MEXICO CITY — The once-secretive Mexican drug lord Joaquin ‘‘El Chapo’’ Guzman has launched a public relations blitz, calling on his lawyers and even his common-law wife to keep his name in the news.
Emma Coronel, mother of Guzman’s twin 4-year-old daughters, has given unprecedented media interviews, issuing dire warnings about his health and pressuring the government to improve the conditions he endures his third time behind bars.
His lawyers have gathered the media at Mexico’s supreme court and outside the White House in Washington.
On Friday, one of Guzman’s lawyers called a news conference outside the maximum-security Altiplano prison where he is being held, and which he escaped from through a mile-long tunnel in July.
Wearing an ‘‘Extradition Never!’’ sweat shirt emblazoned with a photo of his client, attorney Jose Luis Gonzalez Meza said he planned to begin a hunger strike to protest Guzman’s treatment — water and juice allowed. He called on Mexicans to join him.
Analysts say the publicity is all part of a carefully planned media strategy. At the very least, Guzman hopes to negotiate the terms of his imprisonment in the United States should moves to extradite him succeed.
Another Guzman attorney, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, says that the drug lord wants to be sent to the United States quickly and negotiate a guilty plea in exchange for a ‘‘reasonable’’ sentence in a medium-security prison in the United States.
Samuel Logan of the business and security consulting firm Southern Pulse said he doesn’t believe the effort will work.
‘‘El Chapo’s folks are grasping at straws,’’ he said. ‘‘I doubt the US will negotiate on any level.’’
The PR campaign has featured Guzman’s common-law wife, a former beauty queen, giving her first-ever public interview in February.
In her conversation with Telemundo, Coronel painted an image of El Chapo as a loving family man. She was careful to suggest his innocence, or at least not confirm his guilt.
The drug lord’s lawyers have filed several requests for injunctions in Mexican courts to stop his extradition. Rodriguez said Wednesday they won’t drop those efforts until they get an agreement with US prosecutors, an unlikely prospect.
