very, very angry and very hurt,” said Hernández. “And so when the trial ended, she decided to get revenge and the way to get revenge was to make her husband see what he was losing.”
Coronel, 31, was born in San Francisco but grew up in the mountains of Durango adjacent to Guzmán’s Sinaloa state in a poor area known as the Golden Triangle.
She and Guzmán were married in 2007 when she was 18 years old. He was 50 and one of the world’s most powerful drug traffickers. “I can’t imagine she really had many options for saying no, I won’t marry you,” said Hernández.
For a time, Coronel’s father, Ines Coronel Barreras, is said to have been in charge of moving the Sinaloa Cartel’s marijuana across the border into Arizona. In 2013, he was arrested with one of his sons and other men in a warehouse with guns and hundreds of pounds of marijuana across the Douglas, Arizona border.
For years, Emma Coronel’s only public image was a photo taken in 2007, when she was crowned 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 straight into the camera.
After their marriage, she disappeared from public view until it was reported in 2011 that she had given 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 Altiplano maximum security prison outside Mexico City while his lawyers fought against his extradition. On July 11, 2015, Guzmán escaped through a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.
In January 2016, Mexican Marines recaptured Guzman in Los Mochis, Sinaloa. The following month, Coronel gave her first-ever interview to Hernández, complaining repeatedly about the conditions in which Guzmán was being held.
Coronel told Hernández that she had learned through television that he had escaped from Altiplano prison.
“If I had known anything I would not have been able to sleep or eat from despair,” 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, US prosecutors say.
Coronel and her design wardrobe impressed during the El Chapo trial. Photographers elbowed each other to record her arrivals and departures.
At one point she wore a burgundy velvet blazer that matched the blazer she had sent to Guzmán that day. Then she commissioned a courtroom artist to recreate the show of solidarity – a souvenir.
Coronel confidently walked through the courtroom. She played with her hair while she waited for the proceedings to begin and spoke amicably with reporters sitting behind her. She had crackers and cookies in her bag and sometimes offered snacks to reporters.
Every morning Guzmán visited her when he entered the courtroom. He smiled and waved hello.
One day she chatted and laughed in court with Mexican actor Alejandro Edda, who played Guzmán in the Netflix series “Narcos: México”. For the sixth week of the trial, she brought her 7-year-old twin daughters, dressed in matching jeans and white coats; their father slapped them softly, as if to play with them.
After Guzmán was convicted – he would be expelled for life plus 30 years – Coronel posted a statement thanking Guzmán’s lawyers and her mother and sister for looking after the twins while she attended the trial.
She said the process had been difficult. Her name had come up as testimony: Dámaso López, one of Guzmán’s former lieutenants, testified that he had met the sons of Coronel and Guzman several times to plan the drug lord’s escape from Altiplano prison. And he said Coronel had forwarded messages from her husband.
Coronel was unrepentant. “All I can say about that is that I don’t have to be ashamed of anything,” she wrote. “I’m not perfect, but I consider myself a good person and I’ve never intentionally hurt anyone.”
López, the editor of Noroeste, and Ismael Bojórquez, the editor of Riodoce, a news outlet known for his research into the Sinaloa underworld, were both shocked that Coronel had traveled to and from the US after the trial.
Hernández suspects US authorities have noticed Coronel’s lifestyle change and saw an opportunity to pressure her at a time when she is more open to betraying her husband.
Although Coronel has only posted five photos on Instagram (@therealemmacoronel), she has more than 563,000 followers.
For her last 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 gorgeous in red lipstick, a black leather jacket – and a crown in her long, dark hair, echoing the small-town beauty queen she was so long ago. .
“Happy birthday to you,” she wrote.
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.