Emma Coronel wants answers from TikTok.
The 37-year-old wife of imprisoned drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán told followers on a new TikTok account Monday that her main page, which had drawn more than 1.4 million followers since she joined in August 2024, had been shut down without warning or explanation. Coronel, a former beauty queen born in San Francisco who was raised in Mexico, has been building her social media presence since her release from prison after serving three years on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
“Hey, how’s it going? I’m a bit annoyed today because TikTok blocked my account for no reason,” Coronel said in the video posted Monday.
“They haven’t given me an explanation as to why, what happened, or what I supposedly did,” she continued.
Coronel insisted she had stayed within the platform’s boundaries. “I’m very careful not to break the rules – I make sure to do everything right – and yet, they still blocked me,” she said. “But we’ll keep moving forward.”
The suspension marks a setback for Coronel’s efforts to rebuild her public profile following her incarceration. She has also been expanding onto other platforms, including Kick, where she made her debut in a livestream on August 24 alongside Mexican-American influencers Luis Ordoñez and Guillermo Peña. That stream drew roughly 24,000 followers to her new channel.
Coronel has been open about the psychological toll of her recent years. “I went in to speak with my psychiatrist and psychologist, and they told me I needed to start doing things to break out of my routine – to see what motivated me – because I was slipping into depression,” she said during the stream.
The mother of 15-year-old twin daughters with El Chapo, the co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel now serving a life sentence in a U.S. Supermax prison, Coronel has sought to craft a new identity online. Her TikTok following had grown rapidly in just over a year, making the sudden suspension particularly damaging to her emerging brand.
During the same Kick stream Monday, Coronel speculated about possible motives behind the ban and hinted at retaliation. “I don’t want to speculate or name names since I haven’t received an answer yet,” she said.
“But once I do get an answer, I’ll spill the tea – I promise,” Coronel added. “And if it was something or someone from here, of course I’ll let you know so you can go take their account down.”
Coronel’s online pivot comes after a dramatic fall from grace. She was arrested in February 2021 at Dulles International Airport and later pleaded guilty to helping run her husband’s multibillion-dollar narcotics operation and assisting in his 2015 escape from a Mexican prison through a mile-long tunnel. She was sentenced to three years in federal prison and released in September 2023.