“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
Just like Emma Coronel Aispuro, Dámaso López Serrano, El Mini Lic and Jesús Reynaldo Zambada García, Rey Zambada, Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López abandoned the anonymity and low profile she had maintained, and reappeared with a renewed figure and a new life of freedom in the United States.
Through Tiktok, the former PAN local deputy for the municipality of Cosalá, known as “Chapodiputada” for her sentimental and business relationship with Joaquín el Chapo Guzmán, shares her life outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego, California, where she was held since 2017 and at least until June 2020, when she was erased from the records of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
US authorities detained her at the San Diego immigration checkpoint on June 21, 2017 when she tried to enter the US to request political asylum. She was charged with the crimes of conspiracy to traffic, distribute and sell cocaine to that country between 2013 and 2017, that is, when she held a seat in the Sinaloa State Congress. She accepted the drug trafficking crime two years later, there was talk that she could face a 10-year prison sentence and even life imprisonment, the reality is that she is currently free, after having testified against El Chapo in the so-called “Trial of the Century”.
Now, from the other side of the border, Lucero Sanchez has her own commercial brand called “LovelinessLGSL”, she shares through the social network, her daily life: meals, trips and concert attendance. Last December 10, she even sent her condolences for the death of Consuelo Loera. “I join in the irreparable loss of the Guzmán family. D.E.P. Doña Consuelo Loera,” she wrote in the post in which she included an image of Chapo’s mother.
Congresswoman and drug trafficker
In January 2019, in the trial against the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in the Eastern District Court of New York, Lucero Sánchez confessed that she met Chapo in 2010, and that she began a sentimental relationship with him in February 2011, when she was 21 years old. Eight months later, she said she began trafficking marijuana for Guzman Loera. Her task was to collect the drugs in the mountains of Durango and Sinaloa and then send them to Chapo in small planes.
In addition to trafficking marijuana, Sanchez Lopez admitted that she helped Chapo open business fronts to launder drug money. In June 2012, she was in charge of training “Pancho” to open a juice import-export company in Mexico City, through which she laundered $5 million in three months.
During the trial, the “Chapodiputada” also said that she lived intermittently with Chapo between 2011 and 2013, when he had already married Emma Coronel. She “took care of him as a housewife, shopping for him for his personal care: his clothes, his creams, everything for personal care,” in homes where she was initially taken blindfolded and where she learned about her partner’s business dealings during meetings with some business partners.
At that time, Lucero Sanchez entered politics. The PAN political party nominated her as candidate for the 16th district of Cosalá in the coalition Unidos Ganas Tú, which included the PRD and the PT. The Sinaloense Party joined in a common candidacy. In the July 7, 2013 election she won with 4,167 votes, becoming the youngest legislator in Sinaloa until then. Her position lasted until June 2016, when she was removed from office.
In December 2013, Lucero Guadalupe Sánchez López began to wander between two worlds. In Congress she occupied a seat and punctually attended congressional sessions, always keeping a low profile. On the other hand, she continued her relationship with the then leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, who was on the run.
Lucero Sánchez’s apparently controlled life came to a halt in June 2015, when journalist Joaquín López Dóriga made public a video of her entering the Altiplano prison with a false credential to visit Chapo on April 14, 2014. She denied it and in Congress she had the backing of her colleagues. The then leader of the Sinaloa Cartel had been arrested on February 24 of that same year at the Miramar Hotel in Mazatlan, nine days after fleeing from authorities from a home in the Guadalupe neighborhood in Culiacan. It was revealed that the drug lord had left through a tunnel built under a bathtub.
What was not known at the time, but not until 2019 in the trial against El Chapo, was that on February 16, 2014, when the capo managed to flee from elements of the Navy and at least one DEA agent in Culiacan, he was with Lucero Sanchez. She said that around 3:00 a.m. she began to hear knocking on the door. On the surveillance camera screens she could see “people wearing helmets, people from the government, she could hear them shouting, they were in uniform and hooded”.
“The lid of a bathtub I had there was lifted and I said ‘am I going in there?’ I was very scared and it was dark,” said the former local congresswoman. El Chapo entered first, followed by “Condor”, his secretary, Lucero Sanchez and “Chaparra”, a domestic employee. After walking through the concrete tunnel with water up to their knees, they ran out. The first to come out was Guzmán Loera, who was naked, the witness explained, “and he left us there”. When Sánchez López managed to get out after an hour, she discovered that she was in the Humaya River, “where the Conagua is in Culiacán.
El Chapo managed to escape to Mazatlan, where he was arrested on February 24 at the Miramar hotel. On that occasion he was with his wife Emma Coronel and their two daughters.
Free of guilt
The complicities with El Chapo that Lucero Sánchez admitted during the “Trial of the Century” and the indictment on drug trafficking charges for which she was arrested in 2017, were erased by US authorities. The former local congresswoman regained her freedom, and is currently enjoying her life in the United States.
In her official Tiktok account, the native of Cosalá shares the days in her life since 2021. In this manner we are informed that she attended a concert at the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet, in the city of the same name. “What a night, I finally got to go to a concert of these friends, Los Morros…” she wrote to accompany the video of the concert that would have taken place at the end of October.
“As you can see, I’m not am not here to please anyone. I’m having a great time enjoying life, whatever I win, let’s see who’s who. If you want to figure it out…,” she wrote on November 3. The publication includes a photo of her showing half of her face with the background theme of Quien es quien, from La Revancha RC.
Sánchez López also shares moments of her walks, vacations, her taste for cooking, her pet, which is a cat: “common days of a woman, this is what my days are like for those who ask me what I do with my life besides going to the gym,” she wrote on May 17, 2022.
She also shared at least three videos in which she recounts her life with images of her through the years: “The passage of time changes us physically… but mentally we move forward with goals, despite the setbacks,” she wrote in one of them, while photos of her from her youth appear, another in a PAN political party headquarters, her time in the Sinaloa Congress, to her new life in the United States, where she is seen with a different physiognomy.
Her publications are generally accompanied by regional music and corridos.
On her official website she also advertises her brand “LovelinessLGSL”, in which she has so far launched a hair straightener, which is sold online.
Lucero Sanchez thus joined other associates of Chapo Guzman, such as Rey Zambada, the Colombian Jorge Milton Cifuentes Villa, who after having collaborated with the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, decided to become protected witnesses, thus winning pardons before the U.S. justice system.