He’s El Chapo Guzman, once the most powerful drug lord of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. She is Emma Coronel, his partner in life and crime. This is their story.
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00:00He is El Chapo Guzman, once the most powerful drug lord of the Sinaloa cartel.
00:05She's his wife, Emma Coronel, partner in life and crime.
00:19This is their story.
00:25It's July 11th, 2015 in Mexico's most secure prison.
00:29Drug trafficker El Chapo Guzman escapes through a mile-long tunnel,
00:33dug straight to the shower in his prison cell.
00:35In a way, El Chapo came to be known as the master of tunnels.
00:39In order to carve out this tunnel, the engineers he hired needed GPS to locate his cell.
00:45And Emma Coronel gave El Chapo a watch fitted with GPS,
00:48so engineers could map out a path straight to his cell.
00:51As such, she was an accomplice in her husband's escape.
00:59With the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993, the Mexican cartels,
01:18who until then had acted as transporters, took control of drug trafficking in the Americas.
01:24In the mountains of Sinaloa, in the northwest of the country,
01:27one man rapidly climbed the ranks of organized crime.
01:30Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias El Chapo, which means shorty,
01:35was born in the rural community of Ratuna, by the Raguato in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.
01:41Sinaloa is the birthplace of drug trafficking in Mexico.
01:44El Chapo was raised in a poor family and he was practically illiterate.
01:48He started out producing marijuana before becoming a hitman.
01:52That's how he rose through the ranks of the cartel.
01:54In the early 2000s, he had his breakthrough alongside his partner Ismael Elmayo Zambala.
02:01The Mexican cartels began solidifying their dominance.
02:05They held a monopoly on drug trafficking to the United States,
02:08the world's biggest consumer market.
02:10Amongst Mexico's drug traffickers, the Sinaloa cartel was the most powerful of them all.
02:14At the time, El Chapo was not the head of the Sinaloa cartel,
02:18but one of the leaders of a federation of drug traffickers,
02:21who played a very important role in the organization, particularly in the media.
02:25He was much admired, often appearing with beautiful women,
02:29private planes, luxury cars, and so on,
02:32and thus came to represent the model of so-called narco culture in Mexico.
02:36In 2006, Mexico's newly elected president, Felipe Calderón,
02:41declared war on drug traffickers,
02:42and thousands of soldiers were deployed across the country in this fight.
02:52And it set off a firestorm.
02:56Things went absolutely haywire.
02:59The cartels armed themselves even more,
03:01and today we can count about 350,000 cartel-related deaths since this war on drugs started.
03:08Nearly the entire country continues to be affected by violence related to drug trafficking.
03:13In this war against the cartels, Calderón relied on a strongman,
03:17his minister of public security, Genaro García Luna.
03:21He was the anti-drug czar, taking the lead in this war against the cartels.
03:31But under his tenure, very few leaders of the Sinaloa cartel were arrested.
03:36Those who were arrested were dissenters.
03:39In time, it was apparent that he was working for the cartel,
03:43meaning he made exceptions for the Sinaloa cartel,
03:46arrested members of its opponents,
03:48and let drug shipments pass through to the United States.
03:51In February 2023,
03:53García Luna was found guilty of corruption and cocaine trafficking in U.S. court.
03:58This has been an extremely difficult and long road for Mr. García Luna,
04:01and his fight will continue.
04:03He will continue to do everything he can to clear his good name.
04:07In 2006, El Chapo met Emma Coronel at a ball.
04:11He danced with her, and they fell in love.
04:13At the time, she was entering a beauty pageant and threw a big party to celebrate.
04:18At the party, El Chapo showed up with hundreds of armed men and asked her to marry him.
04:37The day she turned 18, they got married and very, very quickly began having children.
04:48It's January 2016 in the state of Sinaloa.
04:52On the run since his daring escape from Mexico's highest security prison,
04:56El Chapo was finally arrested.
05:00In the home he was using as a hideout,
05:03Mexican police discovered a veritable arsenal,
05:05including two armored cars and a grenade launcher.
05:08El Chapo was arrested as he once again tried to escape through a tunnel.
05:13El Chapo was extradited to the United States to stay on trial.
05:18During his 2018 trial in New York,
05:20Emma Coronel was there every step of the way.
05:24We see her showing up to court in Gucci sunglasses.
05:27She's in a tank top and she's standing on the ground.
05:29She's screaming, she's screaming, she's screaming.
05:32She's screaming, she's screaming.
05:34She's screaming, she's screaming.
05:35She's screaming, she's screaming.
05:37She's screaming, she's screaming.
05:39She's screaming, she's screaming.
05:40in Gucci sunglasses, she's in attendance at all the hearings and really becomes highly publicized.
05:56In fact, Emma Coronel comes from the cartel world. Her father was a drug trafficker. He
06:02was arrested in 2013 and her uncle, Ignacio Nacho Coronel, was an associate of El Chapo.
06:09Said plainly, El Chapo chose a wife who would respect the code of silence or omerta
06:15in the organization and who already was part of his world.
06:27She tried to portray El Chapo as if he were the best possible husband. At the same time,
06:32she was cultivating her social media presence.
06:35This Instagram account, followed by several hundred thousand people,
06:39which Coronel denies creating, documented her personal life.
07:05Emma Coronel did television interviews and even appeared on Cartel Crew,
07:10a VH1 reality show featuring family members of drug traffickers.
07:14In 2019, El Chapo was sentenced to life in federal prison.
07:19Two years later, it was Emma Coronel's turn to face the U.S. justice system.
07:24She admitted to having been aware that large quantities of drugs were being
07:27imported into the United States and also admitted her involvement in her husband's 2015 escape.
07:34She was sentenced to three years in prison, a seemingly lenient sentence
07:45that some suggest indicates she may have cooperated with U.S. authorities.
07:49But for now, that's just a theory. Her lawyer patently denies such allegations.
07:54Her role was simply to be the wife. That's what her role was, period.
07:59After spending 18 months in federal prison in Texas,
08:02Emma Coronel was transferred to a halfway house in California in June 2023.
08:07Three months later, on September 13th, she was released from custody.
08:10In the U.S., people in witness protection change their identity and live in hiding,
08:15protected by law enforcement.
08:17If she doesn't return to Mexico, that could suggest she cooperated.
08:21Adherence to the code of silence is a non-negotiable rule.
08:24If you betray the cartel, you die.
08:32you