Lawyer Mariel Colon rolls up to the gate of a secluded mansion in a black SUV with tinted windows, flanked by Emma Coronel, wife of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, a security guard. passed in front of.
Wearing sports suits and sunglasses, the pair walked into a dimly lit room filled with smartly dressed men smoking cigars.
All to the sound of trumpets.
The scene is from Mr. Colon’s latest music video, “La Senora,” for which he worked as a defense attorney for several years while Mr. Guzman was on trial in a U.S. court. With Mexican regional music becoming a global phenomenon, the 31-year-old used her relationship with the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel to launch a musical career under the stage name “Mariel La Abogada” (Mariel). I’m starting it. ,lawyer).
“La Senora” features and pays tribute to Mr. Guzman’s wife, who was released from prison last year and was struggling to find work. This paved the way for the two to model together during Milan Fashion Week last weekend, attracting attention both in Italy and abroad.
“(My work) opens doors for me because of the morbid, the curiosity of people… They want to understand this,” Colon told The Associated Press. “Mariel always told people that she was a singer who became a lawyer.”
The Puerto Rican daughter of a music director, she grew up listening to Mexican ballads and loved the heartbreak passion in music. Although she had always wanted to be a singer, her family encouraged her to pursue a law degree.
She graduated from a U.S. law school and began working for Guzman’s defense team in 2018 after stumbling across a Craigslist ad seeking part-time paralegals to help prepare Spanish-speaking clients for trial. Ta.
It wasn’t until much later that she learned that she would be working with Guzmán and would have him and Coronel as full-time clients. She said she saw this as a “great professional opportunity” and was not easily intimidated.
Once one of the world’s most wanted men, Guzman led the Sinaloa Cartel in a bloody war for control of the international drug trade and was arrested in a dramatic prison escape before being extradited to the United States in 2017. gained notoriety. The group known as “Los Chapitos” is embroiled in a deadly power struggle with another faction of the cartel, leaving dismembered bodies around the state capital.
“(People) ask how I can do this job, am I 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.”
Mr. Colon is one of the few people who is in regular contact with Mr. Guzman. She visits him three times a month at a maximum-security prison in Colorado, where he is serving a life sentence. She declined to discuss details of Mr. Guzman’s case, citing attorney-client privilege.
Colon, who is trying to build trust, has worked with Guzmán, other Mexican drug traffickers, and, briefly, Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. sing songs to other customers, including;
Colon serenades Guzmán with Mexican classics by bands like Los Alegres del Barranco and Tucanes de Tijuana. To this day, she said, he was one of the first people to hear her new music.
“If something came out that I liked, no matter what genre, I would sing it to him because he doesn’t have a radio,” she said.
Her music career began a little more than a year ago when she released her first video, “La Abogada.” The video shows Colon, wearing a pink suit, screaming at law enforcement in the courtroom. Like many genres, her music ranges from percussion-heavy bandas to character-focused ballads known as corridos.
“La Senhora” features a diamond-encrusted table and depicts Guzmán’s wife riding a trotter by the pool.
Colon said the song is based on Coronel’s life and sends a message of redemption and second chances. It was also a way to provide the 35-year-old with a job, a condition of her probation.
Coronel, a former beauty queen, was released last year after serving a three-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering related to her husband’s drug empire. Coronel declined to be interviewed.
“A slim waist and beautiful eyes. A smart head for business and a strong voice against the bad guys. She shows her loving side only to El Chaparito,” Colon exclaims in the ballad. “El Chaparito” means “Short Child” and is a play on Guzman’s nickname.
Colón’s musical rise coincides with a relative golden age for Mexican music, which has grown 400% worldwide in the past five years on Spotify. In 2023, Mexican artist Peso Pluma surpassed Taylor Swift as the most streamed artist on YouTube.
Corridos have been mainstream for more than a century, but younger artists are twisting the style, filling stadiums with their mix of classic ballads and the trap of corridos tumbados.
But it also cuts to the heart of a larger debate. Does this music capture the reality faced by many Mexicans, or does it glorify the drug violence that has long plagued the Latin American nation?
Rafael Saldívar, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Baja California, said drug culture has long been part of corridos, with many singers idealizing traffickers as “ambitious figures who go against the system.” Ta.
“They are cultural expressions that speak to the reality of this country,” Saldívar said. But “they do so in a way that glorifies these criminals in a way or that some people feel is promoting this kind of lifestyle.”
A classic example: Chalino Sánchez, king of Corridos, used the surrounding violence in Sinaloa to spin lyrics while condemning “Sinaloa gangs” who tortured and killed innocent people. He was shot and killed during a performance in the state capital in 1992.
Peso Pluma, who last year paid tribute to Guzmán with a song, was forced to perform in Tijuana after the 25-year-old received threats from rivals in the Sinaloa Cartel that “if he came, it would be his last performance.” had no choice but to cancel the performance. ”
Tijuana then banned the performance of drug ballads entirely to protect the “eyes and ears” of young people trying to contain the violence. Local authorities in northern states had previously banned musicians from singing narcocorridos.
While Colon doesn’t go so far as to glorify weapons or drugs, he is quick to defend narcocorridos.
“There’s a reason Netflix made the ‘Narcos’ show, and that’s because there’s an audience. It piques people’s interest,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they admire or admire what this person has done, but they have some sort of admiration for this person and this person’s life. It’s all about the violence. No, these people have hearts and families.”
While Coronel is set to release her first record in December, Coronel used “La Señora” to launch her career as a model and social media influencer.
Designer April Black Diamond, who asked Coronel and Colon to model for a side event during Milan Fashion Week, said she was “shocked” by her choice.
“People evolve. My platform is not about judgment, but about showing the different sides of women, their strength and resilience,” she said in a statement. The next day, a photo of Coronel wearing a designer dress was plastered on a billboard in New York’s Times Square.
On Wednesday, Italy’s National Fashion Chamber issued an “urgent” press release, saying the show was not associated with an official fashion week event and that brands must abide by the chamber’s code of ethics.
Meanwhile, Colon and Coronel’s video continues to gain traction, racking up nearly 750,000 views on YouTube.
