EL CHAPO’S wife has apologised to victims of her husband’s brutal life of crime a decade after the Sinaloa Cartel boss was snared.
Emma Coronel, who married drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman when she was 18, sent her condolences to families of those who died at the hands of narco-thugs like him, and said she was sorry for their suffering.
Coronel appeared to show regret over the bloodshed – despite decades living in luxury off the spoils of her husband’s crimes.
Breaking her silence in the new Oxygen documentary “Married to El Chapo: Emma Coronel Speaks”, Coronel, now 36, revealed details about her relationship with the cartel leader and reflected on the impact of organised crime.
She also opened up about her own prison sentence in Mexico and the United States.
In one key moment, she said: “I stand in solidarity with those who have lost a loved one, who have suffered.”
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Viewers follow Coronel through her teenage years and her marriage to the deadly cartel leader – all the way through to her release in September 2023.
Born in California and raised on a ranch in Durango, Mexico, Coronel said she had a difficult childhood with her parents and three siblings.
They apparently went without clean drinking water, electricity or television – and the family made money by selling cannabis.
Coronel said: “I grew up seeing and believing that the government was the enemy. Either you starve or you do what you have to do to survive.”
Her fateful meeting with Guzman came when she was 17 at a local party, where she was taking part in a beauty pageant.
She recalled: “I heard an important person was at the party and that he wanted to dance with me. A man came over and said: ‘My name is Joaquin’.”
After she won the pageant, the pair married shortly after her 18th birthday in a ceremony at the family ranch.
Coronel claimed that she never witnessed the violence associated with drug trafficking and never took part in Guzman’s criminal activities – despite him leading one of the most bloodthirsty cartels ever.
According to her, Guzman kept his criminal life separate from the family.
She said: “Thank God, to this day, I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve seen someone lose their life. I’ve never been in a situation like that.
“He didn’t sit down to talk to me about his work. I didn’t ask him, and I didn’t see him work.”
In the documentary, she also revealed that doubts about her marriage to the career criminal surfaced when she became a mother in 2011.
Her father and her brothers might never have gone to prison if she had chosen another man, she said.
Her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, and her brother, Ines Omar Coronel Aispuro, were arrested in 2013 in Mexico alongside other members of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Both men were sentenced in 2017 to ten years in a Mexican prison for drug trafficking.
Coronel also faced legal repercussions herself after Guzman’s final capture in 2014, and conviction in 2019.
In June 2021, she pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering and managing companies linked to the cartel – and got 36 months in a US prison.
Being away from her daughters sent her into a depression while she was behind bars.
Since her release in September 2023, she has been attempting to rebuild her life, support her daughters and develop her own brand.
She has also built a profile as a lifestyle influencer and fashion model – including appearing in a runway show during Milan Fashion Week in Italy.
She said: “I want to continue with my life.”
Guzman is currently serving a life sentence plus 30 years in the ADX Florence supermax prison in the US state of Colorado.
While Coronel may claim to want out of the criminal underbelly, there remains a number of “Cartel Queens” who cash in by glorifying the lifestyle.
Last month, one such woman known as La Chucky was one of five gangsters killed during a gunfight with police on the US-Mexico border.
Thought to have been a member of the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico‘s oldest crime syndicates, the twenty-something had frequently boasted about her large gun collection on social media and is believed to have been in a relationship with a senior gang boss.
Back in 2019, the pouting selfie queen was rumoured to have faked her own death after a cartel shakeup saw scores of its members wiped out.