They had come on planes and buses, in pedicabs and on scooters. Some navigated the crowd in wheelchairs or pushed babies in strollers.
They were there, in Mexico City’s central plaza, to see the singer known as the “Divo of Juárez,” or simply “Juanga,” a nickname used by millions of fans with all the familiarity of cousins.
Juan Gabriel — in his time as famous as Bad Bunny is today — has been dead for nearly a decade. But on Saturday, he drew more fans to the screening of a 1990 concert than most performers attract when alive: More than 170,000 people thronged the plaza, known as the Zócalo, according to city officials.
For some, the show was a chance they had thought would never come.
“This is the dream of those of us who never got to see him in person,” said Cristian León, 33, who works in his family’s hardware business in Mexico City.
“I always wanted to see him, but I never had the money,” said Carmen Sandoval, 37, who came from the state of Veracruz, where she sells motorcycle parts.
Enriqueta Cañas Torres, 56, a street cleaner at the Zócalo, said she would be “sweeping and watching the concert” — and waiting for a song that was sure to make everyone cry.
Saturday’s screening of Juan Gabriel’s landmark concert in the vaunted Palacio de Bellas Artes coincided with the release of a Netflix documentary series, “Juan Gabriel: I Must, I Can, I Will,” which tells the story of the artist’s rise from obscurity and poverty in a Mexico-U.S. border town to global stardom.
Before he was Juan Gabriel, he was Alberto Aguilera, born in 1950 and raised in Juárez. Left at a home for children by his widowed mother when he was 5, he escaped seven years later with the hope of finding her and winning her love.
One of his first songs, “No Tengo Dinero” — “I Have No Money” — was clearly autobiographical, and spoke to other Mexicans who knew what it was to struggle. It became a major hit in 1971, and was ultimately translated into several languages.
“His songs became anthems,” the director of the documentary, María José Cuevas, said.
The series draws on Juan Gabriel’s personal archive — opened for the first time to a producer, Laura Woldenberg — which includes some 2,000 hours of video, cassette recordings of the singer improvising lyrics, even the scraps of paper where he first jotted down his biggest hits.
Beyond his music, the series explores the seismic effect on Mexican culture of a superstar who defied traditional notions of masculinity.
Juan Gabriel never spoke openly about his sexuality. Asked point-blank if he was gay by a television interviewer, he delivered a now-iconic reply: “They say that what is seen need not be asked, son.”
“He’s my idol,” said Alan Cruz, a 25-year-old public servant. “In Mexico, homosexuality wasn’t accepted. But he was accepted by important people. He changed culture. He changed music.”
Ms. Cuevas, the director, said: “In the 1970s, the ’80s, Mexico was totally close-minded, machista, conservative. And suddenly this figure appears who begins to liberate himself — and gradually to conquer all these audiences and all these social classes.”
That, she said, was the importance of Juan Gabriel: “He’s a transgressor, a provocateur.”
But even as Juan Gabriel sold millions of albums and won legions of fans across Latin America, one thing proved elusive: entry into Mexico’s so-called temple of high culture, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, a grand concert hall not far from the Zócalo that had long been the preserve of symphonies.
For his fans, Saturday’s show, produced by Netflix and Mexico City’s government, was a chance to celebrate the moment when he took that final step — despite outraged editorials and protesting opera singers — appearing at Bellas Artes in a sequined mariachi suit and singing along with the National Symphony Orchestra, to both shock and delight.
As he performed, he whispered witty asides into the microphone, never forgetting, said Patricia Huerta, a 54-year-old teacher from the state of San Luis Potosí, that he was “a man of the people.”
Maria Columba Rodríguez, 66, who long ran a fan club in the capital, said devotees embraced him without getting hung up on tabloids’ questions about his private life.
“It didn’t matter,” she said. “What mattered to us was what he transmitted through his songs, what he wanted people to understand.”
That message, many fans agreed, was about love and how it transcends borders.
Beatríz Velasco Hsieh, 62, left the state of Jalisco for California as a teenager, she said. To return to this upswelling of Mexican pride — at what she called a “very sad moment” for immigrants in the United States — was more emotional than she had words for, she said.
“It’s a feeling so big it doesn’t fit in your chest,” she said.
Nearby, a boy lifted a photograph of Juan Gabriel. Vendors sold key chains and photos featuring his dimpled face, along with snacks like churros and elotes. Fans rocked children and lap dogs.
Above them all, a Mexican flag the size of a swimming pool rippled in the wind.
For some in the crowd, this was an opportunity to experience a Juanga concert — the dancing and singing, the eruptions of energy and applause — not for the first time, but for the last.
“Adoration,” was all Teresa de Jesús Pérez Castillo, 73, said from her wheelchair.
When the song that was sure to make everyone cry, “Amor Eterno,” began to play, everyone cried, even the event’s security guards.
It was the ballad that Juan Gabriel wrote after his mother died, and it played at his funeral and at the funerals of the loved ones of many of those gathered. It was what mariachi bands sang when they traveled to Uvalde, Texas, to comfort families in the wake of the 2022 school shooting there.
“Eternal love,” the crowd of thousands sang again and again, in unison with the singer onscreen.
“Eternal love — and unforgettable.”
Elda Cantú contributed reporting from Mexico City.
