Drug lord’s granddaughter busks in London as she pursues music career
The teenage granddaughter of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán is visiting some of Europe’s most glamourous destinations as she tries to boost a burgeoning career as an influencer and pop singer.
Frida Guzmán, 18, is the daughter of Édgar Guzmán, who was gunned down by hitmen from a rival cartel in 2008. His father, “El Chapo”, 66, the founder and former boss of the ruthless Sinaloa Cartel, is serving life plus 30 years in the Florence Supermax prison in Colorado.
In recent days, Frida has been posting selfies to her 110,000 Instagram followers, showing her at locations including outside Buckingham Palace, on a boat ride on Loch Ness, where she apparently went on a monster tour, a Johnnie Walker whisky tasting in Edinburgh, and, in France, the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre museum and the Eiffel Tower.
In one, she even appears busking in central London, reportedly in Leicester Square, where she is introduced by an unidentified man simply as “Frida” before striking into a ballad against a recorded guitar melody.
The brief video is captioned in Spanish: “My dream of singing in the streets of London. Mission accomplished.”
Frida has been pursuing a pop career for years. In 2021, she came third in Tengo Talento, Mucho Talento, a reality TV show on Estrella TV, a Spanish-language network catering to the United States’ huge Hispanic population.
After the contract slaying of her father Edgar in the carpark of a shopping centre, her beauty queen mother Griselda Guadalupe López moved to Los Angeles and eventually married boxer Julio Cesár Chávez Junior, son of boxing great Julio Cesár Chávez.
Frida’s carefully curated online image is a stark contrast to the blood-spattered careers of her grandfather, father and uncles, from which she has distanced herself – although she does not deny her family heritage.
Given their criminal backgrounds, she might also be one of the few members of her family allowed into the UK.
“El Chapo” – which means “Shorty” in Mexican Spanish – founded and led the Sinaloa Cartel, once the principal purveyor of cocaine to the US, and is believed to have ordered hundreds and possibly thousands of murders. Mexican security forces arrested him three times, but he escaped twice, contributing to his near-mythical status as possibly the world’s most powerful cartel leader, rivalled only by the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
He was eventually extradited to the US, and tried in New York in 2019. The jury found him guilty of drug trafficking, homicide and a string of other serious crimes. Before his capture, his net worth was put at US$1 billion.