Mexico is mourning the loss of
singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel, who died Sunday in his home in Santa
Monica, California of a heart attack.
The 66-year-old Gabriel, who was
touring the United States, had performed over the weekend in Los
Angeles and was scheduled to take the stage in El Paso, Texas on
Sunday.
Mourners flocked to his star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles and around a statue of him in
Mexico City.
Gabriel never married, conceived four
children via artificial insemination and refused to discuss his
sexuality.
Hector Carrillo, a professor of
sociology at Northwestern University, told The
Los Angeles Times that coming out would have killed Gabriel's
career.
When a reporter in 2002 asked him
whether he's gay, Gabriel answered: “You don't ask about what can
be seen.”
Gay fans didn't question what they saw
– glittery outfits and occasional eye makeup – and claimed
Gabriel as their own.
“I think he made a deep cultural
change not by talking about his sexuality but by living it out on
stage,” Alejandro Madrazo, a law professor in Mexico, told the
Times.