Enchiladas have always been the way to El Chapo’s heart.
Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, once fell in love with a prison cook when he was first sent to jail in 1993 because she served up “enchiladas suizas” the way his mother made them — in the Sinaloan style, smothered in tomato sauce and cream and oozing melted cheese.
Now, a new book reveals that El Chapo, 64, was won over by his current wife, leggy 32-year-old Emma Coronel Aispuro, after she cooked him her own enchilada recipe while the two were dating in her home state of Durango.
El Chapo met Coronel Aispuro in 2006 at a country dance near her hometown in La Angostura. She claims that she had no idea he was the feared leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and a fugitive from justice. “He never bought me huge gifts or other big things,” Coronel Aispuro told Mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez for the book, “Emma and the Other Narco Women” (Grijalbo Publishing), out Jan. 25. “He won people over with his way of being…He never put on airs. He acted like any normal person.”
Although she was still a minor in a traditional rural family, her parents allowed her to go out on dates with El Chapo, who took her to regional dances. “We danced and talked,” Coronel told Hernandez. One day, she cooked him his favorite dish, and El Chapo knew he had found the woman of his dreams
“Maybe El Chapo was looking for his mother in all the women he knew,” Hernandez writes.
El Chapo was born to an impoverished family in La Tuna, in a remote region of Sinaloa state. The eldest of six children, he only went as far as the third grade in school before he was forced to earn money for his family. His father took him along to the family’s small marijuana plantation when he was seven years old to help him plant seeds. His mother, a homemaker, cooked for the family.
During El Chapo’s trial in Brooklyn federal court it emerged that Coronel Aispuro had aided her husband’s escape from a high security prison in Mexico and helped him deliver messages to the Sinaloa cartel. She was tried in a DC federal court last year, and sentenced to three years behind bars. Meanwhile, El Chapo’s mother, Maria Consuelo Loera Perez, 93, remains devoted to her son, who is currently serving a life sentence for drug trafficking and murder at a maximum security facility in Colorado.
When he was detained at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Correctional Center two years ago, Loera Perez received clearance from US authorities to visit him. She said she was hoping to bring along his favorite dish.
“He loves enchiladas,” she told Mexican reporters when the humanitarian visa came through in June 2019. She also thanked Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for personally intervening in her mission.
This article was originally posted here