Wife of cartel kingpin 'El Chapo' says she's 'afraid for his life'

(Image credit: Twitter.com/ElDebate)

last updated 22 February 2016

He stands accused of heading the cartel responsible for trafficking 1.8 million pounds of cocaine to the U.S. and other countries over the course of a decade, plus torture, kidnappings, and murder, but Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, says her husband is a doting family man who is "not violent, not rude."

The 26-year-old former beauty queen spoke with the Los Angeles Times and Telemundo for her first public interview about life with El Chapo, and said she has never heard her husband of eight years "say a bad word" or "get excited or be upset at anyone." Coronel was born in San Francisco, and is El Chapo's third wife and mother to two of his reported 19 children. The U.S. Treasury Department said in 2013 that her father, Ines Coronel Barreras, was one of El Chapo's top two lieutenants in the Sinaloa cartel, a charge that she denies.

El Chapo famously escaped from prison last year, and has been in solitary confinement at the El Altiplano prison in Mexico since his recapture last month. "They want to make him pay for his escape," Coronel said. "They say they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell." Coronel said officials won't let him "sleep," and he "has no privacy, not even to go to the restroom." She has been able to visit him once for 15 minutes, surrounded by guards with El Chapo donning shackles and handcuffs. Coronel believes her husband is in danger, as he's "slowly being tortured" and has extremely high blood pressure. "I am afraid for his life," she said.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.