Foreign – Page 5 – The Pen Hustle With Brandy Cavalli

Beauty queen Emma Aispuro Coronel, wife of El Chapo Guzman Photo: Telemundo

In a sit-down with Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, Emma Coronel Aispuro, wife of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, claims that her husband’s health has deteriorated in the Antiplano prison since the Sinaloa cartel leader was recaptured on January 8.

“I am afraid for his life. We don’t know if he is eating well. We don’t know what his situation is because we haven’t seen him.”

Guzmán escaped from the Antiplano prison through a tunnel in the shower area of his cell in July.

The drug lord’s escape was considered a major embarrassment for the Mexican government as Mexican marines mounted a nationwide manhunt.

Marines finally caught up to Guzmán at a home in Los Mochis in January.

Guzmán’s lawyer has alleged that prison guards in the Antiplano prison are not allowing his client to sleep.

“They want to make him pay for his escape. They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell. They are right there, all day long, calling attendance. They don’t let me sleep. He has no privacy, not even to go to the restroom.”

The special, titled “The Queen of El Chapo,” are on Mexico’s Telemundo network details Aispuro’s life with Guzmán — including when and where the pair were married, her life as Guzmán’s wife and the drug lord’s relationship with his twin daughters.

“Not everything people say is true, I think that all human beings have the right to have at least the basic things for life handy. They are not giving that to him.”

Coronel claimed not to know about her husband’s position as the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, the largest drug trafficking network on earth.

Blank-faced and without inflection she says:

“He’s like any other man. Not violent. Not rude…. I have never seen him get excited or be upset at anyone.”

Coronel was born in San Francisco, CA and has U.S. citizenship.

She plans on following her husband everywhere — even to the United States, where he faces a 21-count indictment in the Eastern District of New York, charged with money laundering and 12 murders.

She told Hernandez:

“I will follow to wherever he is. I am in love with him. He is the father of my children.”

In the 1960s, a gang of variously disaffected youth sprang up in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand.

They didn’t ride bikes, but they quickly developed all the trimmings of an outlaw motorcycle club: patches, club colors, and a fiercely violent process of initiation. They came to be known as the Mighty Mongrel Mob and today they’re the largest gang in the country, with around 30 chapters across both islands. Media access to the Mob is rare, which is why this photo series by Jono Rotman is kind of a big deal.

Jono, who is a Wellington born photographer now living in NYC, cut his teeth capturing New Zealand’s prisons and psychiatric wards, before he took on gang life in 2007.