The scene is from “La Señora,” the latest music video from Colón, who spent several years working as a defense lawyer for Guzmán while he faced trial in a US court.
Riding in a black SUV with tinted windows, lawyer Mariel Colón rolls up to the gates of a remote mansion, strolling past a security guard side-by-side with Emma Coronel, the wife of notorious drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
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 Señora,” the latest music video from Colón, who spent several years working as a defense lawyer 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 leveraging her association with the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel to launch her music career under the stage name of “Mariel La Abogada” (Mariel, the Lawyer).
“La Señora” features — and pays tribute to — Guzmán’s wife, who was released from prison last year and has struggled to find work. It paved the way for the two to model together last weekend 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,” Colón 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 grew up listening to Mexican ballads, loving the brokenhearted 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 Guzmán’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 prepare a Spanish-speaking client for trial.
It was only later that she learned she would be working with Guzmán, taking him and Coronel as clients full time. She saw it as a “great opportunity professionally” and said she wasn’t easily intimidated.
Once among the most wanted men in the world, Guzmán led his Sinaloa Cartel in a bloody war for control of the international drug trade, gaining a cinematic level of notoriety for his dramatic prison escapes before his extradition to the U.S. 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?” Colón said.
