Emma Coronel: From A Pawn To Queen

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Video translation is as follows:

If life were a chess board, Emma Coronel Aispuro, would honor her second, modest name, and would have started the game as the least important piece: a pawn.

Although she was born in San Francisco, California her childhood was far removed from the glamor of the Californian coasts. As a little girl she moved to a small community called La Angostura in the town of Canelas, in Durango, in the area known as “El Golden Triangle ”.

A region where the climate makes the cultivation of marijuana ideal. In that terrain everyone will be a pawn. At the beginning of the 90s, the heads of families in Angostura had two destiny’s, the most fortunate emigrated north to the U.S. or became soldiers.

The least of them stayed to work in the fields, almost always growing marijuana that grew wild and in high demand in the United States.

Emma Coronel's father, Inés Coronel Barrera, was one of those pawns with horse aspirations. He hated poverty and wanted to get out of it. But not as much as her brother, Emma's uncle, Nacho Coronel, the most ambitious of the family.

When a young hit man with a promising future in the criminal world settled in La Angostura and noticed Emma Coronel, just a teenager, the Coronel Aispuro family didn’t hesitate to give their blessing for the union of marriage. 

It was a wedding of convenience, where the only one who seemed to lose was the beauty queen who won the Cafe y La Guayaba fair in Canelas, Durango. "El Chapo" won a third, young and beautiful wife.

The Coronel Aispuro family had an ongoing bet that another Sinaloan pawn would become a king of the drug trade. And Emma was to become just one more trophy wife in the world of organized crime.

But Emma Coronel would make a first break in her life. Disguised just in her  beauty, she also camouflaged herself as one more buchona, but she wasn’t the latter. 

Supported by what she knew of a family-criminal business since she was a child, Emma Coronel acquired, without many of us knowing, roles within the Sinaloa Cartel that were leveling up.

The pawn piece changed. And she passed by on horseback: Emma not only looked good or spectacular in her husband's meetings. But she began to participate in drug trafficking and money laundering operations.

It was a discreet role, limited to what as a woman she could do in a macho structure such as a drug cartel. But it was a lot more than what other wives did.

And that led Emma Coronel to another break that caused her importance to change on the board. When "El Chapo" was apprehended for the second time, she was part of the inner circle that planned his escape from the Altiplano maximum security prison. 

Her role was no less. She was in charge of making contacts with high-level public servants during the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto. She also had to make the necessary payments to bribe officials and ensure that the underground tunnel that would return her husband to freedom was well financed.

She was no longer a pawn, but a rook showing her skills, her charisma, her ability to work as an operator for the most important criminal group, perhaps, in the world.

The last break of hers occurred in full view. That day, Tuesday, October 30, Emma Coronel went from a rook to queen. She broke all possible molds when she surrendered in February of this year to the United States authorities and violated rule number one of organized crime: the pact of silence.

Emma Coronel did what no one from the Sinaloa Cartel did: voluntarily enter the United States, confess the crimes, divulge the secrets, those of others, and obtain a tiny sentence of about 3 years in a minimum security prison.

The queen will go free in the winter of 2024 without any guilt to be a celebrity, an influencer, a businesswoman or whatever she likes. And behind her she will have left dozens of dead men, perpetual prisoners or fugitives who only wished they had her luck. 

Emma Coronel, the pawn who became queen with chess movements. Checkmate.

mvs noticias