Updated November 11, 2025 at 12:24 PM CST
One of Mexico's all-time best-selling artists, singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel, wrote more than 1,500 songs and toured for decades to sold out crowds until his death in 2016.
But even larger than his success on stage was his enigmatic personality, which inspired the new four-part Netflix documentary series, Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will.
Juan Gabriel was born Alberto Aguilera Valadez. His early life was marked by his father's mental illness and abandonment. When he was just five, his mother gave him to a children's home. That's where he was introduced to music and wrote his first song. He fled at age 14.
Soon after, he became known as a promising live performer in the nightlife circuit of Ciudad Juarez, the sister border city of El Paso, Texas.
In 1971, Juan Gabriel released the first of several dozen albums setting off decades of success and a public fascination with his unstated sexuality. Few knew Juan Gabriel was documenting the ups and downs of his private life.
Using mostly handheld video cameras and tape recorders, Juan Gabriel meticulously recorded the last 45 years of his life. Those decades of footage, in his own voice, are the foundation to Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will.
Morning Edition's A Martinez spoke with series director, María José Cuevas, about Juan Gabriel's legacy and the making of this project.
Here are three takeaways from the conversation.
A great provocateur
Soon after his days on the border in the 1960s, Juan Gabriel moved to Mexico City where he could access major record labels and the larger entertainment industry. While he is now regarded as "almost a national symbol," that wasn't always the case, according to Cuevas who spoke of the context in which he emerged.
"Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s, [was] a deeply conservative, macho and homophobic country. Then suddenly, this figure appears, someone who manages to win over every social class, every kind of audience, even the most macho man," Cuevas said. "He's both a great provocateur and a great conqueror."
In 1990, despite his commercial success, some in Mexico protested his performance at one of the country's most prestigious venues, The Palace of Fine Arts (Palacio de Bellas Artes), in Mexico City.
"It was the first time a popular singer performed on a stage traditionally reserved for ballet, opera and classical music," Cuevas said. "Yet he managed to get the entire audience, at a venue where he wasn't initially accepted, to get up and dance."
Good at selling records, "even better at selling newspapers"
Juan Gabriel's sexuality and love life were a source of speculation throughout his career. The singer didn't discuss his sexuality and was known to surround himself with Mexico's most celebrated female performers.
"I think it was a time when artists all around the world simply weren't coming out of the closet," Cuevas said. "Freddie Mercury in England, Elton John, I mean, back then, if artists, singers or celebrities came out in the '70s and '80s, it would very quickly have ended their careers."
In a 2002 interview, Juan Gabriel was asked on camera if he was gay. He responded with the now iconic phrase used widely as a meme, bumper sticker and slogan on coffee mugs: "Lo que se ve no se pregunta," or what is seen doesn't need to be asked.
The personal versus the private: Juan Gabriel and Alberto Aguilera Valadez
As director of this series, Cuevas was tasked with sifting through a warehouse of more than 2,000 tapes in more than a dozen formats collected by the performer.
"For me, the experience was deeply immersive, constantly delving into this dual universe," she said.
From very early on in his career, Juan Gabriel separated his stage persona, which he also documented meticulously, from the person he was at home with his children and close friends. According to Cuevas, in addition to being a father and family man, Alberto was the composer.
"He is the one who writes down all his experiences, who pours out his loneliness, who is the child forced to face solitude and the man who seeks to fill all these voids by becoming a father," Cuevas said.
"I feel that Juan Gabriel is the performer who sings these songs of loneliness, but he is the one who becomes free…he's the one who fills all the loneliness and voids with an audience," she said.
Luis Gallo and Natalia Fidelholtz provided Spanish to English translation for the broadcast version of this piece.
The digital version was edited by Obed Manuel.
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