Cartel Wives: How Kingpins' Wives Operate in Mexico's Notorious Sinaloa Cartel
Recent arrests revealed how Mexico's infamous Sinaloa Cartel relied on the bosses' wives to keep its operations going, a report said.
Business Insider reported that authorities in the U.S. had arrested the wives of three Sinaloa Cartel bosses in the past few months. They were Emma Coronel Aispuro, the wife of kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, and Olivia and Mia Flores.
The Flores are the wives of twin brothers Margarito and Pedro Flores, who are distributors for the Sinaloa Cartel.
According to cartel operatives and security analysts, these arrests shed light on the vital role of kingpins' wives on cartels' operations. Authorities had an overview on what their roles in the Sinaloa Cartel.
Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo's Wife
The former teenage beauty queen, who is now the 32-year-old wife of El Chapo, was arrested by authorities at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on February 22.
Emma Coronel Aispuro was charged with helping her husband in operating the Sinaloa Cartel that ran for decades with unimagined distributions. Last month, El Chapo's wife pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Coronel Aispuro was also accused of aiding at least two escapes of El Chapo. She allegedly planned and passed the messages, which led to the success of El Chapo's escapes.
The first of El Chapo's escapes happened in 2012 when he slipped away from the U.S. and Mexican authorities in Cabo San Lucas. The other occurred later in 2015 when El Chapo escaped from Mexico's Altiplano maximum-security prison.
An operative at the Sinaloa Cartel in Culiacan, which is the cartel's home turf, was surprised about the arrest of El Chapo's wife, but the accusations did not surprise the cartel member.
The Sinaloa Cartel operative, who asked Insider not to reveal his identity for safety reasons, said the arrest was surprising since authorities did not pay much attention to the wives of the cartel members.
The operative noted that Coronel Aispuro was operating for the Sinaloa Cartel and shared that El Chapo's wife was not the first cartel wife who did it and would not be the last.
The cartel member also revealed that most of the kingpins' wives were in charge of the "complex" tasks for the cartel. The operative noted that cartel wives are in charge of coordinating operations, money laundering, and communicating with other cartel members, lawyers, and even authorities.
Security expert and author of "Los Zetas Inc.," Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, also told Insider that while organized crime groups are viewed as "patriarchal," women leverage their presence in it.
Correa-Cabrera added that since women were quickly considered weaker, incapable of getting involved in a world like organized crime, that mistake played on their favor.
Flores Twins' Wives
The wives of the Chicago-based Flores twins accused of working with the Sinaloa Cartel in smuggling drugs into the U.S also appeared to show the same pattern.
After being sentenced in 2015 to 14 years in prison, Pedro and Margarito Flores were released late last year and moved into witness protection after both agreed to cooperate with the authorities against El Chapo.
However, their wives Valerie Gaytan, also known as Olivia Flores, and Vivianna Lopez, known as Mia Flores, were arrested on money-laundering charges in June.
They were allegedly helping in disposing hundreds of thousands of dollars of their husbands' drug proceeds for more than a decade.
The twins' wives even wrote a book called "Cartel Wives," wherein they describe what it's like to be married to cartel members and their lives after their husbands got arrested.
In their book, the cartel wives revealed that they even witnessed how their husbands trafficked $2 billion to Mexico, initially hidden from houses full of money.
READ MORE: Sinaloa Cartel Boss El Chapo Seen in Video Dropping His Pants During Strip Search in Mexico Prison
This article is owned by Latin Post
Written by: Jess Smith
WATCH: El Chapo's Wife Pleads Guilty, Admits to Helping Run his Criminal Empire - From ABC7