Emma Coronel, the wife of imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, recently shared details about their courtship and her own time in a U.S. prison.
Coronel, now 37, met Guzmán in 2007 when she was 17 at a dance in Durango, Mexico, several months after winning a beauty pageant. She recounted that Guzmán approached her respectfully, asking permission to dance and later sending flowers. They married on her 18th birthday in a private ceremony at her family’s home.
“He was a gentleman with me,” Coronel said during a broadcast on the streaming platform Kick with influencers Víctor Ordoñez and Guillermo Peña. She noted that by the time she entered his life, Guzmán was already facing increased scrutiny and could not travel or move freely.
Coronel gave birth to their twin daughters in 2011. She described Guzmán’s interests as long walks in the mountains, riding motorcycles, and gambling. According to Coronel, they maintained contact regularly, though traveling together was not possible.
Coronel has not seen Guzmán since his sentencing on July 17, 2019, to life in prison. She stated that the Federal Bureau of Prisons has prohibited contact between her, their daughters, and Guzmán. What she misses most, she said, is the way he spoke to her, describing it as if she were a baby.
Less than two years after Guzmán’s sentencing, Coronel was arrested at Dulles International Airport by the FBI on Feb. 22, 2021. She faced charges of money laundering and drug trafficking, to which she pleaded guilty and received a three-year sentence.
Coronel described her first year of incarceration in an Alexandria, Virginia, jail as solitary confinement, with one hour outside her cell per day. She characterized the experience as intensely difficult, highlighting the isolation and the inability to know or control events outside.