It’s my life, very much my life, and I don’t have to give any explanations. Many gay fans saw coded messages in the lyrics of Juan Gabriel’s songs, such as “Es Mi Vida” (“It’s My Life.”) Famed Mexican singer Chavela Vargas waited until 2002, when she was 81, to publicly come out as a lesbian.Īlthough Gabriel never publicly claimed the gay community, that community certainly claimed him, with his romantic Spanish-language ballads belted late into the night in drag bars on both sides of the border. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” had long been the policy in Mexico when it came to the sexuality of those in the limelight. “That was part of the calculation for people who had a very public persona.
“It would have been a career killer to come out,” said Hector Carrillo, who grew up in Mexico and is now a professor of sociology at Northwestern University. Like the flamboyant pianist Liberace, who some say maintained that he was straight out of fear that the truth would hurt his appeal to mainstream America, Juan Gabriel’s stance could in part be viewed as a business decision. “You don’t ask about what can be seen,” he said.
