The allure of a fast-paced life filled with danger and luxury attracted several women to the arms of drug traffickers and a life of crime after joining their lover’s criminal organization. While these cartels operate in Mexico, U.S. citizens have also fallen in love with Mexican drug lords and have faced dire consequences afterward.
Mimi Webb-Miller
One of the most famous cases is the story of Mimi Webb Miller and her short-lived romance with the late Pablo “El Zorro de Ojinaga” Acosta Villarreal. In the 1980s, Acosta Villarreal built his own criminal organization in Chihuahua, where he controlled approximately 200 miles of border areas that he used to smuggle approximately 60 tons of cocaine a year.
In the case of Webb Miller, the Texas woman grew up in Wichita Falls and came from a politically connected family. According to a 2014 article by the New York Times, Webb Miller moved to the Texas Big Bend area in the 1970s, where she bought a ranch and settled. There, she met a man from Mexico and had a common-law marriage. In the 1980’s Webb Miller began talking with Acosta, who had a property next to her ranch. He helped her get permits for a cross-border horseback tour business she started. After Webb Miller’s common law marriage ended, she dated another man, and later began dating Pablo Acosta.
While Webb Miller is not believed to have taken part in Acosta’s drug business, she was forced to go on the run soon after the drug lord died during a shootout with Mexican authorities in 1987. The flight came after former Presidio County Sheriff Rick Thompson told her that cartel gunmen had placed a price on her head because she knew too much about the drug trade. Years later, Webb-Miller returned to the region where she continues to live.
Deanna M. Gerards
In August, authorities in the Mexican state of Morelos announced the arrest of Deanna Gerards, claiming she was a U.S. fugitive wanted in North Dakota on drug trafficking charges connecting her to the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to information released by the Morelos State Attorney General’s Office, Gerards was romantically linked to an unnamed drug lord from the Sinaloa Cartel. Federal prosecutors in the U.S. claim that Gerards helped coordinate the trafficking of meth, cocaine, and fentanyl into Minnesota and North Dakota.
The hunt for Gerard began in 2020 as part of a crackdown by a task force aimed at stopping fentanyl trafficking. After her August arrest in Mexico, authorities were able to have her deported and moved to the U.S., where she remains in custody awaiting trial.
Emma Coronel
Emma Coronel Aispuro, the current wife of jailed Sinaloa Cartel drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, continues to be a social media sensation after her recent release from federal custody for her husband’s criminal empire. Coronel Aispuro is both a U.S. and Mexican citizen.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Coronel Aispuro spent a little less than three years in a U.S. federal prison and several months in a halfway house after her February 2021 arrest and subsequent conviction on various conspiracy charges.
She was born on July 2, 1989, in Santa Clara, California, but grew up in a small ranch called La Angostura, located in northern Mexico, in an area known as the “Golden Triangle” of drug trafficking This region includes the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Durango and Chihuahua. She has been with Guzmán since she was 18 years old.
Her life has been surrounded by mystery and controversy due to her long-standing family ties to the Sinaloa Cartel. Her father, Inés Coronel Barrera, and her older brother, Inés Omar, were considered leadership figures within the Sinaloa Cartel. Both are serving a ten-year sentence on drug charges in Mexico following their 2017 convictions. Various journalists in Mexico have also claimed that Emma Coronel Aispuro is the niece of the late Ignacio Coronel Villarreal — one the top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel and a former close associate of El Chapo.
Coronel met Guzmán when she was 17 at a party near La Angostura. According to an interview published by Proceso magazine in 2016, Coronel Aispuro was drawn to El Chapo by the way he talked to her and treated her and not by flashy gifts. The two married on July 2, 2007, when she turned 18, in a private party where only family and close friends were in attendance.
After the wedding, Coronel Aispuro moved to Culiacan, Sinaloa, where she studied journalism. In the published interview, she claimed that her life was quite normal and that she never saw weapons or drugs when she was with her husband.
“In fact, I have no proof that he trafficked drugs,” Coronel Aispuro told Proceso.
In 2011, the woman had twin daughters, María Joaquina and Emaly Guadalupe, with the imprisoned drug lord.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Dharma Fernández” from Baja California.