She defended ‘El Chapo.’ Now this lawyer is using her narco-fame to launch a music career

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Using in a black SUV with tinted home windows, lawyer Mariel Colón rolls as much as the gates of a distant mansion, strolling previous a safety guard side-by-side with Emma Coronel, the spouse of infamous drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Sporting fits and sun shades, the pair stride right into a dimly lit room stuffed with slickly dressed males smoking cigars.

All to the roar of trumpets.

The scene is from “La Señora,” the newest music video from Colón, who spent a number of years working as a protection lawyer for Guzmán whereas he confronted trial in a U.S. court docket. Now, at a time when regional Mexican music is turning into a world phenomenon, the 31-year-old is leveraging her affiliation with the previous chief of the Sinaloa Cartel to launch her music profession underneath the stage title of “Mariel La Abogada” (Mariel, the Lawyer).

“La Señora” options — and pays tribute to — Guzmán’s spouse, who was launched from jail final 12 months and has struggled to search out work. It paved the way in which for the 2 to mannequin collectively final weekend throughout Milan Vogue Week, elevating eyebrows in Italy and past.

“(My work) opens doorways for me due to the morbid, due to individuals’s curiosity … They need to perceive this,” Colón advised The Related Press. “I’ve at all times advised people who Mariel is a singer who grew to become a lawyer.”

The Puerto Rican daughter of a music director grew up listening to Mexican ballads, loving the brokenhearted ardour infused within the music. She at all times needed to be a singer, however her household pushed her to pursue a legislation diploma.

She started working for Guzmán’s protection workforce in 2018 after graduating from legislation college within the U.S. and stumbling upon a Craigslist advert in search of a part-time paralegal to assist put together a Spanish-speaking consumer for trial.

It was solely later that she realized she could be working with Guzmán, taking him and Coronel as purchasers full time. She noticed it as a “nice alternative professionally” and stated she wasn’t simply intimidated.

As soon as among the many most needed males on this planet, Guzmán led his Sinaloa Cartel in a bloody conflict for management of the worldwide drug commerce, gaining a cinematic degree of notoriety for his dramatic jail escapes earlier than his extradition to the U.S. in 2017. Now his sons, referred to as “Los Chapitos,” are locked in a lethal energy battle with one other faction of the cartel, leaving mutilated our bodies across the state capital.

“(Individuals ask) how I can do that job, that I’m a part of the mafia, how can I sleep at night time?” Colón stated. “I don’t care what they are saying about me. I sleep very properly at night time.”

Colón is one among few individuals who preserve common contact with Guzmán. She visits him 3 times a month within the most safety jail in Colorado the place he’s serving a life sentence. She declined to debate particulars of Guzmán’s circumstances, citing attorney-client privilege.

In search of to construct a rapport, Colón sings to Guzmán and different purchasers, who’ve included different Mexican drug traffickers and, for a short time, Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 whereas awaiting trial on sex-trafficking fees.

Colón serenades Guzmán with Mexican classics from bands together with Los Alegres del Barranco and Tucanes de Tijuana. To this present day, she stated, he’s among the many first to listen to her new music.

“No matter style, something that was popping out that I appreciated, I’d sing it to him as a result of he doesn’t have a radio,” she stated.

Her musical profession started little greater than a 12 months in the past, when she launched her first video, “La Abogada,” which options Colón wearing a pink go well with, crooning to legislation enforcement from a courtroom. Like a lot of the style, her music is numerous, starting from percussion-heavy banda to character-focused ballads referred to as corridos.

“La Señora” encompasses a desk sprinkled with diamonds, Guzmán’s spouse astride a trotting horse and strolling beside a pool.

Colón stated the track was primarily based on Coronel’s life, sending a message of redemption and second probabilities. It was additionally a option to provide the 35-year-old work, a situation of her probation.

Coronel, a former magnificence queen, was launched from jail final 12 months after finishing her three-year sentence for drug trafficking and cash laundering in relation to her husband’s drug empire. Coronel declined to be interviewed.

“A small waist and delightful eyes. A mind for enterprise and a powerful voice for the dangerous boys. She solely reveals her affectionate aspect to El Chaparrito,” Colón belts out in her ballad. “El Chaparrito,” which means “the little shorty,” performs with Guzmán’s nickname.

Colón’s musical rise coincides with a relative golden age of Mexican music, which grew 400% worldwide during the last 5 years on Spotify. In 2023, Mexican artist Peso Pluma bested Taylor Swift as probably the most streamed artist on YouTube.

Whereas corridos have dominated for greater than a century, younger artists have stuffed stadiums by twisting the type on its head, mixing traditional ballads with lure in corridos tumbados.

But it surely additionally cuts to the center of a bigger debate: Does the music seize the realities dealing with many Mexicans or does it glorify the narco-violence lengthy plaguing the Latin American nation?

Narco tradition has lengthy been a part of corridos, with many singers idealizing traffickers as “an aspirational determine going in opposition to the system,” stated Rafael Saldívar, a researcher on the Autonomous College of Baja California.

“They’re cultural expressions chatting with the realities of the nation,” Saldívar stated. However “in a method they glorify these criminals, or accomplish that in a method the place some really feel it’s pushing this sort of way of life.”

A traditional instance: king of corridos Chalino Sánchez used the violence round him in Sinaloa to spin lyrics whereas additionally calling out the “Sinaloa gang” for torturing and killing innocents. He was shot lifeless at a efficiency within the state’s capital in 1992.

Final 12 months, Peso Pluma – who paid homage to Guzmán in songs – was pressured to cancel a present in Tijuana after the 25-year-old obtained threats from a rival of the Sinaloa Cartel that if he got here it “could be your final efficiency.”

Later, Tijuana banned the efficiency of narco ballads altogether to guard “the eyes and ears” of youths because it tries to comprise violence. Native authorities in northern states beforehand banned musicians singing narcocorridos.

Colón, who hasn’t gone as far as to glorify arms or medication, is fast to defend narcocorridos.

“There’s a cause why Netflix did the ‘Narcos’ present, it’s as a result of there’s an viewers for it. It intrigues individuals,” she stated. “That doesn’t imply they’re applauding or celebrating what this particular person did, however they do have a type of admiration for this particular person or this particular person’s life. Not every thing is violence. These individuals have hearts, they’ve households.”

Whereas Colón plans to place out her first report in December, Coronel has leveraged “La Señora” to launch her profession as a mannequin and social media influencer.

April Black Diamond, the designer who requested Coronel and Colón to mannequin in a aspect occasion throughout Milan Vogue Week, stated her selection was met with “shock.”

“Individuals evolve. My platform isn’t about judgment however about exhibiting completely different dimensions of ladies, their power, and resilience,” she wrote in an announcement. The subsequent day, images of Coronel in one of many designer’s clothes appeared plastered on a billboard in New York’s Occasions Sq..

On Wednesday, Italy’s Nationwide Vogue Chamber issued an “pressing” press launch saying the present wasn’t affiliated with official style week occasions and that manufacturers have to observe its code of ethics.

In the meantime, eyes on Colón and Coronel’s video proceed to develop, clocking round 750,000 views on YouTube.