El Chapo’s wife, a former teen beauty queen, is not actually his wife, according to a new book.
The drug cartel chief married Emma Coronel Aispuro on her 18th birthday in July 2007 but he remains legally tied to his first wife Alejandrina Salazar, a social worker he married in 1977, it is alleged.
The claims are in a new book by Anabel Hernandez called Emma And The Other Narco Women which is due to be published next week.
According to a report in the New York Post, Ms Coronel Aispuro, who is now 32, says in the book that she and the drug kingpin were married under “the law of the divine”.
The book claims that El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquin Guzman Loera, bribed a priest in Sinaloa to conduct the religious ceremony for him and Ms Coronel Aispuro.
‘Not just his lover but his formal partner’
The wedding celebration was reportedly attended by members of Mexico’s army, politicians, and the governor of Sinaloa.
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But Hernandez, a Mexican investigative journalist, says in the book that she verified as recently as last year that the marriage between El Chapo, 64, and his first wife Ms Salazar was still in place.
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Hernandez spoke to Sky News about her research in July last year and, when asked if El Chapo and Ms Coronel Aispuro were legally married, she replied: “That’s a very good question.
“Legally they are not married – legally the only wife of El Chapo is Alejandrina Salazar, his first wife. He never gave her a divorce.
“(The marriage with Ms Coronel Aispuro) was kind of a ceremony inside the Sinaloa cartel… Emma was not anymore just his lover, she was his formal partner.”
El Chapo and Ms Coronel Aispuro have 10-year-old twin daughters together.
El Chapo and Ms Salazar have five children together but he has also had nine children with other women, according to the book.
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‘I was all of 18 years old after all’
Ms Coronel Aispuro told Hernandez she had no idea what El Chapo did for a living when they met, despite him being one of the most wanted fugitives in his country.
“It’s only after it came out in the news that we had gotten married that I started to figure out what was going on with him, although I didn’t really give it that much importance,” she said.
“I was all of 18 years old after all.”
El Chapo is serving a life sentence in a Colorado prison and Ms Coronel Aispuro was jailed last year for three years for her part in helping to run the drug cartel.
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