Riding in a black SUV with tinted windows, lawyer Mariel Colón approaches the gates of a remote mansion, strolling beside a security guard along with Emma Coronel, the wife of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Dressed in sporting suits and sunglasses, the pair enter a dimly lit room where smoothly dressed men are smoking cigars.
All to the roar of the trumpet.
The scene is from Colón’s latest music video for “La Señora”, who spent several years working as a defense attorney for Guzmán while he faced trial in a US court.
Now, at a time when regional Mexican music is becoming a global phenomenon, the 31-year-old is taking advantage of her association with the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel to launch her musical career under the stage name “Mariel la Abogada” (Mariel). Is. , Advocate).
“La Señora” features and pays tribute to Guzmán’s wife, who was released from prison the previous year and was struggling to find work. This paved the way for the two to model together during Milan Fashion Week last weekend, causing a stir in Italy and beyond.
“(My work) opens doors for me, because of the morbidity, because of people’s curiosity… they want to understand it,” 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 who grew up listening to Mexican ballads, she loved the passion of a broken heart included in the music. She always wanted to be a singer, but her family encouraged 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 a Spanish-speaking client prepare for trial. Chasm.
Only later did she learn that she would be working with Guzmán, taking him and Coronel on as full-time clients. She saw it as “a great opportunity professionally” and said that she does not get intimidated easily.
Once one of the world’s most wanted men, Guzmán led his Sinaloa Cartel in a bloody war for control of the international drug trade, achieving cinematic levels of notoriety for a dramatic prison escape before his extradition to the US in 2017. Did. Now his sons, known as “Los Chapitos”, are locked in a deadly power struggle with another faction of the cartel, and are leaving mutilated bodies around the state capital.
“(People ask) how can I do this job, 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.”
Colón is one of the few people who maintains regular contact with Guzmán. She visits him three times a month in a maximum security prison in Colorado, where he is serving a life sentence. He declined to discuss details of Guzmán’s cases, citing attorney-client privilege.
In an attempt to make connections, Colon sings for Guzmán and other clients, including other Mexican drug traffickers and, for a time, Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Had inserted.
Colón presented Guzmán with Mexican classics including Los Alegres del Barranco and Tucanes de Tijuana. To this day, he said, he is one of the first people to hear her new music.
She said, “Whatever genre, anything that was coming on that I liked, I would sing it because they don’t have a radio.”
His music career began a little more than a year ago, when he released his first video, “La Abogada”, which featured Colón, dressed in a pink suit, singing to law enforcement from the courtroom. Like most genres, their music is diverse, ranging from percussion-heavy bandas to character-focused ballads known as corridos.
“La Señora” features a table decorated with diamonds, Guzmán’s wife riding a horse and strolling by a pool.
Colón said the song is based on Coronel’s life, giving a message of redemption and second chances. It was also a way of offering the 35-year-old work, which was a condition of his probation.
Former beauty queen Coronel was released from prison last year after completing a three-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering in connection with her husband’s drug empire. Coronel declined to be interviewed.
“Small waist and beautiful eyes. A brain for business and a strong voice for the bad boys. She only shows her affectionate side to El Chaparrito,” Colón asserts in his song. “El Chaparito,” meaning “little shorty,” plays with Guzmán’s nickname.
Colón’s musical rise coincides with the relative golden age of Mexican music, which has grown 400% worldwide over the past five years on Spotify. In 2023, Mexican artist Peso Pluma bested Taylor Swift as the most streamed artist on YouTube.
While corridos have dominated for over a century, young artists have filled stadiums by turning the genre on its head, mixing classic ballads with trap in corridos tumbados.
But it’s also at the center of a larger debate: Does the music reflect the realities faced by many Mexicans or does it glorify the narco-violence that has long plagued the Latin American nation?
Rafael Saldivar, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Baja California, said narco culture has long been part of the corridors, with many singers idealizing traffickers as “an ambitious person going against the system.”
“They are cultural expressions that speak to the realities of the country,” Saldivar said. But “in a way they glorify these criminals, or do it in a way where some people feel it’s promoting this kind of lifestyle.”
A classic example: Chalino Sanchez, king of the corridos, used the violence around him in Sinaloa to spin lyrics, also calling out “Sinaloa gangs” for torturing and murdering innocents. He was shot dead during a demonstration in the state capital in 1992.
Last year, Peso Pluma – who paid tribute to Guzmán in songs – was forced to cancel a show in Tijuana because the 25-year-old received threats from a rival of the Sinaloa cartel that if he came it would be “your last There will be a demonstration.”
Later, Tijuana banned the performance of narco ballads altogether to protect the “eyes and ears” of youth as it tries to prevent violence. Local authorities in northern states previously banned musicians from singing narcocorridos.
Colón, who has not gone as far as glorifying weapons or drugs, has been quick to defend narcocorridos.
“One of the reasons why Netflix did the show ‘Narcos’ is because there is an audience for it. It attracts people,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that they’re appreciating or celebrating what this person did, but they have a kind of appreciation for this person or this person’s life. Not everything is violence. These people have hearts, they have families.”
While Colon plans to present her first record in December, Coronel has taken advantage of “La Señora” to launch her career as a model and social media influencer.
Designer April Black Diamond, who asked Coronel and Colón to model at a side event during Milan Fashion Week, said she was “surprised” by their choice.
“People evolve. My platform is not about judgment but about showcasing the different dimensions of women, their strength and resilience,” she wrote in a statement. The following day, photographs of Coronel in one of the designer’s dresses appeared 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 affiliated with official Fashion Week events and required brands to follow its code of conduct.
Meanwhile, Colon and Coronel’s video continues to gain views, reaching nearly 750,000 views on YouTube.
