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