Speaker 1: From Futuro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria
Speaker 1: no Josa and today, my dear Latino USA listener, we
Speaker 1: have got something so special for you. We are about
Speaker 1: to drop the first episode of our newest podcast from
Speaker 1: Futuro Studios. It's been under wraps until now. Now when
Speaker 1: someone says, oh, that girl is my diva, you know
Speaker 1: what that means.
Speaker 2: Well, we're changing it up. Our podcast is called.
Speaker 1: My Divo and it's because it's about none other than
Speaker 1: Juan Gabriel. It's an Apple original podcast about the legacy
Speaker 1: of one of the biggest stars in Mexico and Latin
Speaker 1: America and in the entire Spanish speaking world, Juan Gabriel.
Speaker 2: But this is also a podcast about roots.
Speaker 1: In this eight episode series, available in both English and
Speaker 1: in Spanish.
Speaker 2: That's right in Espanol. Right from this moment.
Speaker 1: Our host Marie Gartci explores her own roots and her
Speaker 1: own queer identity through one GAVINID. Now you might remember
Speaker 1: Maria Garcia from another Futuro Studios podcast, Remember this one
Speaker 1: Anything for Selina. It was on multiple best of lists
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. Well, Maria Garcia is back with
Speaker 1: My Devo. Here is episode one. It's called the light
Speaker 1: on my skin.
Speaker 3: Where I'm from, the sun shines a particular bright wash
Speaker 3: of gold. You see, the brightness and angle of sunlight
Speaker 3: depends on your place on Earth. My home lies about
Speaker 3: thirty two degrees latitude, a position that allows for soft,
Speaker 3: glowy mornings, blazing noons, and sunsets that look like they're
Speaker 3: made out of caramel and lavender. When the warmth of
Speaker 3: this light blankets my skin and my body knows I'm home.
Speaker 3: That's because my mother and her mother and her mother
Speaker 3: have all been cloaked by this same light, the one
Speaker 3: of a kind hue of the Chihuahuan desert that glistens
Speaker 3: over to Ahuadis and al Paso, Texas. On my mother's side,
Speaker 3: I can count up to seven generations who have been
Speaker 3: born in this desert. I wonder which one of the
Speaker 3: generations first adopted the lessons that got passed down to me.
Speaker 3: Lessons like the more feminine a woman is, the more
Speaker 3: beautiful a woman should always be pursued and never ever pursue,
Speaker 3: and naturally the ones doing the pursuing are men. Anything
Speaker 3: outside of that is unnatural. These lessons were easy to
Speaker 3: follow for me. At my young age, I loved all
Speaker 3: things feminine, fashion, furls, pink, and boys. Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: easy to like them too. I date a good number
Speaker 3: of them from the time I was thirteen to my
Speaker 3: mid twenties. Around that time, this other part of me
Speaker 3: began waking up. I remember reading a book about seventeenth
Speaker 3: century Mexican nun so Juan Nainez de la Cruse's imagined
Speaker 3: queer affairs and feeling a novel desire in my body.
Speaker 3: I felt myself expand, craving a connection that was outside
Speaker 3: the gender bounds of my upbringing. But I kept it
Speaker 3: to myself. And then a woman kissed me in the
Speaker 3: bathroom at a club, and I knew I couldn't brush
Speaker 3: this feeling off anymore. I didn't want to god about
Speaker 3: all the rules my mom had taught me. I fell
Speaker 3: in and out of love. I had a baby. Years later.
Speaker 3: I met someone, someone who was beyond a woman or
Speaker 3: a man, and things felt the most right they ever had.
Speaker 3: Like some who I just want us to like melt
Speaker 3: into each other.
Speaker 2: That happens sometimes.
Speaker 3: So my life looks very different now than what my
Speaker 3: mom had imagined for me. My queerness now illuminates my life.
Speaker 3: As I raised my son back in the desert after
Speaker 3: years away, I want him to notice you, that's what
Speaker 3: is the desert light. Are deep roots here, okay, if almost,
Speaker 3: But I also want to prune those roots. I want
Speaker 3: to shed the homophobia, the gender norms, these ingrained lessons
Speaker 3: I grew up with. That may sound simple, but it's
Speaker 3: actually radical because when I was growing up, the message
Speaker 3: my Mexican culture gave me was that it was dangerous, wrong,
Speaker 3: unnatural to love the way I do. But I know
Speaker 3: there's a way forward, a way of being Mexican that's
Speaker 3: in harmony with my queerness. I know it because I've
Speaker 3: seen it in Huanga Rielle. When my American friends ask
Speaker 3: me about Huanga, I tell them that when he was young,
Speaker 3: Puanga had a hairy style, slash prince vibe, handsome, thematically
Speaker 3: provocative telegraphing, a reverence.
Speaker 2: Queerness, Agusta.
Speaker 4: Agusta Kant.
Speaker 3: And maybe in Huanga's later years he gave off a
Speaker 3: little bit of an Elton John energy, but more relevant
Speaker 3: and sexier. I can see him now koift thick black hair,
Speaker 3: coffee hued skin, bejeweled outfits, a soft, tender voice, too.
Speaker 5: Yes, I.
Speaker 3: Completely devoted to an audience that is total. Huanga was
Speaker 3: a prolific composer. By some estimates, he wrote more than
Speaker 3: eighteen hundred songs, and his songs they're cannon like sacred text.
Speaker 3: In Latin America, he sold more than one hundred million records.
Speaker 5: He wrote hit songs for other artists.
Speaker 3: Pungga did recorded countless seismic ubiquitous hits from the early
Speaker 3: seventies to the twenty tens. He devoted his life to music.
Speaker 4: I can consideras to mehor amiga ala musica.
Speaker 3: Kuanga had a song for everything. His poetry was the
Speaker 3: soundtrack to daily life. You want to tell your ex
Speaker 3: in a gentle loving way that you have someone new,
Speaker 3: Huanga has a song for that.
Speaker 1: Benwieskinless times baus mina Mura.
Speaker 3: You want to tell a booty call that they didn't
Speaker 3: mean anything to you, Huanga has one for you too.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's Ben Sando Keesulfi and best joys that song
Speaker 1: Yando no snskin song.
Speaker 3: You want to bask in hopefulness and the beauty of
Speaker 3: the sun, Huanga has a song for that too. But
Speaker 3: what made him Huanga was that he could make his
Speaker 3: songs come alive on stage. To this day, there's a
Speaker 3: whole genre of reaction videos of people discovering the power
Speaker 3: of Huanga's performances, like this YouTuber who goes by go
Speaker 3: O t Games Loop.
Speaker 2: Did you hear his voice break?
Speaker 4: That's emotion, that's raw passion.
Speaker 5: Listen.
Speaker 3: It was the way Huanga emoded, the way he performed
Speaker 3: songs like there was an urgency in every lyric. His songs,
Speaker 3: he'd say, are about real.
Speaker 2: Life experience, yes, half waiter, about.
Speaker 3: Things he had to release when he was burning with feeling,
Speaker 3: and the songs there's this understated, elegant simplicity to his writing.
Speaker 3: He'd make you cry, feel grief so viscerally, and then
Speaker 3: he'd suddenly switched to flirty fun. There was a lightness
Speaker 3: to him and a bigness to him, a big queer exuberance,
Speaker 3: the exact opposite of the macho ladies man. I mean,
Speaker 3: think about the other Mexican music icons who played with
Speaker 3: Mariachis at that time, like Vicente Fernandez, a mustache oed
Speaker 3: manly man with a deep singing about revenge and jealousy
Speaker 3: and being a king. And here was sauce spoken Juangabriel
Speaker 3: with his folded wrist, wearing a little makeup, singing about
Speaker 3: the optimism of the sun rising every day. He revolutionized
Speaker 3: who could embody Mexico's most traditional music. He showed that
Speaker 3: the nation's music wasn't just for the masculine chatterls, the
Speaker 3: Mexican cowboys and muted colors and tailored suits. No Hunga said,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna command this Mariacchi, but let's make it gay now.
Speaker 3: There was a time in the beginning of his career
Speaker 3: as a young pop star when the default assumption was
Speaker 3: that he was a straight me heart throb. Interviewers would
Speaker 3: ask him what his type of woman was. He always
Speaker 3: seemed to evade the question, answering something vague and cryptic.
Speaker 6: Like mohe.
Speaker 3: Always a nobody truly marries anyone, You just choose someone.
Speaker 3: By the time I was growing up, the world had
Speaker 3: caught on that Huanga was different than other pop stars.
Speaker 3: Even as a kid, I knew there was something subversive
Speaker 3: about Huanga. He was the very first queer person I
Speaker 3: knew of. I mean, I wasn't sure he was gay,
Speaker 3: but all the adults around me seem to assume he was,
Speaker 3: and interviewers alluded to it. For example, in this Mexican
Speaker 3: TV show, the announcer prefaced an interview with Huanga by
Speaker 3: saying some people had written to the program to say
Speaker 3: they found Huanga's demeanor offensiveson as.
Speaker 7: A sinten of India's put through manaty.
Speaker 3: After years of media speculation about his sexuality, a reporter
Speaker 3: famously asked Huanga outright on national television if he was gay.
Speaker 8: Lison, dear gay Lavena is gay?
Speaker 3: Liz Calkas Avena super go oh to this day, I
Speaker 3: love this answer. What can be seen shouldn't be asked?
Speaker 3: He said, like he wasn't hiding, but he refused to
Speaker 3: be a spectacle. A spectacle because we're talking about mainstream
Speaker 3: media in Mexico in the eighties through the odds, this
Speaker 3: is the country with the second highest Catholic population in
Speaker 3: the world. Being queer wasn't as accepted as it is
Speaker 3: now in Mexico. For many of us, we heard our
Speaker 3: first gay slures and yoakes ever directed at Huanga. But
Speaker 3: even though he represented something many Mexicans seem to hate,
Speaker 3: he was also revered and loved because his art was
Speaker 3: that good and he was so magnetic and.
Speaker 2: Real coram as dim.
Speaker 3: He talked about his human duty to be kind, humble,
Speaker 3: and divine. He'd always say how proud he was to
Speaker 3: be from Mexico, but he was especially proud to have
Speaker 3: grown up in what Is. That made an impression on
Speaker 3: me because I grew up hearing misconceptions about my city
Speaker 3: of birth that it was all violent.
Speaker 2: In this video from Thursday, you can hear gunshots on
Speaker 2: a busy street in Quody.
Speaker 3: Mexico's defense ministry has said that it has centered on
Speaker 3: two hundred military personnel to the northern border city of
Speaker 3: war Now.
Speaker 6: To extra depth and perspective on the violence is joining
Speaker 6: us now is Louis with headlines that made it sound
Speaker 6: like the only thing worth reporting about in this corner
Speaker 6: of the world where Narco wars and murder.
Speaker 3: But to Huanga, what Is was beautiful. He sang about
Speaker 3: what is a lot called at the border where God
Speaker 3: should live? Look Sometimes, Huanga exaggerated, a bit can be
Speaker 3: a tough place to live, but his zeal for what
Speaker 3: Is served as an antidote for how much the city
Speaker 3: is snubbed and looked down upon. I love that this
Speaker 3: quintessential symbol of Mexican identity. Is this queer man from
Speaker 3: the fringes of the country, a gay fronterriso Mexico Mexican.
Speaker 3: I asked my mom, who was born and raised in
Speaker 3: what is why Huanga has become a symbol of Mexican
Speaker 3: identity bourgueznostro del pueblo denstro because he's ours of the people,
Speaker 3: she tells me. And over and over people have echoed
Speaker 3: that sentiment that Juangabriel means something beyond himself, that there's
Speaker 3: something greater in his legacy.
Speaker 4: What does Guangabriel mean to me?
Speaker 8: The first time I've experienced pride as a gay Mexican man,
Speaker 8: That's what he means to me.
Speaker 2: He was almost like the music of my childhood that
Speaker 2: I grew up with.
Speaker 1: The first thing that comes to my mind is my
Speaker 1: mother dancing in the living room all by herself.
Speaker 7: For me, it just meant that somebody like me, who
Speaker 7: was also like him gay, could find himself in a
Speaker 7: place where we could transcend the homophobia in Mexico and
Speaker 7: be respected.
Speaker 3: The way that I think of a lot of us
Speaker 3: is queer folks wish to be in the world is
Speaker 3: just to exist as who we are.
Speaker 8: He was just always that as someone who's not born
Speaker 8: and raised Mexican, he gives me a little bit of
Speaker 8: that connection because he's just been a part of my
Speaker 8: life in the background there for as long as I
Speaker 8: can remember.
Speaker 4: To me, he means the border of Alpasso and Fares,
Speaker 4: but more broadly Mexico and the United States.
Speaker 8: Huanga to me means being true to who you are
Speaker 8: and not turning down your life, not turning off your
Speaker 8: life for anyone else.
Speaker 9: There are only very very few artists that come around
Speaker 9: like Juan Gabrielle.
Speaker 3: Once every fifteen years you see an artist like him.
Speaker 1: Hey, we're back and I'm going to turn it over
Speaker 1: once again to Marie Garcia for the first episode of
Speaker 1: our new podcast series from Futuro Studios.
Speaker 2: It's called My Devot.
Speaker 3: Singing Dancing to Huanga with my mom and my cousins
Speaker 3: is when I feel peak Mexican love for Huanga runs
Speaker 3: deep in my home. My mom taught me to love him.
Speaker 3: I've taught my son, your baby. Can I ask you something,
Speaker 3: who's your favorite singer right now? Junda Guana is your
Speaker 3: favorite singer right now? Look, my son is the first
Speaker 3: one in his line born in the us. But when
Speaker 3: I hear him karaoke huanga with my mom, I know
Speaker 3: that he knows where he comes from.
Speaker 2: Ami Usa Mucho sad and apple Beta.
Speaker 5: Go good luck.
Speaker 3: It's a Sunday morning and I'm visiting my mom. She's
Speaker 3: making breakfast. I'm catching up with her. Asking my mom
Speaker 3: about a concert she went to the night before. She
Speaker 3: jokes that she felt like getting up on stage, which
Speaker 3: is on brand for her, but was too scared to
Speaker 3: fall after I put some sauce on my tacos kerrico. Yes,
Speaker 3: I asked her. What I'm really here to find out?
Speaker 4: You taking.
Speaker 3: About the story of when she met Juan Gabriela. Yes,
Speaker 3: that Juan Gabriel. My mom went to the Juatis airport
Speaker 3: to pick someone up and she saw the commotion Juangabriel
Speaker 3: had just arrived. She was star straight. He was her
Speaker 3: favorite artist. She wanted to go ask him for an autograph,
Speaker 3: but she was too shy. So like a movie scene,
Speaker 3: he noticed my mom from across the room, and instead
Speaker 3: of paying attention to the gaggle of girls around him,
Speaker 3: he asked my mom, what about you? You don't want
Speaker 3: an autograph? My mom finally approached him and he told
Speaker 3: her mid your eyes are so beautiful. Yeah, my mom
Speaker 3: says she didn't even want to wash her hand afterward
Speaker 3: because Huanga had touched it. And the magical part of
Speaker 3: this story, the part that's become family lore. She says
Speaker 3: that soon after this encounter, he came out with his
Speaker 3: song Soos, a banger about beautiful dark Mexican eyes like
Speaker 3: my mom's who SUPs mag.
Speaker 2: Gets on along for me.
Speaker 3: And of course there's no proof that Huanga complimenting my
Speaker 3: mom's eyes and him writing this song have anything to
Speaker 3: do with each other, but we like to think so.
Speaker 3: In the song, Huangavriel admire someone's big, dark eyes. He
Speaker 3: calls them the inheritance of your beautiful parents. It feels
Speaker 3: like that's what I'm seeking in Huanga, an inheritance, something
Speaker 3: passed down to me that says, look, this is what
Speaker 3: it can look like to be fully Mexican and fully
Speaker 3: joyously queer. Reporting on Huanga has also forced me to
Speaker 3: look within, to look at my own family, my own room.
Speaker 3: You see, I saw similarities between my mom's difficult upbringing
Speaker 3: and Huanga's own traumatic youth.
Speaker 4: He told me his mother sent one of his older
Speaker 4: brothers to hit him in order to get him out
Speaker 4: of the problem of being gay.
Speaker 3: Or when I looked into his complicated relationship with politics,
Speaker 3: it forced me to confront a dark story in my
Speaker 3: own family history. My body passed into a memory. I
Speaker 3: finally know something dark went down here. Or as I
Speaker 3: uncovered details about Huanga's journey as a queer person in Mexico,
Speaker 3: I had to think about what it looks like for
Speaker 3: me to be gay and Mexican.
Speaker 5: I think Mexico is a gay country, but.
Speaker 1: We are liars.
Speaker 3: We've uncovered details about Huanga's life that have never come
Speaker 3: to light, and you'll find things out about him that
Speaker 3: will change what you think you know. Okay, Hags argionas
Speaker 3: Jalisco Shock. You'll hear his story in a way that's
Speaker 3: never been told. We'll be focusing on key moments in
Speaker 3: his life and legacy, from the slums of what is
Speaker 3: to worldwide stardom.
Speaker 9: Are you I guess?
Speaker 3: But this is not a straight biography podcast. You can
Speaker 3: find Huangas story in plenty of places. Now. This is
Speaker 3: a story about beauty, the beauty of being queer, the
Speaker 3: beauty of being soft, the beauty of being us. Even
Speaker 3: if the world would rather we not be.
Speaker 9: I see a bunch of kres, I see a mountain,
Speaker 9: I see cat. This is a tiny little one right
Speaker 9: here at the edge of the mountain.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite things to do with Kile my
Speaker 3: son is.
Speaker 9: To hike and a tiny little kreiso on the side
Speaker 9: of the mountain. He also loves recording to capture the
Speaker 9: great sound of nature, but also just to.
Speaker 3: Make funny voices. Yeah, you're funny. The luminous desert sun
Speaker 3: enrapts us as we stand in al Paso looking at Huatas,
Speaker 3: a few miles away, where Huangaverie had once lived, where
Speaker 3: our family also comes from. Did you know that mounting
Speaker 3: you There have been five generations of our family who
Speaker 3: have lived between these two mountains. Yeah, all of that
Speaker 3: is you. That quartis where mom and I was born,
Speaker 3: where her mom on Nanna came to when she was
Speaker 3: really young, Where my great grandmother.
Speaker 9: She's lived sixty one years.
Speaker 3: She's pretty old. Sixty one is not old, buppy. As
Speaker 3: I joke with my son about my mom's age. We're
Speaker 3: watching the sunlight drape over a mountain range in Sua Quartas,
Speaker 3: and this feels right because remember when my mom said
Speaker 3: Juan Gavrielle felt like he was of the people. When
Speaker 3: my mom told me that my son was listening to
Speaker 3: us and he had a question.
Speaker 9: And dibblo, what is that?
Speaker 3: What does it mean to be of a people? I
Speaker 3: guess that's what I'm thinking too, what does it mean
Speaker 3: to be of a people? I want my son Hiel
Speaker 3: to have the answer to that question, to know he's
Speaker 3: connected to the what is? My mom and I come
Speaker 3: from the what is? Juan Gabrielle came from the what
Speaker 3: is drenched in the same golden sunlight that our skin recognizes.
Speaker 3: I'm Maria Garcia and this is my Deevo, a podcast
Speaker 3: about roots. Coming up on episode two, we take you
Speaker 3: to the Club, a Huaris club, glitzy and gritty where
Speaker 3: Huanga got his start.
Speaker 5: Here in knock my Door, he say hey, I want
Speaker 5: you You hear a new song and I say, I
Speaker 5: gotta big hangover.
Speaker 3: And two dark secrets, one from Huanga's life and one
Speaker 3: from my own. That's all coming up in the next episode.
Speaker 3: My Devo is an Apple original podcast produced by Futuro Studios.
Speaker 3: This episode was written and reported by me Maria Garcia.
Speaker 3: Our senior producer is Fernanda e Chavari. The show is
Speaker 3: produced by Nicole Rothwell, Gini Montalvo, Lili Reese, Joaquin Coutler,
Speaker 3: Tash Sandol and Alicia Fernandez. Our editor is Marlon Bishop.
Speaker 3: Spanish adaptation by Ezequiel Rodriguez Andino and Fernando Ernandez Besserra.
Speaker 3: Our senior production managers are Nicole Rothwell and Jessica Ellis,
Speaker 3: with post production support from Nancy Trujillo. Mixing by Stephanie Lebau,
Speaker 3: Julia Caruso and Gabriela Biaz. Fact checking by Nidia Bautista.
Speaker 3: Our original music is by Paul Weitkiz, scoring and musical
Speaker 3: curation by Stephanie Lebau. Our executive producers are Marlon Bishop
Speaker 3: and Me. Legal review by Neil Rossini, Adrian Ojeda Cuevas,
Speaker 3: Jimenajurigi and Sergio Gomez. Futuro Media was founded by Maria Inojosa.
Speaker 3: Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. I'm Maria Garcia. Thank
Speaker 3: you for listening. See you next time.