The Beauty Queen and the Drug Lord: How El Chapo fell in love with Emma Coronel
The glamorous wife of drug kingpin Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, has recently been awarded 36 months behind bars after she pleaded guilty to drug charges. Emma Coronel Aispuro also has to fork out around $1.5 million, according to the verdict against her. On November 30, she pleaded before Rudoph Contreras, the District Court Judge in Washington, DC, for leniency, mentioning her twin daughters — Emali Guadalupe Guzman Coronel and Maria Joaquina Guzman Coronel — who are both ten years old.
Aispuro said, “They are already growing up without the presence of one of their parents. I beg you to please not allow them to grow up without the presence of their mother.” Then, Judge Contreras stated, “I hope you raise your twins in a different environment than you’ve experienced to date.” It has been said the 32-year-old will be held behind bars at a federal facility in California so that she can be near the kids whom she shares with one of the most powerful drug traffickers in the world. Currently, her husband is at a maximum security facility in Colorado as he serves life imprisonment.
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How did Emma Coronel Aispuro meet El Chapo?
According to reports, Aispuro met El Chapo in 2007 while throwing a party to announce her candidacy in the Coffee and Guava Festival beauty pageant in northern Mexico. On the day of the party, the drug kingpin entered the Mexican town of Canelas in an unusual way. First, a motorcade of 200 scooters ridden by armed men in black clothing and ski masks made their way into the tiny town — reportedly a center of activity of marijuana and opium production, then six small planes came down from the sky. One of the planes was carrying El Chapo, who was a fugitive at the time.
Describing that day, Mexican journalist Patricia Davila wrote in Proceso magazine: “As if it were part of his wardrobe, he wore a goat-horn AK-47 assault rifle across his chest.” It has been said that by the time the party ended that day, Aispuro and the 64-year-old were engaged. Also, days after the party, Aispuro was made the queen of the Coffee and Guava Festival. Though she denied the influence of her then-fiancé in her crowning, several Mexican media reported that El Chapo had bribed the judges.
On July 2, 2007, the pair exchanged vows and four years later, they became parents to twin daughters. However, Aispuro’s life was beyond being a wife and a mother. As per reports, before being arrested in February of this year, she was aspiring to start a line of cell phone cases, hats, T-shirts, and sweatshirts under the “El Chapo Guzman” name. She even registered a trademark with the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2019 for the brand name along with a logo featuring a lion’s head, but production did not happen under the brand. Aispuro also starred in an episode of VH1’s ‘Cartel Crew’ in November 2019, where she was seen seeking advice from the son of drug trafficker Griselda Blanco for her dream business. In the show, she said: “I try not to regret what’s in the past. They judge us without knowing us. It’s hard because sometimes you just want to do what you see everyone around you doing.”
Not just that, the daughter of a convicted drug trafficker is also a very famous face in the world of social media. She has over 600k followers on Instagram, where she models designer clothes. Robert Almonte, a security consultant based in Texas, said: “In the past, she was able to rub elbows with some pretty fancy people. Now she will be treated just like any other female inmate in the federal prison system.”