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Mariel Colón had just finished law school and was waiting for the results of the bar exam when she replied to a Craigslist ad looking for a Spanish-speaking paralegal to help with translation on a major case. Only later did she learn that she’d be working on one of the biggest trials of the decade, helping defend the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel chief Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán . The inmate Colón encountered deep in the bowels of a Manhattan prison seemed hungry for human connection after years of isolation in jail .

So as Colón explained to Guzmán what the attorneys on his drug trafficking and murder conspiracy case were planning, she looked for ways to bond. “I told him I love singing,” she said. “And he told me he loves music.



” Colón learned his favorite songs — banda and ranchera classics — and serenaded him there in the jailhouse. He applauded. She credits Guzmán, 68, with rekindling her love of performing and sparking her interest in the rich tradition of Mexican country music.

And so, as her legal career blossomed and she carved out an expertise representing drug traffickers like El Chapo, she also pursued an unlikely side hustle: as a swaggering singer of corridos under the stage name La Abogada — the Lawyer. On a recent sweltering weekend, at a California festival billed as the Coachella of ranchera music, young couples in jeans and boots spun around in the dirt as all-male bands from both sides of the border swigged tequila from t.

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