Meet Chapo's Lover

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

If until now the sentimental protagonist of the trial of Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán Loera had been his wife Emma Coronel, the former Mexican state deputy Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez disputed the leading role with his dramatic testimony on Thursday about his life with the wanted drug boss.

The 29-year-old, also known as the Chapodiputada, told the jury in great detail from Guzmán's naked escape through a tunnel in Culiacán in February with Mexican marines on his heels, to the size of the accused's pants or slippers. favorite sneakers.

That in addition to, among other things and always according to her words, they washed some nicaban through an application of the Blackberry phone in which she had the code name of "Beauty". Their romance, for which they saw each other two or three times a month, combined it with a business relationship. The first task that Guzmán entrusted her with was to visit the Sierra de Sinaloa and Durango, part of the so-called Golden Triangle that she knew by heart, looking for marijuana growers. "I could get it easier."

El Chapo wanted farmers to give them their marijuana on credit, but she said she refused because she knew she would never pay them if they gave it "the speck" on trust. "It wasn't fair to me because people worked so hard."

She assured that her feelings towards her partner, whom she sometimes referred to as my husband, were changing. "Sometimes I loved him, sometimes not," said Sánchez, who claimed to have been afraid of him, particularly on issues related to the security of the capo and his hatred of possible informants from the authorities.

On one occasion, he recalled, he assured him that he would not hesitate to kill relatives if they betrayed him.

Despite this, she continued to work with him in the creation of front companies in which to hide the income from the transfer of drugs. He said that they were looking for "a person of low resources" that they could manipulate so that it would be their straw man, the one who would sign the papers, in the juice company they founded in Mexico City.

In that time, El Chapo seems to have formed a second home with Sánchez, who treated him as “her husband”. "When he didn't go out or was working, I lived with him," he said. I bought him shirts, pants, shoes, and even his lotions. "I treated her like a housewife."

The tunnel through which El Chapo escaped.

A desperate flight

The relationship began to leak in late 2012. "We had some problems and we distanced ourselves," she said, although they kept in touch and saw each other sporadically when Guzmán contacted her through her communication network so that she could see him.

That is why they were sharing a bed at a Chapo residence in Culiacán in February 2014 when Mexican marines assaulted her in a coordinated operation with the US DEA. They managed to escape per second from the soldiers thanks to a tunnel hidden under a bathtub. So fast was the flight, he said, that the narco had to run naked.

According to the US authorities, during this stage Sánchez served the criminal organization, managing, among other things, the transfer and money laundering that they had obtained through their illegal business.

Her ties to drug trafficking did not prevent her from jumping into politics in the 2013 elections, when she managed to win a seat in the Sinaloa parliament by the National Action Party (PAN) and thus become the youngest deputy in the state's history.

Personal tragedies

His success in politics was clouded when his former Rafael Chávez Cháidez, 27, was assassinated the following January by unknown individuals who shot him. A few weeks later, her sister María Carolina Sánchez was murdered by her partner.

His world had just collapsed when, after the capture of El Chapo and his admission to a high-security prison in the Altiplano, Sánchez went to visit him with a false identity card. They discovered her and from that moment she was in the sights of the authorities, who managed to lose her jurisdiction as a legislator.

She was detained in January 2016, but was released at 11 p.m. and disappeared from the public eye for a long time. It was hardly known about her until she was arrested at the border crossing in San Diego, United States, in July 2017 when she was trying to enter the country. There was an arrest warrant in her name.

Already in an American jail, his lawyer assured that he suffers from anxiety attacks. The nervous tic that she has suffered for a long time, and that makes her blink constantly, could be seen in her appearance at El Chapo's trial.

Last October, Sánchez pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in federal court in Washington, DC, and is awaiting a sentence, which can range from 10 years in prison to life in prison. She herself said she hoped that her testimony against her former lover would serve to earn the court's indulgence.