María Loera had fallen ill and spent the last three weeks receiving care at a private hospital in Culiacán, the capital city of the northwest state of Sinaloa.

Staffers at the facility called 911 around 2:30 pm local time to report her death, El Chapo’s lawyer José González told Milenio news outlet.

Although the cause of her death has not been determined, the outlet reported that Loera may have died from natural causes because she was receiving medicine from a nebulizer.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered his condolences to El Chapo’s family during his daily press briefing Monday morning at the National Palace in Mexico City.

‘Respect to the family. I was reading that the lady was already (ill) … any human being who loses their life deserves respect and also consideration for their family members, for all those who go through these ordeals,’ he said.

‘Nothing human is foreign to me and we must not hate and we must put into practice that philosophical, universal principle of love for our neighbor and only by being good can we be happy.’

Loera reportedly led a quiet life including frequent religious activities.

However, she made headlines in March 2020 when she greeted López Obrador while she was sitting in a parked vehicle on a dirt road in Badiraguato, where El Chapo and her other 10 children were born and raised. 

The impromptu chat had taken place just a week after she had sent the leftist president a letter pleading for El Chapo’s return to Mexico, so that he could serve the remainder of his life sentence there because he was illegally extradited to the United States in January 2017.

At the time, López Obrador told reporters that Loera had told him that she had not seen her jailed son in five years and that she did not ‘want to die without seeing him.’

In 2019, the president received a letter from Loera, who was seeking assistance in obtaining humanitarian visas for herself and two daughters to travel to visit El Chapo at the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado.

That petition was denied by the United States embassy in Mexico City.

The head of Mexico’s state media agency, Jenaro Villamil, described Loera as ‘a simple woman from Sinaloa who always denied publicly that (her son) was the head of the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico, despite the hundreds of deaths caused by the drug war.’

El Chapo led the Sinaloa Cartel in bloody drug turf battles that claimed the lives of thousands of Mexicans. He escaped twice from Mexican prisons, one time through a mile-long tunnel running from his cell.

After he was extradited to New York, his three-month trial included tales of grisly killings, political payoffs, cocaine hidden in jalapeno cans and jewel-encrusted guns. 

He was convicted of running an industrial-scale smuggling operation and now is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.

Earlier this year, Mexico extradited one of the drug lord’s sons, Ovidio Guzmán, to the U.S. to face drug trafficking, money laundering and other charges. 

He is believed to have led the Sinaloa Cartel’s push to produce and export fentanyl to the United States, where it has been blamed for about 70,000 overdose deaths annually.

She pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges and was sentenced to three years in jail in November 2021, a sentence which was later reduced.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed her release.

It is believed the 34-year-old left a halfway house in California, where she was moved from federal prison in June.

Her husband is serving a life sentence in a supermax jail in Colorado.

Last month, he sent a handwritten letter requesting his wife and their two daughters be allowed to visit him in the maximum security prison.

El Chapo Guzmán, 66, was found guilty in 2019 of running the Sinaloa cartel.

The Mexico-based transnational criminal organisation is estimated by US law enforcement officials to have smuggled more than 1,000 tonnes of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamines and heroin into the US.

The cartel’s hitmen kidnapped, tortured and killed members of rival gangs to consolidate its power.

The Sinaloa cartel also bribed police officers and high-ranking politicians in Mexico and across Central America to turn a blind eye to drug shipments or even tip the cartel off about impending raids.

Emma Coronel first met Guzmán when she was 17 years old and competing in a local beauty pageant.

Her father, Inés Coronel, was a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Mexico for drug smuggling.

Guzmán was running the cartel from various hideouts in northern Mexico after he had escaped from prison in a laundry cart in 2001.

They formalised their relationship in a ceremony when Emma Coronel was 18 – although it is not clear if their marriage was ever officially registered with the Mexican authorities.

Coronel, who holds dual US-Mexican nationality, travelled to California in 2011 to give birth to the couple’s twin daughters, a move which means the children have US citizenship.

In 2014, Guzmán was arrested after a 13-year manhunt and sent to the Altiplano maximum security jail in Mexico.

It only took Guzmán 17 months to escape again, this time through a tunnel complete with ventilation shafts and a motorcycle on rails which led from his cell to a nearby warehouse.

At her trial, prosecutors said Coronel had played a key role in her husband’s escape.

She was also accused of having acted as a messenger for her husband both during his time on the run and behind bars, relaying orders to his cartel lieutenants and to his sons with his previous wives, who are known as the Chapitos (Little Chapos).

After his 2015 tunnel escape, Guzmán managed to evade capture for six months before Mexican special forces finally captured him outside Los Mochis, in his home state of Sinaloa.

He was extradited to the US a year later and put on trial in New York.

Coronel made daily appearances in the Brooklyn courtroom.

Immaculately dressed and perfectly groomed, she smiled and waved to him from the public gallery.

She told the New York Times that she did not recognise the gruesome testimony given about her husband in court, instead describing him as “an excellent father, friend, brother, son, partner”.

When Guzmán was found guilty in February 2019, the couple gave each other the thumbs up.

Coronel remained free for almost another two years until her arrest at Dulles airport, near Washington DC, in February 2021.

Prosecutors said she was well aware of her husband’s criminal activities and “understood the scope of the Sinaloa cartel’s drug trafficking”.

She pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering.

At her sentencing, Coronel asked for leniency for the sake of her children. “I beg you to not allow them to grow up without the presence of a mother,” she told the judge.

She was sentenced to three years in jail which were subsequently reduced, paving the way for today’s release.

Her future plans are unclear, but her husband’s letter pleading for her to be allowed to see him would suggest she may travel to Colorado to visit him.

In the letter, Guzmán says the couple’s daughters, who are now 12 years old, are “studying in Mexico and can only travel to visit their dad during the holidays, two or three times per year at most”.

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Ovidio Guzmán-López – himself alleged to be a leader of his father’s former cartel – was captured in Culiacán and transferred to Mexico City.

Furious gang members set up road blocks, set fire to vehicles and attacked a local airport.

Two planes were hit by gunfire – one while preparing to take off.

More than 100 flights were cancelled at three Sinaloa airports.

The state governor said earlier 18 people had been admitted to hospital.

Mr Guzmán-López – nicknamed “The Mouse” – is accused of leading a faction of his father’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, Defence Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said. It is one of the largest drug-trafficking organisations in the world.

His father, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, is serving a life sentence in the US after being found guilty in 2019 of drug trafficking and money laundering. His trial revealed some of the brutal details of how Mexico’s drug cartels operate.

The six-month surveillance operation to capture Mr Guzmán-López had the support of US officials, Defence Minister Sandoval added.

Videos on social media show burning buses blocking roads in Culiacán.

The fuselage of a plane scheduled to fly from Culiacán to Mexico City was hit by gunfire on Thursday morning as it was preparing for take-off, Mexican airline Aeromexico said.

No customers or employees had been harmed, it said. A video posted on social media appears to show passengers crouching and cowering in their seats.

“As we were accelerating for take-off, we heard gunshots very close to the plane, and that’s when we all threw ourselves to the floor,” one of the plane passengers, David Tellez, told Reuters news agency.

An air force plane was also hit in Culiacán, Mexico’s civil aviation agency said.

US President Joe Biden is due to visit Mexico for a North American leaders’ summit next week. He will now arrive on Sunday, a day earlier than previously expected, according to a tweet by Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. No reason was given for why he was arriving early.

Federal armed forces had been carrying out an operation in Culiacán since dawn on Thursday, Mayor Ruben Rocha Moya confirmed on Twitter earlier.

There were blockades in different parts of the city and he urged residents to stay at home. Many shops were also looted.

Gunfire exchanges between security forces and gang members continued into Thursday afternoon, reports say.

All schools will be closed across the whole state of Sinaloa on Friday, the local government body overseeing education said.

Mexican security forces had previously arrested Mr Guzmán-López in 2019 but released him to avoid the threat of violence from his supporters.

The US state department says he and his brother Joaquín are currently overseeing approximately eleven methamphetamine labs in the state of Sinaloa, producing an estimated 1,300- 2,200kg (3,000-5,000lb) of the drug per month.

They have also said that information indicates Mr Guzmán-López ordered the murders of informants, a drug trafficker and a popular Mexican singer who refused to sing at his wedding.

In December, the US announced a reward of up to $5m (£4.2m) for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Mr Guzmán-López and three of his brothers, who are thought to have kept their positions of command in the group.

Brian Donaciano Olguin Berdugo – better known as ‘Pitt’ – was arrested an apartment complex in the city of Cali in the Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, south west of the capital of Bogota. 

Mexican national Berdugo, 39, is said to have arrived in the country in February to broker cocaine deals with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army on behalf of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.

But after finishing his deals, he travelled to Cali and frequently met with a model, whose name has not been disclosed.+5View gallery

The pair reportedly spent several nights together at a luxury apartment.

Local media said trafficker besotted Berdugo abandoned all security protocols while he was with the model.

She even convinced him to visit the busy tourist spot Cerro de los Cristales where he was photographed in her company.

His fate was sealed when the model uploaded one photo to her Facebook account and agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration informed the Colombian Anti-Narcotics Police of the suspect’s location.

In addition, security cameras at the Jose Maria Cordova International Airport captured him with another attractive woman, according to reports.

Colombian intelligence officers then began to follow Berdugo and, after nearly two weeks of surveillance, arrested him.

The Sinaloa Cartel (Cartel de Sinaloa – CDS) is also known as the Blood Alliance, and works as a huge international drug trafficking, money laundering and organised crime body operating primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua.

It also has presence in Colombia and cities across the US. It is considered to be the most powerful drug trafficking organisation in the western hemisphere by the United States Intelligence Community.

The Sinaloa Cartel (Cartel de Sinaloa – CDS) is also known as the Blood Alliance, and works as a huge international drug trafficking, money laundering and organised crime body operating primarily in the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua. The Mexican drug lord is being held in custody with an extradition order to the US

The Mexican drug lord is being held in custody with an extradition order to the US.

Lawyers are working to prevent his extradition while the police reportedly claimed they were offered $265,000 (£202,897) as a bribe for his release. 

Police spokesperson General Jorge Vargas Valencia said: ‘We believe this result was the most important in terms of capturing Mexican cartel delegates who come to commit drug trafficking crimes with FARC in Cauca.’ 

Emma Coronel Aispuro, 32, was sent down on Tuesday in Washington, USA, after pleading with US District Judge Rudolph Contreras to show her mercy, Reuters reports.

Using an interpreter, she said: “With all due respect, I address you today to express my true regret for any and all harm that I may have done, and I ask that you and all the citizens of this country forgive me.”

Coronel added that she feared the judge might find it difficult to forgive her because she is married to El Chapo.

“Perhaps for this reason you feel there is a need for you to be harder on me, but I pray that you do not do that,” she continued.

Coronel pleaded guilty in June to three counts of conspiring to distribute illegal drugs, conspiring to launder money and engaging in financial dealings with the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday asked that a four-year prison term be imposed on Coronel, adding that she would be forfeiting £1.13 million as part of her sentence.

Federal prosecutor Anthony Nardozzi said: “While the overall effect of the defendant’s conduct was significant, the defendant’s actual role was a minimal one. The defendant acted primarily in support of her husband.”

He noted that after her arrest, she “quickly accepted responsibility for her criminal conduct.”

Coronel, an American-born former beauty queen who married El Chapo while she was still a teenager, was arrested at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in February.

She and the drug lord share nine-year-old twin daughters together.

As part of her plea agreement with prosecutors, Coronel admitted to acting as a courier between El Chapo and other members of the Sinaloa cartel while he was being held in Mexico’s Altiplano prison following his 2014 arrest.

He used those communications to plan his daring 2015 escape from the prison, through an underground tunnel built by the cartel leading to the shower in his cell.

Coronel’s attorney on Tuesday stressed that she was swept into the world of drug trafficking while still a minor and deserved mercy.

Jeffrey Lichtman said: “She met Joaquin Guzman when she was a minor. She was 17 years old, and she married him on her 18th birthday.”

Mr Lichtman added that Coronel now finds herself in danger, noting that anonymous law enforcement sources told news media that she was cooperating with the government.

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KEY FACTS

U.S. law enforcement officers arrested Aispuro, 31, who is a dual U.S.-Mexico citizen, at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

Prosecutors say Aispuro conspired to distribute methamphetamines, cocaine, marijuana and heroin in the U.S., and helped her husband make his daring 2015 escape from a prison in Mexico via an underground tunnel.

Guzmán was re-arrested in 2016 and was extradited to the U.S., where he is serving a life sentence in a supermax facility in Colorado.

Aispuro had previously denied participating in illegal activity and supported Guzmán during his trial even as his mistresses testified against him.

KEY BACKGROUND

Aispuro met Guzmán when she was 17.

At a party celebrating Aispuro’s entrance in a local beauty pageant, Guzmán reportedly brought a “motorcade of 400 men” to impress her, Rolling Stone reported.

They married as soon as Aispuro turned 18.

“I don’t know my husband as the person they are trying to show him as,” Aispuro told the New York Times during Guzmán’s trial.

Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years for his role as head of the Sinaloa Cartel.

The 4,300ft passage, alleged to have been built by El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel, is the longest known illicit underground route into the United States.

Complete with a ventilation system, high-voltage power cables and drainage, it is like the one used by the crime boss to escape jail in 2015.On average 70ft below ground, it is almost 6ft high and 2ft wide.

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It starts with an industrial area of the border city of Tijuana in Mexico, ending in a neighbourhood of San Diego, California, where its entrance was found covered by several hundred sandbags.

It was discovered by authorities in August but has only now been revealed.No arrests or drug seizures have yet been made in relation to the find.

San Diego customs official Cardell Morant said: “The sophistication and length of this tunnel demonstrates the time-consuming efforts transnational criminal organizations will undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling.”

El Chapo, whose real name is Joaquín Guzman, sent men to Germany to learn how to construct such underground passages to take millions of pounds’ worth of drugs into the US.

Complete with a ventilation system, high-voltage power cables and drainage, it is like the one used by the crime boss to escape jail in 2015.On average 70ft below ground, it is almost 6ft high and 2ft wide.

He was recaptured in 2016 and extradited to the US where he is serving a life term.His wife has posted glamorous photos of herself on a skiing trip as he spends his life behind bars.

Emma Coronel, married to the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, uploaded two new pictures of her on what is believed to be her Instagram account.

The 30-year-old is also a reality TV star who took part in Cartel Crew, made by VH1, two months ago.Dressed in skiwear in a snowy landscape, Emma did not reveal on either image where she was in the world.

On the post she writes, in Spanish: “The snow is good, it comes in its time. God Bless.”Emma made headlines by starring in the Cartel Crew reality show where she was seen talking with Michel Blanco, son of the drug trafficker Griselda Blanco, who complained about how people treated her.