Mariel Colón had simply completed regulation college and was ready for the outcomes of the bar examination when she replied to a Craigslist advert searching for a Spanish-speaking paralegal to assist with translation on a significant case.
Solely later did she study that she’d be engaged on one of many largest trials of the last decade, serving to defend the infamous Sinaloa drug cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
The inmate Colón encountered deep within the bowels of a Manhattan jail appeared hungry for human connection after years of isolation in jail. In order Colón defined to Guzmán what the attorneys on his drug trafficking and homicide conspiracy case have been planning, she regarded for tactics to bond.
“I informed him I really like singing,” she mentioned. “And he informed me he loves music.”
Colón realized his favourite songs — banda and ranchera classics — and serenaded him there within the jailhouse. He applauded.
She credit Guzmán, 68, with rekindling her love of performing and sparking her curiosity within the wealthy custom of Mexican nation music. And so, as her authorized profession blossomed and she or he carved out an experience representing drug traffickers like El Chapo, she additionally pursued an unlikely facet hustle: as a swaggering singer of corridos below the stage title La Abogada — the Lawyer.
On a latest sweltering weekend, at a California competition billed because the Coachella of ranchera music, younger {couples} in denims and boots spun round within the grime as all-male bands from each side of the border swigged tequila from the bottle and performed boisterous songs about epic events, grievous infidelities and the daring lives of drug traffickers.
Backstage, on a tour bus whose home windows regarded out at acres of California almond groves, Colón waited nervously to carry out. She wore a merlot-colored cowboy hat contemporary out of the field and matching boots whose heels lifted her simply above 5 toes.
Within the testosterone-heavy world of regional Mexican music, the 33-year-old Puerto Rican singer knew she was a bit misplaced. “I’m feminine,” she mentioned. “And I’m not Mexican.”
Abraham Siguenza holds an AK-47-shaped decanter holding tequila after pouring a shot into musician Chavela Vasquez’s mouth on the Ranchela Music Competition in Tracy.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Instances)
Competition attendees dance on the Ranchela Music Competition in Tracy.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Instances)
However she had one massive factor going for her that not one of the different bands may declare: a detailed bond with the person lionized in lots of the narcocorridos the musicians have been belting onstage.
Colón, who right now is Guzmán’s main lawyer, is among the few individuals permitted to go to him within the Colorado supermax jail the place he’s serving a life sentence. And whereas the small print of their twice month-to-month conferences by no means make it into her songs (“attorney-client privilege,” she explains), her proximity to Mexico’s most infamous cartel boss is an simple promoting level in a tradition obsessive about all issues narco.
She has leaned closely into the lawyer persona. In her first music video, filmed in a courtroom, she wore a sizzling pink pantsuit and crooned: “Good morning, choose, please give me the ground. I’ve come to defend a damaged coronary heart.”
It was a bit gimmicky, certain, and as a girl within the famously machista business of Mexican regional music, Colón felt the percentages have been stacked in opposition to her. However she was banking on the simple pressure of her singing voice, the general public’s eternal obsession with Guzmán — and her personal tenacity.
“If I made it on the Chapo case, I’m going to make it right here,” she mentioned. Then she stepped from her tour bus and strode together with her band onto the stage.
Earlier than Colón was a lawyer, she was a musician.
She grew up round round salsa, merengue and pop in Puerto Rico, the place her father was a percussionist and band chief. She begged her mother and father for voice classes and took any alternative to carry out, dancing alongside her dad’s bands onstage and dressing up as a clown for her mother and father’ youngsters occasion enterprise.
Colón dreamed of fame as a singer, however her household, conscious of the challenges of the music business, pushed her to take a extra typical path. She studied music enterprise at Loyola College in New Orleans and regulation at Hofstra College in New York. She deliberate at first to be an leisure lawyer, however discovered herself drawn to the courtroom drama of legal instances.
“Prison regulation is precisely like performing,” she mentioned. “Your viewers is the choose and jury. You’ve got a narrative line and you need to persuade them of it.”
She met Guzmán in 2018. Often called El Chapo, or Shorty, due to his top, he had been extradited to the U.S. to face trial after twice escaping jail in Mexico. Again dwelling, Guzmán was typically seen as people hero: a rags-to-riches nation child from the Sinaloa sierra recognized for his generosity with locals and his eager means to evade authorities. However prosecutors accused him of fueling an habit disaster within the U.S. and ruthlessly torturing and killing rivals. Throughout his trial, they shared proof that Guzmán had burned the our bodies of rivals — and as soon as ordered a person to be killed after he refused to shake the cartel boss’ hand.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, the top of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, is proven 10 years in the past as he’s escorted to a helicopter in Mexico Metropolis after his seize in Mazatlán.
(Eduardo Verdugo / Related Press)
Colón knew little about Guzmán when she first met him contained in the cement fortress that’s Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Heart.
In between translations of plans for opening statements and cross-examinations, they talked about their shared love of music. Guzmán was a devotee of Mexican regional music — an umbrella time period that refers back to the subgenres of nation common in several elements of Mexico. Colón, who knew little concerning the type, researched his favourite bands and singers, together with Jenni Rivera and Los Tucanes de Tijuana. And he or she went about instructing him tunes from up to date musicians, like Peso Pluma, a extra up to date singer who sings continuously about El Chapo, and who was just lately threatened by a rival cartel for his perceived sympathies to Sinaloa.
She cherished the best way the regional songs have been composed and the depth of the lyrics.
“I’m very dramatic and really passionate,” she mentioned. “I imply, it was simply good for me.”
When Colón was admitted to the bar in late 2018, Guzmán requested if she would be part of his protection crew as a trial legal professional. His extra skilled legal professionals formed many of the technique. However as soon as the tribunal started, Colón typically discovered herself within the highlight, giving interviews to Spanish-language journalists and gaining tens of 1000’s of followers on Instagram, the place she posted courtroom sketches of herself and content material praising Guzmán’s spouse, a former magnificence queen named Emma Coronel who had grow to be a detailed buddy.
Guzmán was ultimately convicted of smuggling large quantities of narcotics into the U.S. throughout the a long time he led the brutal Sinaloa cartel.
Though the protection crew had misplaced the case, the telephone in Colón’s Brooklyn regulation workplace saved ringing.
It turned out many accused drug traffickers — even these from rival cartels — needed the prospect to work with El Chapo’s legal professional. Colón additionally briefly labored on the case of intercourse offender and sex-trafficking defendant Jeffrey Epstein earlier than he dedicated suicide.
Mariel Colón leaves a courthouse in Washington, D.C., after the sentencing three years in the past of Emma Coronel, the spouse of Joaquin “Chapo” Guzmán. Colón turned shut with Coronel throughout Guzmán’s trial.
( Yasin Ozturk / Getty Photos)
Colón cherished her work. A religious Christian, she had no qualms about representing individuals accused of heinous crimes; she mentioned her faith taught her to not choose others. She preferred advocating for shoppers comparable to Guzmán, whose isolation within the Colorado jail she has repeatedly argued is inhumane.
However she nonetheless felt a calling to music — and particularly needed to discover the style Guzmán had turned her onto.
She requested her shoppers what they thought of her launching a music profession. Colón mentioned all of them gave her their blessing.
“They know I’m at all times singing,” she mentioned. “And so they’re the one ones who ought to have a say, as a result of they’re those paying me.”
1
2
1. Colón on the Tracy competition. 2. Fellow legal professional Arturo Hernández backstage with Colón. (Tomas Ovalle / For The Instances)
Colón says one among her largest supporters was Coronel, 34, who served two years in jail after pleading responsible to serving to run her husband’s drug empire.
Days after Coronel was freed final fall, she was noticed sipping cocktails within the VIP part of a Lynwood nightclub the place Colón was performing. The headlines that adopted introduced new consideration to Colón’s singing profession.
“I didn’t need it to be a PR stunt,” Colón mentioned of Coronel’s go to. “I simply needed my buddy who had simply gotten out of jail to see me carry out as a result of she’s at all times been very supportive of me.”
Each two weeks, Colón flies into Colorado Springs and drives 40 miles to one of many nation’s most intensely guarded prisons. There, she spends 4 or 5 hours with Guzmán, who spends 23 hours a day locked in a 7-by-12-foot cell. Guzmán has virtually no contact with the surface world — not even his spouse is allowed to go to him.
Guzmán and Colón discuss authorized issues, sure, but additionally private issues, starting from tales about their childhoods to Colón’s love life.
“He is aware of so much about me, and I do know so much about him,” she mentioned. She admits that a number of the anecdotes he has shared would make for nice lyrics. However Colón mentioned she attracts a transparent boundary between her two careers.
“I’ve to be actually cautious about what I sing about,” she mentioned.
Colón performs on the competition in Tracy. “If I made it on the Chapo case, I’m going to make it right here,” she mentioned of her music profession.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Instances)
Simply earlier than Colón took the stage on the competition in Tracy, a video performed on a large display screen. It confirmed clips of her getting out of a automotive in a slick pantsuit, taking tequila photographs with a gaggle of mates, and in a sizzling tub surrounded by candles. An image of a younger Guzmán flashed. “Many know her because the lawyer of El Chapo,” a male voice intoned.
Colón — who solely began releasing music final yr and remains to be at work on her first EP — was one of many lesser recognized names to play on the competition. As she took the stage, the response from the group was lukewarm at first.
However as she began singing — first a track by Rivera, later a canopy of a corrido about El Chapo (“The Earth turns and stops / If Joaquín orders it”) — the group warmed up. Ladies, particularly, appeared excited by her presence within the in any other case all-male lineup.
After she completed, throwing black-dyed roses into the group, she stepped off stage and obtained a hug from Arturo Hernández, a gray-haired man in a Santa Clara Regulation sweatshirt.
Hernández, an legal professional who has represented many cartel members, met Colón throughout the Guzmán trial when she requested him for data on Sinaloa. He noticed in her parallels along with his personal profession and took her below his wing. Within the Nineteen Eighties, he was a younger legal professional simply beginning out when he represented serial killer Richard Ramirez, referred to as the Night time Stalker.
Colón hangs out together with her band after their efficiency on the Ranchela Music Competition.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Instances)
Hernández had suggested her on the way to deal with the media. He supported her, too, when she informed him she needed to be a singer. His recommendation, each occasions, was the identical.
“Have enjoyable,” he mentioned. “Benefit from the trip.”
She is having fun with it. Though the calls for of the music business, which requires artists to even be influencers, generally is a lot.
Some individuals have requested what is going to occur to her authorized profession if her music takes off. If that occurs, she is aware of she may need to scale back her caseload.
However she mentioned she’ll without end be loyal to El Chapo.
“I’ve a duty to be sure that he has the highest quality of life, whether or not or not it’s inside or outdoors and particularly if it’s inside,” she mentioned. She feels the identical manner about Coronel, whom she is advising on a number of potential enterprise ventures.
“They gave me my first alternative,” she mentioned. “I’d cancel live shows for them.”
Because the solar sank over California farm nation, the younger crowd outdoors saved dancing and ingesting, and Colón and her crew ready to move out. She had some recording in San Francisco to do. Some instances to work on. And some days later, a visit to Colorado to make.
