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Associated Press

Riding in a black SUV with tinted windows, lawyer Mariel Colon rolls up to the gates of a remote mansion before strolling past a security guard side by side with Emma Coronel, the wife of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Sporting suits and sunglasses, the pair stride into a dimly lit room full of slickly dressed men smoking cigars.
All to the roar of trumpets.
The scene is from “La Senora”, the latest music video from Colon, who spent several years working as a defence lawyer for Guzman 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 leveraging her association with the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel organised crime syndicate to launch her music career under the stage name of Mariel La Abogada (Mariel, the Lawyer).
“La Senora” features – and pays tribute to – Guzman’s wife, who was released from prison in 2023 and has struggled to find work. It paved the way for the two to model together recently during Milan Fashion Week, raising eyebrows in Italy and beyond.


“[My work] opens doors for me because of the morbid, because of people’s curiosity … They want to understand this,” Colon said. “I’ve always told people that Mariel is a singer who became a lawyer.”
The Puerto Rican daughter of a music director grew up listening to Mexican ballads, loving the broken-hearted passion infused in the music. She always wanted to be a singer, but her family pushed her to pursue a law degree.
She began working for Guzman’s defence team in 2018 after graduating from law school in the United States and stumbling upon an advertisement on online classifieds site Craigslist seeking a part-time paralegal to help prepare a Spanish-speaking client for trial.
It was only later that she learned she would be working with Guzman, taking him and Coronel as clients full time. She saw it as a “great opportunity professionally” and said she was not easily intimidated.
Once among the most wanted men in the world, Guzman led his Sinaloa cartel in a bloody war for control of the international drug trade, and gained a cinematic level of notoriety for his dramatic prison escapes before his extradition to the US in 2017.

Now his sons, known as “Los Chapitos”, are locked in a deadly power struggle with another faction of the cartel, leaving mutilated bodies around the state capital.
“[People ask] how I can do this job, that 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.”
Colon is one of only a few people who maintain regular contact with Guzman. She visits him three times a month in the maximum security prison in the US state of Colorado where he is serving a life sentence. She declined to discuss details of Guzman’s cases, citing lawyer-client privilege.
Seeking to build a rapport, Colon sings to Guzman and other clients, who have included other Mexican drug traffickers and, for a brief time, Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
Colon serenades Guzman with Mexican classics from bands including Los Alegres del Barranco and Tucanes de Tijuana. To this day, she said, he is among the first to hear her new music.
“Whatever genre, anything that was coming out that I liked, I would sing it to him because he doesn’t have a radio,” she said.

Her musical career began little more than a year ago, when she released her first video, “La Abogada”, which features her dressed in a pink suit, crooning to law enforcement from a courtroom. Like much of the genre, her music is diverse, ranging from percussion-heavy banda to character-focused ballads known as corridos.
“La Senora” features a table sprinkled with diamonds and Guzman’s wife astride a trotting horse and strolling beside a pool.
Colon said the song was based on Coronel’s life, and sent a message of redemption and second chances. It was also a way to offer the 35-year-old work, a condition of her probation.
Coronel, a former beauty queen, was released from prison in 2023 after completing a three-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering in relation to her husband’s drug empire. She declined to be interviewed.
“A 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,” Colon belts out in her ballad. “El Chaparrito”, meaning “the little shorty”, plays with Guzman’s nickname.

Colon’s musical rise coincides with a relative golden age of Mexican music, whose listeners have grown 400 per cent worldwide over the last five years on music app Spotify. In 2023, Mexican artist Peso Pluma bested Taylor Swift as the most streamed artist on YouTube.
While corridos have dominated for more than a century, young artists have filled stadiums by twisting the style on its head, mixing classic ballads with trap in corridos tumbados.
Narco culture has long been part of corridos, with many singers idealising traffickers as “an aspirational figure going against the system”, said Rafael Saldivar, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Baja California in Mexico.
“They’re cultural expressions speaking to the realities of the country,” Saldivar said. But “in a way they glorify these criminals, or do so in a way where some feel it’s pushing this kind of lifestyle.”
A classic example: king of corridos Chalino Sanchez used the violence around him in Sinaloa to spin lyrics while also calling out the “Sinaloa gang” for torturing and killing innocents. He was shot dead at a performance in the state’s capital in 1992.

Last year, Peso Pluma – who paid homage to Guzman in songs – was forced to cancel a show in Tijuana after the 25-year-old received threats from a rival of the Sinaloa cartel that if he came it “would be your last performance”.
Later, Tijuana banned the performance of narco ballads, or narcocorridos, altogether to protect “the eyes and ears” of youths as it tries to contain violence. Local authorities in northern Mexican states previously banned musicians singing narcocorridos.
Colon, who has not gone so far as to glorify arms or drugs, is quick to defend narcocorridos.
“There’s a reason why Netflix did the Narcos show, it’s because there’s an audience for it. It intrigues people,” she said.
“That doesn’t mean they’re applauding or celebrating what this person did, but they do have a sort of admiration for this person or this person’s life. Not everything is violence. These people have hearts, they have families.”

While Colon plans to put out her first record in December, Coronel has leveraged “La Senora” to launch her career as a model and social media influencer.
April Black Diamond, the designer who asked Coronel and Colon to model in a side event during Milan Fashion Week, said her choice was met with “shock”.
“People evolve. My platform isn’t about judgment but about showing different dimensions of women, their strength, and resilience,” she said. The next day, photos of Coronel in one of the designer’s dresses appeared plastered on a hoarding in New York’s Times Square.
On September 24, Italy’s National Fashion Chamber issued an “urgent” press release saying the show was not affiliated with official fashion week events and that brands need to follow its code of ethics.
Meanwhile, eyes on Colon and Coronel’s video continue to grow, with it clocking around 750,000 views on YouTube.


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Music

Mariel Colon, who spent years working as a lawyer for drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, is launching a music career. Photo: Instagram/@el_cuadro_mx

Emma Coronel (centre), the wife of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, and lawyer Mariel Colon leave a federal court in New York in 2019 after attending a hearing. Photo: AP

Colon gives an interview in Colombia during a tour for the music video of La Senora. Photo: Instagram/@mariellaabogada

Colon says “La Senora” pays tribute to Guzman’s wife, who was released from prison in 2023 and has struggled to find work. Photo: YouTube

The cover art for Colon’s “La Senora”. Photo: Instagram/@emmacoronel9oficial

Colon’s musical rise coincides with a relative golden age of Mexican music. Photo: YouTube

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Emily in Paris cast and crew members in Rome in September, 2024, ahead of the release of the show’s fourth season. Photo: EPA-EFE

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Angela Sin Ying Chan,, a Hong Kong violinist, performs in Belgium. Photo: Instagram/@angelasinyingchan

Hong Kong-born violinist Angela Chan performs during the semi-final of the  Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in Hanover, Germany. On September 28, Chan became the first violinist from Hong Kong to win the prestigious competition, sharing the top prize with Canadian Jacques Forestier.  Photo: Helge Krückeberg

Angela Chan performs during the semi-final of the Joseph Joachim Violin Competition. Photo: Helge Krückeberg

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Cecilia Cheung at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards in 2004. The actress’ personal life garnered a lot of attention in the 2000s, with tabloids covering scandals and her high-profile romantic life. Photo: SCMP

Cheung in 1999. Photo: Oliver Tsang

Cheung speaks after receiving the award for best new performer, as veteran actors Liza Wang and Danny Lee look on, at the 19th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2000. Photo: Martin Chan

Cheung and Nicholas Tse in 2001. Photo: Reuters

Cheung in a still from Lost in Time (2003), for which she won best actress at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards. Photo: China Star Entertainment Group

Cheung and Tse at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2011, the year they filed for divorce. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Cheung and Stephen Chow in a still from King of Comedy (1999). Her feature-film debut remains one of her most memorable roles. Photo: The Star Overseas

Cheung and her three sons. Photo: Weibo

Cheung in a photo she posted on her Weibo account in 2023. Photo: Weibo

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Gillian Chung at an interview with the Post in 2009. Photo: SCMP

Gillian Chung at an interview with the Post in 2010. Chung, one half of Hong Kong’s Cantopop duo Twins, is now thriving as a singer and actress but the road to success – marred by a scandal involving intimate photos – has not been an easy one. Photo: SCMP

Charlene Choi (left), then 18, and Chung, 20, at an interview with the Post in 2001. Photo: SCMP

Choi and Chung perform on stage at HarbourFest in October, 2003. Photo: SCMP

Chung (left) in a still from “The Twins Effect” (2003).

Chung speaks at a press conference attended by more than 300 artists, legislators and supporters in Tseung Kwan O in 2006. Photo: SCMP

Chung (left) and Choi at the Asian Film Awards presentation ceremony in Wan Chai in 2007. Photo: SCMP

Chung was interviewed in March 2009 about the photos of her and Edison Chen. Photo: TVB

Chung at an interview with the Post in 2009. Photo: SCMP

Chung (left) and Choi of Twins meet their fans in March 2010 ahead of their reunion concert, titled “Bouncing Back”, at the Hong Kong Coliseum. Photo: SCMP

Chung and Michael Lai on their wedding day, with (back row from left) bridesmaids Yumiko Cheng, Joey Yung and Choi, in 2018. Photo: Instagram/@yungchoyee

Gillian Chung in a still from the film “Prison Flowers” (2023).

Gillian Chung (left) and Charlene Choi during preparations for their 2024 concert series. Photo: Instagram/@q_gill

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Colon is using her notoriety and connection to the drug trafficking world to launch a music career. She denies she is glorifying crime


Colon is using her notoriety and connection to the drug trafficking world to launch a music career. She denies she is glorifying crime.
