Frida Guzmán, El Chapo’s granddaughter, hopes to make a name for herself in music

The life of Frida Sofía Guzmán Muñoz is a story in itself: the 19-year-old is the daughter of Edgar Guzmán López and Frida Muñoz, granddaughter of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and stepdaughter of Julio César Chávez Jr. But Guzmán Muñoz wants to forge her own story as a musician.

In 2020, she released her version of Ya te olvidé, originally performed by Rocío Dúrcal. It wasn’t very successful, with only 2,733 streams on Spotify. She has sung duets with regional Mexican groups at different venues, including palenques (open-air stages for regional Mexican music), and in 2021, she participated in the reality show Tengo talento, mucho talento (I Have Talent, A Lot of Talent), where she placed third. In 2024, she released Leña de Pirul, another cover, alongside Ely Rosario. This track reached nearly 16,000 streams.

The latest work by the granddaughter of one of the most important drug lords in Mexico’s history is Andas contando, a banda song — a subgenre of regional Mexican music — performed as a duet with Cecy Millán, who also composed the song together with Estrella Arzeta Diego. This is the first original song Guzmán has released. In a recent interview, she said that that bearing the Guzmán surname doesn’t trouble her. “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.

“Singing is my passion,” reads the description on her Instagram account, where she has 115,000 followers. Her profile is a mix of what any influencer posts: trips, professional photo shoots, videos of her singing, and popular TikTok dances.

Guzmán says she decided at age 11 that she wanted to pursue music and began taking singing lessons. Guzmán grew up in Los Angeles and, at 15, auditioned for the show Tengo talento, mucho talento, a competition that searches for the best Latino talent in the U.S. where “ordinary” people perform songs and judges gradually eliminate contestants. The year she took part, the judges were Pepe Garza, Ana Bárbara, Don Cheto, and Alexander García, known as El Fantasma (The Ghost). The Culiacán-born singer reached the finals but did not win.

Guzmán family

Frida Guzmán is the daughter of Frida Muñoz Román and Edgar Guzmán López, the eldest son of El Chapo. Her father was gunned down in the parking lot of a shopping center in Culiacán in 2008. Initial suspicions about the murder pointed to the Beltrán Leyva cartel. However, the attack was later blamed on Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a close associate of El Chapo. Frida was just two years old when her father was murdered.

Following his death, Muñoz and her daughter moved to the United States. Once settled there, her mother began a relationship with boxer Julio César Chávez Jr., whom she has been married to for 10 years.

After the release of her single Andas contando, Frida recalled having “very fond memories” of her childhood with the Chávez family. She also acknowledged that growing up with the Guzmán surname has been difficult, saying that people often “label” her as someone she’s not. “But not in a bad way, because in the end, that [surname] isn’t something you deny — I have no reason to be ashamed of anything."

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