Make New York Post a Preferred Source He wanted to traffic in hit tunes!
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán didn’t dream of being a cartel boss — he wanted to be a singer in one of Mexico’s most famous bands, according to the former mistress who testified against the drug kingpin.
Lucero Sánchez, 36, who had a son with El Chapo according to US federal court documents, told El Universal that Guzmán’s passion for music was evident when he sang songs by regional Mexican groups Los Canelos and Los Alegres.
“His dream when he was younger wasn’t to become a narco,” Sánchez said. “He used to say his dream was to be a singer – to join Don Cruz Lizárraga’s group, Banda El Recodo. That had always been his dream.”
But growing up in a poor farming family in La Tuna, a village in the municipality of Badiraguato, sidetracked El Chapo and cut short his dream of singing with the iconic Banda el Recodo, which was formed in 1938 and is the only band to win nine Latin Grammy awards.
El Chapo got into the drug game through his dad by growing marijuana for dealers and in the late 1970s linked up with Héctor “El Guero” Palma, who was a hitman with Miguel Ángel Felix Gallardo. El Chapo rose through the ranks and eventually co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel in 1987.
“Obviously, a lack of education, resources, and opportunities led him down that other path,” said Sánchez.
Sánchez was 20 when she first met El Chapo in 2010 and dated him from 2011 to 2014. She recalled that he maintained a daily routine of having oatmeal, homemade bread and coffee for breakfast.
When he was not out orchestrating massive transnational shipments of drugs, she said El Chapo enjoyed watching the news and Netflix.
“He had his routine, his hobby – he’d get on the treadmill every day, eat healthily,” Sánchez said.
Sánchez told El Universal she tried on multiple occasions to dump El Chapo for spying on her. She attempted suicide with a .25 caliber gun that he gave her as a gift. She shot him in the ear when he tried to wrestle the weapon from her hands.
“Afterward, he was just laughing, saying, ‘You almost killed me, my queen,’ and things like that. He was joking about it,” she said.
Sánchez, who went on to become a state lawmaker, also addressed allegations about how she got there. She rejected rumors that the cartel financed the campaign that got her elected as the Cosalá XVI district representative in the Sinaloa state congress.
She resigned from her seat in January 2016 after Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office discovered that she had used a fake ID to visit El Chapo at El Atliplano, the maximum-security federal prison located in Almoloya de Juárez, Mexico that he escaped from in June 2015.
Sánchez was detained on June 21, 2017, when she tried to cross the US-Mexico border at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry with a visa that had been canceled by the US State Department, according to court documents.
She was later charged with conspiring to traffic drugs from January 2013 to June 21, 2017, pleaded guilty in 2018 and was released from prison in 2020.
Sánchez was among the 14 cooperating witnesses who testified against El Chapo in his federal trial in New York from November 2018 to February 2019. She testified that El Chapo led her into the drug trade and that she bought 883 pounds of marijuana that was shipped by plane.
Sánchez also testified that she was with El Chapo when he was nearly captured by the military at a safe house in Culiacán in 2014 and that they escaped through a tunnel built under the home.
Prosecutors were able to prove that El Chapo was the main leader of the Sinaloa Cartel and got him convicted on all 10 counts, including drug trafficking, using a firearm to commit drug crimes and participating in a money laundering conspiracy on February 12, 2019.
His former mistress told El Universal she thinks the sentence was too harsh.
“I often feel that the sentence he was given – well, to me, it doesn’t seem all that fair,” she said. “I feel he didn’t deserve it. That’s just my opinion.”
Sánchez said El Chapo and cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, whom she met only once in 2010, were considering retiring from the drug trade because they were getting older.
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“They used to talk about retiring – living their lives quietly and at ease – because, well, they were obviously tired and getting old, as they put it,” she said. “But they never spoke about who they would leave as successors. My understanding is that he [Guzmán Loera] didn’t want his children to get involved.”
It’s a steep fall for El Chapo, who once ranked No. 701 on Forbes’ 2009 list of the world’s billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion. Sánchez believes the Sinaloa Cartel’s demise is near because its original leaders are in US prisons.
The Sinaloa Cartel today is divided into two factions and embroiled in an internal conflict.
Two of El Chapo’s sons, Ivan Archivaldo Guzmán and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán, currently run the faction known as “Los Chapitos” while El Mayo’s California-born son, Ismael “Mayito Flaco” Zambada Sicairos, is at the helm of the “Los Mayos” cells.
El Chapo’s two other sons, Ovidio Guzmán López and Joaquín Guzmán López, are in federal US custody.
“We are already witnessing the end of the Sinaloa Cartel,” she said. “Ever since the top leaders who maintained control – Joaquín and El Mayo – surrendered, the cartel simply hasn’t been the same.”
