Image source, Netflix
In the long list of cultural references in Mexico there is one that stands out above the others. His name was Alberto Aguilera Valadez. He is known as Juan Gabriel. And he is called—with affection—Juanga.
More than a famous musician, the figure of the Divo de Juárez is, above all, a member of the Mexican family, a symbol that gave meaning to the tragedies and joys of the lives of so many.
And if there is any doubt about it, you just have to go to any Mexican cantina these days, where the release of the Netflix documentary “I must, I can and I want” has been received as an excuse to play their anthems at full volume again.
As if it were needed. As if Juan Gabriel were not already a soundtrack of the complex, painful and happy life lived in this country.
He was born in Michoacán in 1950. He died in California in 2016. He grew up on the border, in Ciudad Juárez. And his life was a succession of family tragedies and musical successes that Mexicans experienced firsthand on television, in the press, and at home.
Regarding the documentary series, which was directed by María José Cuevas and reveals unpublished material, BBC Mundo wanted to understand the figure Juan Gabriel in more depth with the help of musicologist Guadalupe Caro Cocotle.
Image source, Private file
What place does Juan Gabriel have in Mexican culture?
Juan Gabriel has already passed legendary status. I would rather say that it is an icon.
Not only did he leave a mark, but he became a symbol for many things about Mexicans.
He is in the pantheon of immortals. Pantheon with th, that is, where the gods are.
How is that important place reflected?
Well, it is an obligatory reference for the sentimental education of the Mexican.
Generations that did not experience it already recognize it. It's like with the Beatles, even if you haven't had to experience it, they are part of each person's cultural heritage.
But how does it become an icon?
First, he reverses the positions of the prevailing genre narrative of that time.
And second, he places himself in an ambiguity regarding his sexual identity that ironically gives him freedom, allows him to be who he is without public questioning. And that is why it ends up entering the cultural, and I would say moral, heritage of Mexicans.
That famous phrase “what you see, you don't ask” (when he was asked about his sexual identity) is something that touches the fibers of the Mexican's personality.
That is where it innovates, because for the first time we see in the public an openly sensitive, emotional posture, which was traditionally feminine.
Image source, Getty Images
How did you manage to reverse the paradigms of masculinity?
I'll tell you with an anecdote.
My parents, in Veracruz, once went to see him in the palenque (rural concert plaza), and the next day my dad said, in front of me, “the puto sings very well.” In a house where bad words were not said, that was not an insult, but a vindication of homosexuality in the head of a man clearly repository of traditional Mexican homophobia.
Juan Gabriel manages to decentralize, decompose, a masculinity that, like every human being, needs a connection with the emotional and needs to stop clinging to the absence of feeling.
He has the possibility of queerizing the Mexican alpha male, because he gives him tools to reveal an emotion that comes from heartbreak, but that also raises the hope of love.
That is a very feminine position, that of “I hope, I long, they will find me, I am not looking.”
We came from the idea that men don't cry and hold it in, and he comes out with the possibility of seeing that emotion.
Image source, Getty Images
What is the sentimental personality of the Mexican that he helps to capture like?
He is a personality that sees ambiguity as a tool and with a certain humor.
On the one hand, sexual ambiguity gave Juan Gabriel a kind of freedom that resonated with a people accustomed to not saying things.
But, on the other hand, it places itself in an ambiguous place between extreme happiness and tragedy, and that is the most Mexican thing you will find.
You read his lyrics and you think he's cutting his wrists and then you hear it and see it, and it's like a 90s europop flamenco rumba that makes you wake up and stand up from your chair happy.
Think of the song “Dear”, which begins by pleading “when are you coming back”, and suddenly becomes humorous, joyful.
He denounces the pain, but also sutures the wound.
And that ambiguity is what allows him to move between states of mind, between feelings and emotions in which anyone can identify themselves, especially a Mexican.
It is not in vain that today, October 30, you go out into the street and see people laughing while honoring death for the Day of the Dead.
This is a culture that lives in the ambiguity of heaven and hell, and that is what Juan Gabriel managed to represent.
Image source, Getty Images
What world did Juan Gabriel live in?
It is the beginning of the end of the era of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed for 70 years), the rise of television in the hands of the Televisa monopoly and the rise of alternative movements.
The music industry was mediated by television, by Televisa, and responded to certain values imposed by the State, very closed, conservative, associated with the family and traditional gender categories.
How does Juan Gabriel move in that context?
He knew how to negotiate very well within the industry. He understood her, moved and fought when he had to.
It is documented that at one point he went to Colombia hired by drug traffickers to present himself. Because, as he said, “work is work.”
It is also well known that taxes were forgiven while he was helping the campaign of (PRI presidential candidate and former governor of Sinaloa) Francisco Labastida.
He wasn't the only one, but he knew how to negotiate the tribulations of an industry that was very hostile to someone like him.
Image source, Getty Images
At what point does he consolidate himself as a figure that, although transgressive, is accepted?
The epitome is when he enters Bellas Artes (the most important stage in Mexico).
Before they had opened it for certain popular music figures, but mainly for funerals. Pedro Infante passed by there, many passed by, but he had not opened up to a concert of such magnitude.
And it was very controversial. A large part of the high culture community was opposed.
There he manages to demonstrate his ability to perform, because his show was nothing more than Juan Gabriel singing.
He did it alongside the National Symphony Orchestra and the Fine Arts Choir. That is, in the house of, and with the musicians of the highest academic esteem.
It's like when you go to your aunt's house who has everything perfectly organized and suddenly you bring her a mariachi and the aunt “oh my God”, but in the end it ends up being part of the party.
Then there is an issue of social classes. There were many members of the elite in the front row. And you see them with the average citizen. And that demonstrates the democratizing nature of the figure of Juan Gabriel.
He appeared, equally, in the palenque, in Fine Arts and on a television set. He was a divo for everyone, for everyone, for everyone (laughs).
What part of your biography makes you become an icon?
When one begins to know his life story, some of it is out of curiosity, of course, but much of it is also because it fits with the lives of many Mexicans.
This story from less to more, this story of material success through music.
He makes the central figures in his life protagonists, because that is what motivates him to write what he writes: the conflict with his mother, the conflict with the father figure that does not exist, the conflict with the great love he has for his older sister and of course the mystery of who Juan Gabriel loves.
All of this is not only experienced publicly but also allows you to connect with people.
What is its musical importance?
It goes through what a colleague, Alejandro Madrid, typifies as “the cosmopolitan ballad”, that is, a genre that responds to the migration phenomena of the late 70s and early 80s, and that becomes a transnational identity.
His background was, of course, the bolero, which is what allowed him a very poetic, very refined, fluid sentimentality.
But in addition to this, Juan Gabriel is a singer-songwriter, unlike other figures of his time, such as Rafael, Camilo Sexto, or, more recently, Luis Miguel himself.
This validates him not only as a symbolic figure, but also as a musical genius.
What role does the migration of Mexicans to the United States play in its history?
It's key. He never denied the fact that he had a residence there and that also connected him with another audience and makes him a diasporic product.
It is not only an export product, as is often said, but it is a link with the sentimental origin of the Mexican.
Mexicans born in the United States assimilate it as a way to connect with their identity, with their origin, with their Mexicanness.
An emotion that “has no money or anything to give”, but that comes through and ends up laughing at misfortune.
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