One of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s lawyers has launched a bid to become a ranchera singer. Her stage name? “La Abogada,” which means “the attorney” in Spanish.
Mariel Colón, who is still working for the Guzmán family and also represents El Chapo’s wife Emma Coronel, announced her new career expansion this week. Colón also worked briefly for Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted child sex trafficker, before he committed suicide.
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In her debut music video, Colón plays an attorney who falls in love with her client, who is a man facing jail. “Good morning your honor, may I speak: Today I’m here to defend my heart,” Colón sings on her first line.
The video shows Colón in a court before a judge and a jury. At one point she is visiting her client behind bars, sings “I’m no longer your defense attorney” through the glass.
Speaking to Univisión, Colón said music has always been her first passion. “I’m a singer who became a lawyer. I’ve always had a passion for singing and I thought this was the perfect moment to launch my career as a singer, because I know I have a big talent,” she said.
“My plan was to become an attorney for the music industry, but ended up being a criminal attorney and that changed everything,” Colón said in the interview.
Colón, 29, was born in Puerto Rico and is based out of New York. She became part of Guzmán’s legal team in 2017. She was eventually also hired by El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel, to also represent her after she was taken into custody in the U.S.
Colón began working on El Chapo’s case soon after leaving college, when she applied for an assistant attorney position advertised on Craigslist.
“I think El Chapo is proud of seeing me as an artist (…) and Emma Coronel is very happy with my transformation and I’m impatiently waiting for her to get out of prison and start new projects together,” Colón said in an interview with Univisión.
Colón is currently one of the three people allowed to speak with the former drug lord El Chapo on a daily basis and has previously said she considers his wife Coronel “a good friend”.
El Chapo is currently being held in the ADX Florence, a federal “supermax” prison in Colorado, where he’s serving a life sentence.
Coronel, who is serving a three year sentence, is accused of helping coordinate El Chapo’s infamous 2015 escape from Mexico’s maximum-security Altiplano prison, where the drug lord slipped out of his cell through a mile-long tunnel via a motorbike on wheels.
