Trial Of "Chapo" Becomes Fashionable Among Tourists

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

Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán Loera and his wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro have become, "unintentionally wanting", celebrities in New York. From the extradition of the fearsome 61-year-old boss to a maximum-security cell in Manhattan, until the start of his trial in early November last in the Brooklyn Supreme Court, the drug dealer and his 29-year-old wife have captured the attention of the press.

Now, the show has also become a magnet for tourists who want to see up close the legendary capo who escaped from the Mexican authorities in a spectacular way and who has become a source of inspiration for countless corridos, movies and books.

According to The New York Times, the court allows 50 people to witness each of the hearings in the case. 17 of those seats are reserved for the press and the rest are distributed among the public who have to arrive in the early hours of the morning in order to get their entrance to the trial.

According to this source, among those who have entered the trial are tourists from countries like Lutuania or Guatemala, as well as from different states of the country, who instead of going to Broadway or visiting the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree have moved to New York to see El Chapo's trial.

Emma Coronel Aispuro, El Chapo's wife, just outside the court in Brooklyn:

Two El Chapo attorneys: Eduardo Balarezo (left) and William Ppura

"Everyone in my house is jealous, they cannot believe that I am in El Chapo's trial," said Greg Gold, a Denver Colorado attorney who was lucky enough to be able to enter one of the trial sessions a few days ago. "This is better than watching [the play] Les Miserables."

Drug tourism is nothing new, however it is increasingly a growing phenomenon among visitors from countries like Mexico and Colombia. And for sample a button is enough: according to experts, so far in 2018 the city of Medellín, in Colombia, has received more than 470,000 foreign visitors. Of this number, it is estimated that many travel there to see the house and the neighborhood where the late Pablo Escobar lived.

However, this trend is not welcomed by everyone, even despite the economic spill it generates. "Whoever comes to our country to defend the crime is not welcome," said Federico Gutiérrez, mayor of that city, last August. "The mafia is the worst thing that has happened to us as a society because it misrepresented values such as honest and hard work that turned it into easy money, discretion changed it by opulence and took the value of life to put a price on it and we cannot accept that."