Museum opens honoring memory of Juan Gabriel, icon of Latin music

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – This border city with a bad reputation always had a No. 1 fan, a singer-songwriter so beloved that his songs still bring people to tears, even eight years after his death.

Juan Gabriel broke barriers in Mexico as an unrepentantly flamboyant artist who wore sequined mariachi costumes and once famously told a reporter who asked if he was gay that “you don’t ask what you can see.” A museum dedicated to his legacy opens this week in his former home, just blocks south of the U.S. border, across from El Paso, Texas.

If Taylor Swift is for English-speaking audiences the reigning queen of tortured-poet songwriters, Juan Gabriel, even in his death, remains for Spanish-speaking audiences the king of broken hearts.

He wrote of unrequited love, of suffering and surviving heartbreak. Latin pop artists from Puerto Rico's Marc Anthony to Mexico's Maná and the late crooner Vicente Fernández covered his work – from a catalogue of the 1,800 songs he composed, according to Universal Music Publishing Group.

He also wrote unlikely love letters to Ciudad Juárez, this scrappy industrial city whose proximity to the U.S. has long attracted export-oriented factories as well as criminal organizations, violence and poverty.

But that was part of the charm: to love a place that had everything going against it.

A tough upbringing in a border town

Juan Gabriel was his stage name. He was born Alberto Aguilera Valadez in Michoacán, Mexico, in 1950. He had everything going against him from the start. His father was interned in a psychiatric hospital; his mother took her 10 children to live in Ciudad Juárez, and she consigned her youngest son to a boarding school for orphans.

He grew up poor, wrote his first song at 13 and got his start singing on buses and busking in the bar-lined streets of downtown. Even when he catapulted to stardom in the 1970s with a song called "No Tengo Dinero" – that spoke about having no money and nothing to give but love – he never forgot his roots.

"He was an undeniably great composer in the Spanish language," said Felipe Rojas, director of the Juan Gabriel Foundation, which runs the museum.

"You can see it in his records and the awards he won," he said. "But in Ciudad Juárez, he left a special legacy. His songs speak to the goodness of the people. He left a legacy for us to be proud of our city... and of Mexico."

It was Juan Gabriel's idea, 20 years ago, Rojas said, to convert one of his Ciudad Juárez homes into a museum for the public. The museum opens the week of the eighth anniversary of his death on Aug. 28, 2016.

'We loved him back'

The museum requires reservations, as guides take visitors on an intimate tour of the castle-like home. It begins in a movie room, with a screening of a medley of Juan Gabriel concerts that had visitors during opening week clapping, singing and crying by the end.

"I have photographs, autographs, every one of his records," said Aurora Rodriguez, 64, wearing a T-shirt that said, "From Ciudad Juárez to the World." Her eyeliner ran as she listened to the video concert and wiped her eyes.

"He was just an incredible human, with all that talent and love," she said.

The museum guide, a former local journalist, also wiped away tears as she ushered the group into a basement room containing some of his iconic costumes and one of four thrones made for his final tour, when he was ailing.

On the main floor, Juan Gabriel's voice echoes through a high-ceilinged entrance hall, humming, toying with notes, as if he were in the next room. Flowers decorate a fireplace, where his ashes sit on the mantle.

The tour winds through a mint-green living room with a Steinway piano and a spiral staircase, past a dining room with a table given to him by an icon of Mexico's Golden Age of cinema, María Félix. Crystal chandeliers hang in every room. His bedroom is preserved in all its gilded and lavender glory.

On a rainy Tuesday morning, Dabeiba Suárez, 53, showed up at the iron gates of the late singer's home, hoping for a chance to get in.

Tickets were all sold out for the opening week. But bad weather had kept some ticket-holders home, so Suárez got lucky.

"To feel his presence in his home, it makes me feel like he is still with us," Suárez said, her voice breaking. "I get emotional because he loved Ciudad Juárez and its people, and we loved him back."

Lauren Villagran can be reached at lvillagran@usatoday.com.