February 23, 2021 – Uncle Sam came for El Chapo’s wife this week, with DEA agents arresting the 31-year old former beauty queen, Emma Coronel Aispuro, Monday morning on federal narcotics trafficking charges, as the Narcos “First Lady,” deplaned a flight at Dulles Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington D.C.
Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman, 63, the world’s most notorious and feared drug kingpin of the 21st Century, has been in U.S. custody since 2017. A mythic figure around the globe — fashioned a super villain of sorts by friends, foe and flocking media like –, Guzman was found guilty on racketeering, drug and murder counts in a heavily-covered 2019 trial in New York City. Today, he is serving a life prison sentence in the BOPs SuperMax facility in Florence, Colorado.
Federal prosecutors allege Coronel Aispuro, who has two daughters by El Chapo, helped her husband run his Mexican Sinaloa Cartel while he was on the run from the law in the 2010s, including being part of the planning in Guzman’s daring underground escape from a Mexican prison in 2015. Guzman’s sons from another marriage, Coronel Aispuro and a federal informant, organized the intricate details of the escape pla
Coronel Aispuro has dual citizenship between Mexico and the United States. She was born in San Francisco. Her father, Ines (El Uno) Coronel Barreras, was a cattle rancher and Sinaloa Cartel lieutenant, doing his business in Northern California, Colorado, Arizona and Durango, Mexico. For most of her childhood, Coronel Aispuro lived in Durango and as a teenager she won several beauty pageants.
The 53-year old “El Uno” was one of El Chapo’s top marijuana smugglers, working the Southwest border region separating Mexico and Arizona and Mexico and Texas. He’s currently doing a 10-year prison term in Mexico for a 2017 drug-conspiracy conviction.
El Chapo married Emma Coronel Aispuro in 2009. The pair met in 2007 and have 9-year old twin daughters. Coronel Aispuro appeared in the VH1 reality television show, “Cartel Crew.” She was a regular at her husband’s trial two years ago, unflinchingly sitting through testimony from federal agents implicating her in criminal activity and seeing her face dot the covers of New York gossip rags as the paparazzi snapped photos of her every move when going to and from court every day.