After spending two and a half years behind bars for drug trafficking, getting again her freedom and disappearing quickly from public life, Emma Coronel, 35, needs to return to the highlight. The spouse of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera — who was one of many world’s strongest drug lords, and is now serving a sentence of life in jail at a maximum-security jail in the US — will star within the music video for a music about her personal life. The corrido — a standard Mexican ballad — is sung by Mariel Colón Miró, the inventive identify of La Abogada (The Lawyer), a member of the controversial authorized staff that defended El Chapo in his battle with the U.S. justice system, in addition to Coronel and the multimillionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Now, La Abogada is a performer.
To advertise her entry into the world of Mexican regional music, Coronel spoke on Monday to this system Despierta América (Wake Up America), hosted by María Antonieta Collins on Univision, one of the vital standard channels for the U.S. Latino inhabitants. It was a 10-minute interview, by which Collins averted questions on Coronel’s connection to the cartel and different delicate issues, and targeted on depicting her as a brand new girl who is targeted on enterprise, who has left the previous behind and is now “freer,” because the host put it. El Chapo’s spouse wasn’t very eloquent in her responses, both.
—Doesn’t it weigh on you that, properly, you’re going to return to being within the public eye and that has each good and dangerous penalties?
—Effectively sure, nevertheless it’s like all the pieces else, no? All the things has dangerous penalties, all the pieces has good penalties and on the finish of the day, one thing all the time comes up, why not do one thing that advantages me? As a result of I see it as one thing good. They employed me to work as a mannequin on my buddy’s undertaking and that was my music.
Essentially the most well-known girl of Mexico’s drug trafficking underworld has a brand new look: after the unfastened black hair she sported throughout her husband’s trial, she has transitioned to a blonde shade pulled again right into a ponytail; pink lips; eyeshadow; a white, mild summer time outfit. However some dangerous habits are exhausting to depart behind. El Chapo’s spouse is not distancing herself from the cartels, not even after serving time.
The particular person behind the music is Mario “El Cachorro” Delgado, a narcocorridos composer who additionally wrote Un Corrido Pa Joaquín (A Corrido For Joaquín, a denialist exaltation of El Chapo’s bloodthirsty previous that presents the narco as an harmless sufferer of the U.S. system: “Se pasaron de la raya y en su conciencia estará / no soy asesino en serie, nomás soy Joaquín Guzmán / siempre me gustó el negocio, pero supe respetar / y si alguien probó mi furia fue porque se portó mal” (“They went too far and it’ll stay on their conscience / I’m not a serial killer, I’m simply Joaquín Guzmán / I’ve all the time favored enterprise, however I knew to indicate respect / and if anybody tasted my fury it was as a result of they behaved badly”.)
The brand new observe, which might be known as La Señora (narco slang for the capo’s associate), is scheduled to be launched this week. “I listened once they have been writing it, the complete music, to what each half mentioned, for me, it’s vital and it resonated, I imply, it’s about me and all the pieces that has occurred in my life,” mentioned Coronel within the interview. Why did she determine to look within the music video? “I’ve all the time dreamed about changing into a mannequin, after I was a bit lady, I all the time mentioned I wished to be a mannequin,” she mentioned.
Coronel additionally assessed the time she spent on the earth of organized crime: “In 10 years, it looks like all the pieces occurred too shortly and too many troublesome issues have occurred, good ones as properly. Many classes realized, good ones. It’s very troublesome for me to guage an individual from simply seeing or listening to her and even seeing a narrative within the information by which they are saying one thing about that particular person as a result of I used to be there, and information objects have come out about me that don’t have any fact to them.” Has her life modified? “Life is similar, I’m the identical, however with totally different ideas, totally different teachings, I feel in another way now. I’m a bit extra reserved in how I discuss my life, I’m extra cautious about what I say, what I don’t say. I really feel like I’ve much more persistence.”
Within the interview, Coronel mentioned she was “doing enterprise,” with out specifying in what subject (“I nonetheless can’t say”); she mentioned she doesn’t maintain any grudges, that she would by no means once more take part in a actuality TV present, as she as soon as did, “not for hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, it’s one other form of jail”; and even dared supply recommendation to the “little girls”: “Perceive that when troublesome issues occur to you, when dangerous issues occur to you, the factor is that the previous is the previous, don’t get caught in it, now we have to hold on to get forward.” Collins requested about Coronel’s relationship with El Chapo, who remains to be her husband, although she has not seen him in years — Guzmán printed a letter asking her and their daughters to go to him.
—He and I aren’t in touch any longer, responded Coronel.
—However the love continues.
—The love will all the time proceed.
The ‘Kardashian of Sinaloa’
Coronel had her two weeks of fame throughout her husband’s trial, between 2018 and 2019. Wearing high-end designs that highlighted her vertiginous curves, in high-heeled footwear that she needed to take away day by day to move by means of safety on the New York courthouse, she was nicked the “Kardashian of Sinaloa” simply as her husband acquired a life sentence in jail. El Chapo has escaped from jail twice: the primary time, in 2001; the second time, in 2015, allegedly by means of a mile-long tunnel. He was lastly re-captured in 2016 and extradited to the US one 12 months later to forestall him from getting as much as his outdated methods. After his third arrest, it was solely a matter of time till his spouse’s fall from grace.
That wouldn’t occur till two years after El Chapo’s sentencing, in February 2021 at Dulles Worldwide Airport in Virginia. 4 months later, in June, Coronel pled responsible to drug trafficking and cash laundering for the Sinaloa Cartel. In November, she was sentenced to 3 years in jail, although she wound up solely serving two and a half years, the vast majority of it in a minimum-security facility.
Coronel was launched in September 2023. A couple of weeks later, she gave her first interview for a prolonged article on her life in Elle, by which she advised journalist Emily Palmer her story. The story was one in every of an adolescent from a small city within the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental who impressed a drug lord when she gained a magnificence contest in Canelas, Durango, a small city with a inhabitants of 800. El Chapo virtually purchased his future spouse: he gifted Coronel’s mother and father a Chevrolet Cheyenne 4×4 and a Mercedes-Benz.
They have been wed when she turned 18, although Guzmán Loera had different wives from which he had by no means divorced and plenty of lovers. Considered one of them, Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez, even testified in opposition to him in courtroom, whereas she was watched by an unruffled Coronel. Three years after their wedding ceremony, the lady from Sinaloa gave beginning to twins in a California hospital in order that, like she herself, her daughters would have U.S. citizenship: a safeguard for the long run. On their beginning certificates, she didn’t fill within the identify of their father. The years have handed and now, with a music about to be launched about her story, shadowed by her drug trafficking previous, Coronel insists: “Life is similar, in a distinct period.”
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