text: / Updated By Daniela Franco 
   
   The wife of Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán, Emma Coronel Aispuro, said in her first-ever interview that she fears for the life of her husband and has not seen him since he was recaptured on January 8. 
   
   The exclusive Telemundo interview between Coronel Aispuro and Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández aired on Sunday, in a news special titled “The Queen of El Chapo.” 
   
   Coronel Aispuro is a former beauty queen who was born in California and holds dual citizenship. El Chapo reportedly met her in 2006, when he was around 50 years old and she was 17. They married in 2007 on her 18th birthday. 
   
   Coronel Aispuro questioned the conditions her husband is living in at the Antiplano prison, claiming the Mexican government is responsible for El Chapo's health. 
   
   A Telemundo promotional photo for its interview with Emma Coronel Aispuro. Telemundo News 
   
   “I fear for his life [El Chapo’s]. We don’t know if he is eating well. We don’t know what his situation is because we haven’t seen him,” she said. 
   
   Telemundo Video: La Esposa del Chapo Habla Por Primera Vez En Exclusiva 
   
   “They want to make him pay for his escape. They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell,” she said in the interview, which was produced in association with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley (IRP). 
   
   “Not everything people say is true... I think that all human beings have the right to have at least the basic things — they are not giving that to him,” she said. 
   
   A Telemundo promotional photo for its interview with Emma Coronel Aispuro. Telemundo News 
   
   Coronel Aispuro also spoke about Kate del Castillo and her relationship with El Chapo, as well as about her family life and El Chapo's relationship with his twin daughters. 
   
   Related Article: El Chapo's Wife Gives Birth in California Hospital 
   
   On Friday, journalist Anabel Hernández appeared on Telemundo's "Al Rojo Vivo con María Celeste" to talk about the Telemundo News exclusive. She revealed that the interview took place February 12th in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. 
   
   "This is an interview that I have been going after for a very long time; I’ve been investigating the life of 'El Chapo' for 15 years,” she told host María Celeste Arrarás. "Emma [Coronel Aispuro] thanked me for the interview but I also thanked her because this is an interview to understand the circumstances around this whole ordeal." 
   
   Hernández says that Coronel Aispuro willingly answered all the questions she had. "I asked her what she says to people that consider that 'El Chapo' Guzmán is a dangerous criminal, and she says that to her, Joaquín Guzmán is just her husband, not 'El Chapo'," she said. 
   
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   "When one has children, the way we think and see life changes," she says. "For me it was then when I started thinking about the situation, that everything was kind of complicated." 
   
   
   
   She began wondering if her daughters, now 4 years old, would spend their lives paying the price for all that has happened. "It makes me deeply sad to think that in these moments they can't see their father, that when they're older they can be judged, that someone might single them out for things they have no idea about." 
   
   
   
   As for her husband, she says she has never seen him fearful or agitated, not even in moments of great stress. 
   
   
   
   "He doesn't show at any moment he is worried about something," she says, describing him as "very intelligent," though he lacks formal education. 
   
   
   
   What did trouble him, she said, was his growing status as a narco-legend and his inability to control his own story. 
   
   
   
   Guzman had long wanted to collaborate on a film about his life, in part to counter what he viewed as untruths and sensationalism. "To put exactly how things are and everything that has happened until now, told by him," she explains. 
   
   
   
   The Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, known for her role as a female drug kingpin in a popular telenovela, was exploring such a film project after Guzman, an admirer, reached out to her. It was Del Castillo who teamed up with Sean Penn, the Hollywood actor and director, on a clandestine visit to Guzman last year while the drug trafficker was still on the run. Penn wrote a colorful story for Rolling Stone about the encounter. 
   
   
   
   What drew Coronel's wrath — and that of her husband, she believes — is a video posted with the article in which Guzman, sitting in front of a fence in a country setting, acknowledges he has worked in the drug trade since he was 15 — drawn to it because of the poverty in the rural mountains. 
   
   
   
   Coronel said that publishing the video, whose rights were granted not by Penn but by Del Castillo's company, was a "betrayal." Her husband, she said, believed that the footage would be used only as background information for a text article. 
   
   
   
   Del Castillo's lawyer, Los Angeles attorney Harland Braun, said the drug lord clearly understood that the actress was there to talk about a movie — a project he said she is still pursuing. "He's admitting [in the video] to being a drug trafficker. And the point that he's in the drug business, that embarrasses him? The whole point of the movie is that he's in the drug business. What she's saying doesn't make any sense." 
   
   
   
   Then there was the affectionate exchange of messages between her husband and Del Castillo, leaked to the Mexican publication Milenio after his latest arrest. "You are so beautiful, my friend, in every way," Guzman told the actress in one of them. "I will take care of you more than I do my own eyes." 
   
   
   
   Coronel said she did not find the exchanges troubling. "I think it was the first time they met. How could it be a personal relationship?" she said. "At no time did I feel jealous of Kate."
target: – It's no surprise that Mexico is keeping a very close eye on drug lord Joaquin Guzman after recapturing him for the second time—but that doesn't mean his wife has to like it. In her first public comments about "El Chapo," beauty queen Emma Coronel says she fears he may not survive the "slow torture" of solitary confinement at El Altiplano, the prison he left through a mile-long tunnel last year. "They want to make him pay for his escape. They say that they are not punishing him. Of course they are. They are there with him, watching him in his cell," Coronel says, per the Los Angeles Times. "They don't let him sleep. He has no privacy, not even to go to the restroom." The Telemundo interview with Coronel was recorded in Mexico in mid-February and aired Sunday night, NBC News reports. Coronel—who married Guzman on her 18th birthday eight years ago, when he was 50—has dual American-Mexican citizenship and gave birth to his twin girls in California in 2011. He is believed to have at least 17 other children. Coronel says she only saw her husband twice during his months as a fugitive last year. "He just wanted to have a nice time with his daughters," she says. "To be in peace." She claims to know little of Guzman's drug empire and says she has never seen him use drugs or violence. "He is like any other man—of course he is not violent, not rude," she says. "I have never heard him say a bad word. I have never seen him get excited or be upset at anyone." (When authorities closed in, Guzman temporarily escaped through a door hidden behind a mirror.)