From Futuro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria no Josa and today another special event for us here at Latino USA Episode two of My Divo. Not My Diva, but My Devo. Because earlier this week we brought you episode one of our new series by our very own Futuro Studios. Today Episode two. My Devo is an Apple original podcast about none other than the fabulous Juan Gabriel. It's about the legacy of one of the biggest stars in Latin America, in Mexico and in the entire Spanish
speaking world. But this is also a podcast about roots, about raises. In this eight episode series, available in both English and in Espanol de Este Momento, our host Maria Garcia explores her own roots and her own queer identity through Juan Gabriel. Now you might remember Maria Garcia from another Futuro Studios podcast, Remember Anything for Selena. It was on multiple best of lists for the year twenty twenty one. So, without further ado, here is episode two of My Devo.
It's called What Is and Its Secrets? And by the way, this episode contains mentions of abuse, so take care while listening.
We're starting off in the late nineties. I'm in sixth grade. My curls are gelled up and crunchy, my lipstick is brown and matt and my eyebrows are severely overplucked. I'm at school in class, and I'm staring at the clock non stop, waiting for noon, because at noon, my mom is supposed to pick me up from school and she's gonna take me to the club. Literally, I'm going across the border to what is to a Tha of the Other, a daytime dance party for youth at a nightclub without
the booze. My mom takes me to my cousins in Mexico, where we head out to the hottest strip, a street in downtown wattis right next to the border full of nightclubs, where Juanga got his start. I walk into a club called Cosmo's discothe By the way, I love that my first club experience was at a place called the Cosmos. Anyway, the bright noon sun radiates outside, but inside my eyes have to adjust to the darkness. I remember the bright green strove flashes, the techno thumping in my body, the
disco balls glistening. I'd grown up hearing stories about these hottest clubs from my mom who grew up here. And she's the kind of person who is always starting dance parties at actual parties, and just like on random Tuesdays. My mom is a whoa lady? You know, that's her. The point is, I grew up with a mom who treated dancing like necessary joy. And this place, this nightclub, and what is it's like a temple to that joy. I distinctly remember feeling free. We thought we were all cool,
We thought we were this. That's my cousin Anna. She was my cousin best friend growing up. If you had a cousin best friend, you get what I mean. Anna and I used to watch her older sisters get ready to go clubbing, and what is? It was like a rite of passage. We couldn't wait for it to be our turn. I remember all of the adults in our family, like you would go to dancing, you know, everyone, including our grandma.
I believe.
As teens, Anna and I would sneak around any chance we could and use her older sister's IDs to try to get into Hawattis clubs. But it didn't always work.
You try to usee your mom's ID. I'm never gonna forget that day? What's so embarrassing?
Later, when I turned eighteen, I'd go out all the time in hoatta Is since I couldn't go dancing like that in the US. I'd go to swanky clubs wood in the shape of a pyramid, where I'd dance on top of bars. Then later I discovered the Hottis dives, institutions that have been there for decades. One of them, all Olimpigo, an old queer bar, still ends in karaoke with friends every time I go singing Huanga. Of course, you see, there's something singular about this city at night.
Its legacy is actually built on that on its nighttime culture, clubs, bars, restaurants, parties. Many say that it's this scene that birth Tuangabrielle. This is where he first went clubbing, two where he experienced a lot of first actually, and not all of them were happy or known. Because what is like many nighttime cities, is a place that keeps secrets, A harrowing secret about Juangabrielle, a secret about him that forced me to confront a painful secret in my own home. But today, today both
of these stories come out. It's time. I'm Maria Garcia and this is my devo, a podcast about roots. Okay, my pleas are right here. Passport, where's my pastport. It's a workday. I'm rushing out the door in my home in El Paso, about to head to what is across the border right here? Okay, I say bye to my dog, a pub named Cellino. Bye Chellino by Cello. I'm going to wat Is to explore Huanga's early years, his childhood,
and the start of his career. Because many will tell you Huanga is what is and what is is Huanga? What isang News?
The one thing that what Is was known for was Shuangarian.
I know right away when we crossed the border that we need to visit Marie Mercedes Alvarez Vicencio aka Mece. She's a legend in What Is immortalized by Huanga song about her.
Oh you got the Meekanscha.
She was a scenister and a sex worker who started off working the what Is night scene in the late sixties. Huanga's best friend and sometimes roommate during his adolescence. She's an integral part of his story. So we showed up cold at her house, hoping for the best. We knocked on her door, a small tenement style house in an alleyway, and she answered Hello Gary and messrs. Mitch's in her
seventies and wears bright pink lipstick. Peeking through the door, I could see a collage of pictures of Ungavriel hung on her modest walls. She was like, who are you guys in this? We introduced ourselves, and Matcha welcomed us in with what is hospitality?
Maria merce Bi, since I can't see that what is?
Mitcha was born and raised and what is? She had a rough home life and ran away as a teen, ending up working at what is nightclubs on the strip. She lived in abandoned cars and houses, and then in hotels, trying to make enough to eat, encountering creatures of the night.
Sometimes I go to the bars and I talk to the man's and I say I'm hungry. And I went to Rito and they say, oh no, no, drink a beer. Push. But I know what they want.
She learned English on the strip, talking to American partygoers who paid her for sex.
They want take me to the hotel. Sometimes they take me, they pay me, but they stole my money because here very drunk.
Some of her clients included US servicemen during the Vietnam War era.
So it's lonely. It's lonely that life.
Mitcha told us about the time she saw Huanga, this puppy eyed boy, standing outside Ahuattis Club, where she was a regular. He approached her and said.
I sing if you let me go inside, because I want to sing.
Alberto was his name. He didn't yet go by hunga Riel. Matcha said, sorry, kid, you're underage.
And the boss he don't want young women's and young men's here in this place because the police.
Huanga was still too young and wasn't allowed in bars. Eventually, Matcha took pity on the boy, who looks sad and desperate, and.
I say only one song, please.
The band members to let him in or else.
Oh, I don't want to buy you Burtus and Tortoise no more. And I talked to Huanga Brian and I say come here, and he comes and he sing and everybody you know, they lie the way he sing.
After that night, Mecha and Huanga became inseparable. They were both young, broke bohemians trying to survive in a party scene. Sometimes they had enough to eat sometimes they didn't, but they watched out for each other.
They give him when I seek, they gave me.
So they were facing extreme poverty, but they were also resilient teens hungry for life. They went out a lot, went dancing, They had a good time, and he.
Go playing cars, domino lotteria and we got fun there.
For decades, what Is was known as this liberal hub where the rules of polite society didn't go. Americans like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor would flock here to get a quick divorce. What Is was a precursor to Las Vegas. Picture restaurants with perfectly fitted linen tablecloths, waiters and white jackets, and clubs that stayed open all night. What has had been an international party destination since Prohibition. The music of the Mariantis says the temple for a night out filled
with the sights and the sounds of the border. Sex workers like Metcha would roam the bars and streets. A Boston writer once called what is the most wicked city?
You could say? All kinds of people from different nationalities coming to no on awe, not just the Americans.
Thisas he's been working at and eventually owning a bar and what is For about sixty years he partied here during the glory days of the Noah Noah, a club that's the topic of Huanga's iconic song. In his song Juanga, Riel wrote that the Noah Noah was a place the ambiente of ambiance, which might have been a dog whistle for a gay friendly club. He wrote that everything here was different, a wink to open minded how is? But what is wasn't a nighttime utopia either.
In some places he was mistreated, but that's the way it was. Yeah, it was something bad.
You said that in some places he wasn't allowed to sing because he was gay.
Yeah, but what does it have to do sexuality with good singing.
I don't know people heckling Huanga, but if one club wouldn't take him, Huanga would find another club that would. I don't remembers Huanga as a teen, calling himself by a stage name of Adan Luna, always walking down the hottest strip, trying to sing for someone, carrying a little notebook around where he'd write his songs. And at night, Kuanga would bring his songs to matcha at their.
Hotel and he and knock my door. He say hey, I want you. You hear a new song and I say, oh no, no, no, no, normalistic, don't bother me. I got a big hangover. Bring me a ka guama.
A kawama a forty, which he'd bring her.
And when he sing, I drinking the beer. Oh, it's a nice song.
Oh. I love to picture teenage Huanga walking around with his notebook of songs, singing them to sex workers, trying to sneak into clubs. By the time he was doing that, he was kind of an expert at surviving the Huatas streets. He started hustling here since he was a child. That's what I want to learn more about. When we leave Metcha's house during our reporting, and what is we drive to the house where Huangavria lived as a toddler in the fifties. It's a small adobe building with a tiny
courtyard up front. It's here where Huanga's family arrived after they'd migrated to the border looking for economic opportunities. Huanga's parents were farmers in Parakuado, Micho Guan in west central Mexico. Huangavriel was still a baby, his father lost touch with reality and was taken to a mental institution alone, Huanga's mom migrated north with her six children, Huanga still in diapers.
He talked about it to the Mexican TV host Badi Chaboi in nineteen eighty five, saying his mom had no choice but to move north in.
Thoss not Maskaiki as Huadishuanga's mom got a job as a housekeeper for a rich family.
She took Kuanga, then a toddler, with her to work until the family didn't allow it anymore. According to his biography, toddler Huanga spent his days with his older siblings or sometimes even alone in the busy streets of Huatis, cleaning cars or holding people's shopping bags for money. When Huanga was still a small child, a woman who worked at a shelter for kids saw him on the streets and told his mom that Huanga could have a better life at the shelter. There he could learn rather than be
forced to work. In interviews for his TV bio series as Guangarrie talked about how even as a three year old, he felt his life was over when he realized his mom had left him at the shelter for good. Medejho, one of Huanga's best friends for over forty years. Rossenda Puentez says Huanga would talk to her about how tough it was to have grown up there.
He was very, very sad at the orphanage because you know how kids can be very cruel. They were saying to him, how come if you have a mom, you're here, so your mom doesn't love you? How come you are here? And he really really was hurt by that, and he would suffer so much, and he's starting to really realize, Yeah, they are right. How come if I have a mom, lamb here.
In all his years at the shelter, he said his mother only visited him a few times. Years later, Huanga told the journalist Mate Delgado that he had longed for love and affection, the things he didn't have.
No amor cari okeyoa carecido erdad, nino alesta vitternal.
So at thirteen, he escaped one night, he took out the trash and just never came back. He tried to live with his mom, but she told him he couldn't stay with her. Huanga's biography says she wanted to remake her life with a man and couldn't afford to take in her thirteen year old son. In a televised interview, Huanga Leader talked about how he understood that his mom would never care for him. She had her own life without him. Yes, Ubida. People who knew him during this
time talk about what an intense kid he was. Huangaviev talked about it himself. He said he was old as a kid. There was a profoundness to him. Joe, you can hear that in the very first song he wrote at thirteen years old. He recorded it many years later, Gonza. It's about a dove in agony who looks to the sky and asks God to let him die after being alone in a nest, without anyone there to love or care for him.
It's Monisan.
I listened to the song over and over again as I drove around how Is. I could hear a little Huanga in pain, but I didn't realize to what degree until a discovery weeks later at the Mexican National Archives, we found a file that had been misplaced for decades. It's a file from Huenga's time in prison when he
was a teenager. We'll tell you more about his time in prison in the next episode, but for now you should know that In this file, there are pages and pages of notes on Huanga Vriell's evaluations with the social worker while he was detained. While at the prison, he told officials this story that I think shows what young Huanga, without any family support, was going through. When he escaped the shelter, he said he roamed the streets of juad Is looking for work. He did what he could to survive,
washed other people's clothes, cleaned a church, waited tables. Then he met a priest. The priest invited teenage Huanga to live with him as his servant. The file actually uses that word cente. Juangabriel agreed. Then the file reads the priest raped him. Juangabriel was fourteen years old. I'd heard this story before. Alejandro Perla, a video producer for Huanga, had told me that some of Huanga's close friends knew he'd been raped by a priest, Juang Gabriel Lo biola Una.
When Alejandro told me this, I was like, no way, I'm publishing this story. Sounds like hearsay. And then at the Mexican National Archives, I confirmed the story, reading Huanga's account of the rape. Whether to publish this detail or not, I consulted with other journalists, including Columbia University's Dart Center
for Journalism and Trauma. I slept on it for months. Ultimately, I decided to include the secret because I think my job as a journalist is to paint an honest picture of Huanga, not just his artistic legacy, but his humanity. He was so alone and desperate for safety, for a home. I kept imagining what it must be like to be alone at this tender age, and in your innocence and naivete and loneliness, you trust people you shouldn't because you have no one else, because your mom turned you away.
As I say this, I realize I'm no longer just talking about Juangavriel and his mother, because thinking about a vulnerable thirteen fourteen year old Huangavriel and what is makes me think of another young adolescent once and what is in my own family, another thirteen year old turned away by their mother, my own mom.
Hey, we're back and I'm gonna turn it over to Maria Garcia once again for the rest of episode two of the new Apple Original podcast from our very own Futuro Studios, my Devo. Here's Maria Garcia.
Okay, I gotta tell you about my mom. She smiles at every stranger on the street, literally everyone who crosses her path. She talks to dogs like they're reasoning adults. She tells scandalous jokes. She makes all the kids dance at parties from Gumbia to Reggaeton. You know that story at the beginning of the episode about my mom taking me to the club. One of the reasons I cherish that memory so much is because my mom's experience with going out dancing when she was young was a complete
opposite of mine. Her mom didn't drive her to the club. On the contrary, my mom wasn't really let out much. Her mom, my grandmother, worked as an overnight nurse and slept all day, so my mom had to take care of her younger siblings and fend for herself since she was like nine years years old. Mama, my mom had a complicated home life, a lot of responsibilities, and she felt really alone. So when she was a teenager and friends started inviting her out, she'd sneak out any chance
she got. She would go dancing with her friends in Some of the same clubs were Huanga Once sang.
Oka, Saba Get this boys Kimi nira, maybe n alona fla.
Even if it meant coming home to a beating yallo. See see why, Lucie, they couldn't take away the dancing I'd done, she tells me as we laugh at her endearing determination to party. But I know there's something deeper here. That dancing was not just dancing for my mom, but a respite a bomb. I knew Felicie that she'd gotten a moment of happiness.
Is so am that's a maximo hintonsis wow sali i nime.
She had danced, jumped around with ini, been free kiriyak.
Response, This.
Yo had a moment of scarce pleasure to herself. One night, my mom was especially excited to go out because, by some miracle, my grandma allowed her to. She was going to El Malivu, one of the night clubs where Huanga started out. This is one of the swankiest places in what Is, with velvet seating and disco balls, and my mom says she danced all night. Then when it was time to go, the car of the boy who was going to drive her home wouldn't start. There were no
taxis around, no buses. They walked to the boy's house. The boy's dad was like, it's too late, Christen. Everyone sleep here and I'll take you home in the morning. But the next morning, my grandmother was waiting at the door. She didn't allow my mom to come in. The boy's dad tried to explain, but the details didn't matter. My mom had spent a night away from home. Oh luck, my grandmother didn't want my mom in her home anymore.
Who stinks in the.
My mom even begged my grandmother to do a medical exam so she could verify my mom hadn't had sex my mom. My mom pleaded, begged to be let in. My grandmother said my mom had to marry the boy. She'd gone out with a boy my mom hardly knew. The boy's family objected. My grandmother said she'd have him thrown in jail if he didn't marry my mom. My mom wept, begged. My grandmother rejected her face with no choice, my mom and the boy forcibly married. My mom was thirteen.
It can easy get up by.
Me at the courthouse. My grandma didn't even look back to say goodbye. Soon the boy grew angry at my mom, a terrible, terrible rage one day he raped her and then he beat her. The boy's dad saw my mom bloody and beat and told her to run away lest his son kill her. Go and beg your mother again, he said. So, my mom showed up to my grandmother's house. She pleaded again. Pil Plea said she'd fear the boy
would kill her if she returned. My grandmother finally said my mom could stay under one condition that my mom pay for her own divorce. And now my grandmother said ISSI ant, she'd be even harder on my mom. My mom had to drop out of school to pay for her divorce, never having the chance to get an education to study something she liked. My mom has always told me how much she would have liked to have a career, but that was taken from her by my own grandmother.
My mom held the secret for decades. She's only ever told me, not even my brother knews bit wins Mamas. I asked her why she was ashamed of what had happened.
Truth querresimos and un tempo.
Because back then everyone judged you, thought you were slut, thought you didn't have value. That she thought she ruined her own life. The fourth marriage was actually the most dramatic in a series of insults and hurtful things my grandmother had done to my mom. It's so hard for me to even say this, but it's clear to me now that my grandmother was abusive to my mom, hitting her, calling her a whore in front of the whole neighborhood in.
Mundo.
I keep thinking of this, saying, if you treat your child poorly, they don't stop loving you, they stop loving themselves.
Keramania asta apper India, Marmi Apridia.
Only now did I learn to love myself. My mom tells me to know that I have value. It took me all these years. I asked her why she was ready to tell this story now, is Maniram. It's a way to liberate herself. Back in juad Is on that reporting trip where we started this episode, we ended the day in an alley called Gajejon and it houses run down tenements where Huanga lived with Mech and other sex workers as a sixteen year old. It's easy for me to picture Huanga here. In fact, that's all I've been
doing my entire time in what is imagining him. But I think that if I want to really understand his story, I have to try and picture his.
Mom Amelita Sumama a persona no.
Huangabriel's niece, Sylvia Guilera told me that Huanga's mom was indeed not an affectionate.
Person yokrokel Catrine ask in Naasi.
Because of the emotional way she'd been carrying. Sylvia said she remembers her Rhando, always working, fu Mando, smoking heativa, lost in thought and worry. It's so clear to me that this is a woman in survival mode, tasked with the most essential keep her children alive, safe, even if it means leaving them in a shelter. Maybe that's why, despite the harm she had caused, Wanga spoke about his
mom with such grace. He said in interviews for his bio series that one of the most beautiful things in life is to understand, accept and forgive.
Thenido Aldos.
In nineteen ninety two, he told a TV host that even though he had bad memories, he extracted a lot of good from them.
But okay, alous, okay, algin as persons are you arlist, which is a momehor He.
Could be a better help to others because he had this perspective, this pain I see that in his art, like in amode Terno, the iconic ballad he wrote about losing his mom, Kidia can see you are the sadness in my eyes, He sings, my eyes who cry in silence, longing for your love. If you're Latin American, especially if you're Mexican, chances are you've seen someone openly weep to this song. Something about the guttural and elegant way it
captures grief like a lot of Latinez. I saw my mom cry over my grandmother to this song, and every time she'd tell.
Me Petro, Poe and Mama.
She was a great mom who struggled for us. My grandmother later regretted the way she had treated my mom as a teenager, and she evolved. She was a doting grandmother who was kind to me, always told me how smart I was, how proud of me she was. It's clear to me that my grandmother was at an acute, stressful moment in her life when my mom was a child. She was alone, raising five children, probably with a ton
of unresolved trauma. How can I judge my grandmother when my life allows me to pursue my dreams and her life only made space for survival, and yes, she caused harm, but she also passed down a lot of beauty. My mom and I got our big hearty laugh from my grandmother, and our love of dancing and music comes from her too. I honestly think that's one of the greatest treasures in my life that women in my family showed me how
to be unapologetically joyful. That's ultimately why my mom drove me to my first third the other the nightclub for teens. At the beginning of the episode, she treated me as if experiencing joy was my birthright. I think about all the nights I've had in Hauatas since as I pass all the nightclubs on the strip at the end of our reporting day, I have my mom to thank every time my friends and I karaoke. My favorite Huanga song a deep cut called Ell Noah Noah those not to
be confused with the original Noah Noah. It's a song about the beauty of being young and free. In What Is at Night, Kuanga sings about meeting someone at the club, spotting them from afar, giving them a sexy smile. I feel like Kuanga is narrating many of my what is club memories. I wish my mom would have had more of these memories. She didn't get those things, but somehow she gave them to me. She gave me what is
at night. She gave me a youth. And today she gave me the honor of telling a part of her story, the secret that I had carried alone for years, resigning myself to believe it was my cross to beeras the only daughter of my Mexican mom. And then my mom was like, no, no more crosses, no more shame. We have nothing to hide. We are free. Coming up on episode three, we look back on Huanga's time in one of the most feared prisons in Mexico.
It was a temple of horrors, to say the least.
Before Huanga was Juanga Rielle, he was incarcerated at Legumberi Prison, And in reporting I came across a chapter in Huanga's life that has never been told true now when I found at the Mexican National Archives, like completely changes this story. It left me a bit shook.
Oh my god.
And it's this phase of his life that marked him forever. And that's all coming up in the next episode. If you or someone you know need support, go to Apple dot com slash here to help for resources. Madivo is an Apple original podcast produced by Futuo Studios. This episode was written and reported by Me, Maria Garcia and Fernanda Echavarri. Our editor is Moreland Bishop. Our senior producer is Fernanda Echavarri. The show is produced by Nicole Rothwell, Gini Montalvo, Lili Res,
Taquine Kottler, Tasha sannoal and Alicia Fernandez. 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 Weitkis, scoring and musical curation by Stephanie Lebau. Our executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Me.
Legal review by Neil Rossini, Adrian Ojeda Cuevas, Jimena Juigi 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.