Juan Gabriel was one of Mexico's most beloved music icons.
Affectionately known as “JuanGa,” he was a prolific artist known for his powerful voice and unforgettable performances.
His journey from the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez to superstardom is both inspiring and complex, and it’s now the subject of a podcast called “My Divo” from Futuro Studios.
For more on the new show, Marfa Public Radio spoke with journalist and Futuro Studios Executive Editor Maria Garcia, the podcast’s host.
Interview Highlights
On Juan Gabriel’s cultural significance
Garcia previously worked on a podcast called “Anything For Selena,” which explored the music and legacy of Tejano star Selena Quintanilla. The project pushed her to reconsider and reflect on her own sense of self within the U.S., she said.
“With Selena, I was living on the East Coast and I was thinking a lot about my place in the United States,” she said. “I was thinking about belonging here as a Mexican-American.”
When she began to research and write her next project on Juan Gabriel, Maria Garcia’s move to the borderland inspired a closer look at her own history.
“With Juan Gabriel, I had moved back to the border and I was thinking a lot about rootedness in the Chihuahuan desert where my family has been for generations,” she said.
On the borderland’s importance
“Place is not something abstract for me,” Garcia said when asked about the intersection of physical space and identity when it comes to her work.
“I’m not just writing poetry about my body feeling at home in the desert,” she said. “It’s real, it’s an actual, physical, literal sensation. The border is a character in all of my work because it informs who I am as a person.”
On understanding Juan Gabriel beyond his persona as “El Divo”
By the time Maria Garcia was born, Juan Gabriel was already a megastar whose story was known to everyone in Mexico.
“I knew that he had had a difficult upbringing in Ciudad Juarez,” she said. “You know, he was a homeless queer kid, but when I was growing up, that was almost like, the mythology of him.”
Working on “El Divo,” Garcia was able to unpack that mythology and discover new details about Juan Gabriel’s life that had never come to light. She said these discoveries gave her a profound sense of how difficult and painful Juan Gabriel’s life was, and how he navigated a restrictive society.
On the legacy of Juan Gabriel
According to Garcia, Juan Gabriel was a “disruptor” whose music and performance style were genuinely subversive and revolutionary.
"Think about the artists at the time who were performing traditional Mexican music, right? It was Vicente Fernandez, it was these big macho performers,” she said. “And here was Juan Gabriel, you know, in sparkly outfits and his high-pitched voice.”
Garcia noted that despite being a beloved icon, Juan Gabriel often served as “a proxy for a society to unleash its homophobia.”
"I think about that a lot, how he experienced both scorn and intense adoration from society," she said.
In spite of it all, Garcia emphasized that Juan Gabriel's artistry and ability to connect with people transcended the negativity.
"What he was put in this world to do was greater than any hate, than any discrimination he faced. And to me, that is one of the undying lessons from his legacy," she said.
