Emma Coronel Aispuro had a glamorous life in New York, enjoying the benefits of her marriage to boss Joaquin Guzman Loera, also known as El Chapo. But suddenly she was arrested and imprisoned in Virginia. What happened to the queen in the world of drug cartels?
The windows of the prison, William Truesdale Adult Retention Center in Alexandria, are rectangular slats cut lengthwise into red bricks. There, Emma Coronel Aispuro was kept in solitary confinement in a small cell, she wrote dnes.bg.
Inside, says her lawyer Mariel Colon Miro, she reads novels, mostly romantic, to make time go by faster.
Prison conditions are in stark contrast to the life she once had.
A few months ago, she had plans to launch the El Chapo Guzman clothing line. (The couple has the status of style icons in Mexico, and his daughter has also entered fashion using his name). She wears expensive watches and jewelry.
But earlier this year, the 31-year-old Coronel was arrested at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and charged with helping her husband run the infamous Sinaloa cartel. Guzman, 64, is serving a life sentence in a high-security prison in Colorado.
FBI officials say Coronel is in a cocaine conspiracy and helped plan her husband’s escape from a Mexican prison in 2015.
Her personal story is not so rosy – she has a nervous husband who is courting a mistress and runs a criminal enterprise. Yet it sheds light on the secret world of drug cartels and the women who inhabit them. No trial date has been set. If convicted, she could be sent to prison for life.
Putting the issue of guilt or innocence aside, analysts studying the world of drug trafficking say Coronel has created an unusual role. She was a public figure, entrepreneur and manager, helping to control who had access to her husband while he ran the cartel.
Traditionally, women drug traffickers are perceived as “very sexual” and “aimless,” Cecilia Farfan-Mendes, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego, told the BBC. But Coronel is different: “She has shown that women can take positions of power.”
Possessing power in a cartel is a risky endeavor.
Derek Maltz, a former special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said: “When you run this business, you will either be caught or killed.”
Coronel was bold in her plans for a fashion company, but was stopped by federal investigators. As Maltz says, “The world was collapsing around her.”
Kidnappings and murders
Coronel ate an iceberg lettuce at Brooklyn Federal District Court during her husband’s trial. She was sitting with friends in the cafe, joking.
“She is a bright person,” said Miro, her lawyer. “Emma I know – she’s full of energy, always smiling.”
Coronel, a citizen of both Mexico and the United States, met Guzman when she was only 17 and quickly married him. They have two children, Maria Joaquina and Emali. During her husband’s trial, Coronel sat in the courtroom almost every day.
During the breaks, she rattled her heels in the marble corridors.
“Sinaloa diva,” said Romain Le Cour Courmeson, a Paris security analyst who spent time in Mexico studying the cartels. With red lipstick and diamonds and skinny jeans, she embodied the popular image of the “buhona” – the love interest of the drug lord.
George Mason University in Guadalupe, Korea-Cabrera, conducted research in Sinaloa, Mexico, where the El Chapo cartel operates. They define the term “buhona” as follows: “Women wear very expensive clothes, Louis Vuitton purses. Everything is exaggerated and she is a perfect embodiment of this image. It’s all about appearance, plastic surgery.”
One of its most striking features, Correa-Cabrera noted, is its “back”, which she described as “extremely curved”.
Her glamorous image contrasted with the grim reality of El Chapo’s cartel operations.
Guzman used violence to maintain control of the illicit drug market and reap the rewards of his wife and family. More than 300,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, the year the government launched its war on cartels.
Among the victims were Guzman’s enemies, as well as people close to him. The body of one of his lovers was found in the trunk of a car – a murder committed by a rival gang.
The price of loyalty
Lucero Guadalupe Sanchez Lopez, Guzman’s longtime mistress, testified against him during the trial. She was arrested in June 2017 on charges of drug trafficking near the US-Mexico border.
She pleaded guilty and was told she was facing ten years in prison. Sanchez, a mother of two, is cooperating with prosecutors as part of a plea agreement.
Dressed in a blue jumpsuit from prison, she described their meetings and his work as a cartel leader in the courtroom. She had a nervous tic and blinked often. Guzman, sitting nearby, looked impatient and kept looking at the clock on the wall.
Coronel sat in the second row, wearing a velvet jacket of the same type her husband wore.
“The matching jackets showed the strength of their marriage,” said William Purpura, who served as Guzman’s lawyer. Coronel wants to send a message to Sanchez, wearing a dress similar to her husband’s on the day the ex-mistress testified.
“It was also a hint for the mistress,” Purpura explains. “She said, ‘He’s mine.’
After testifying in court, Sanchez returned to his cell. Coronel went to New York for dinner.
It wasn’t long before the tables had turned for both women. Sanchez was released from prison and is now with his children. Coronel is behind bars and is being held without bail.
Many were horrified by the way Coronelle flaunted her lifestyle during the trial, and disappointed by the way she remained loyal to her husband. She is seen as a fool. Not from Sanchez, though.
When her lawyer, Heather Schaner, told her that Coronel was in prison, Sanchez showed no signs of joy.
Instead, she remembers her lawyer: “She felt sad because she said, ‘This is just another mother who needs to be away from her children.’
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