‘El Chapo's’ attorney uses narco-fame to launch a music career

MEGAN JANETSKY

Riding in a black SUV with tinted windows, lawyer Mariel Colon rolls up to the gates of a remote mansion, strolling past a security guard side-by-side with Emma Coronel, the wife of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman. Sporting suits and sunglasses, the pair stride into a dimly lit room full of slickly dressed men smoking cigars. All to the roar of trumpets.

The scene is from “La Senora,” the latest music video from Colón, who spent several years working as a defense lawyer for Guzmán while he faced trial in a U.S. court. Now, at a time when regional Mexican music is becoming a global phenomenon, the 31-year-old is leveraging her association with the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel to launch her music career under the stage name of “Mariel La Abogada” (Mariel, the Lawyer).

“La Senora” features — and pays tribute to — Guzman’s wife, who was released from prison last year and has struggled to find work. It paved the way for the two to model together last weekend during Milan Fashion Week, raising eyebrows in Italy and beyond.

“(My work) opens doors for me because of the morbid, because of people’s curiosity … They want to understand this,” Colon told The Associated Press. “I’ve always told people that Mariel is a singer who became a lawyer.”

The Puerto Rican daughter of a music director grew up listening to Mexican ballads, loving the brokenhearted passion infused in the music. She always wanted to be a singer, but her family pushed her to pursue a law degree.

She began working for Guzman’s defense team in 2018 after graduating from law school in the U.S. and stumbling upon a Craigslist ad seeking a part-time paralegal to help prepare a Spanish-speaking client for trial.

It was only later that she learned she would be working with Guzman, taking him and Coronel as clients full time. She saw it as a “great opportunity professionally” and said she wasn’t easily intimidated.

Once among the most wanted men in the world, Guzman led his Sinaloa Cartel in a bloody war for control of the international drug trade, gaining a cinematic level of notoriety for his dramatic prison escapes before his extradition to the U.S. in 2017. Now his sons, known as “Los Chapitos,” are locked in a deadly power struggle with another faction of the cartel, leaving mutilated bodies around the state capital.

“(People ask) how I can do this job, that I’m part of the mafia, how can I sleep at night?” Colon said. “I don’t care what they say about me. I sleep very well at night.” Colon is one of few people who maintain regular contact with Guzman. She visits him three times a month in the maximum security prison in Colorado where he’s serving a life sentence. She declined to discuss details of Guzman’s cases, citing attorney-client privilege.

Seeking to build a rapport, Colon sings to Guzman and other clients, who have included other Mexican drug traffickers and, for a brief time, Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Colon serenades Guzman with Mexican classics from bands including Los Alegres del Barranco and Tucanes de Tijuana. To this day, she said, he’s among the first to hear her new music. “Whatever genre, anything that was coming out that I liked, I would sing it to him because he doesn’t have a radio,” she said.

Her musical career began little more than a year ago, when she released her first video, “La Abogada,” which features Colón dressed in a pink suit, crooning to law enforcement from a courtroom. Like much of the genre, her music is diverse, ranging from percussion-heavy banda to character-focused ballads known as corridos. “La Senora” features a table sprinkled with diamonds, Guzman’s wife astride a trotting horse and strolling beside a pool.

Colon said the song was based on Coronel’s life, sending a message of redemption and second chances. It was also a way to offer the 35-year-old work, a condition of her probation.

Coronel, a former beauty queen, was released from prison last year after completing her three-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering in relation to her husband’s drug empire. Coronel declined to be interviewed.