Mexico is in mourning: its king of popular song and star of the “mariachi” orchestras Vicente Fernandez died on Sunday, the day of the pilgrimage to the Virgin of Guadalupe, the patron saint of the country. The sombreros and romance crooner that rocked party nights and generations of broken hearts from Mexico to Argentina died at age 81 in a hospital in Guadalajara, the country’s second largest city, his family said on Instagram.
The absolute master of the “rancheras”, songs about the torments of love with several guitars and inevitable trumpets, had been hospitalized since a fall in early August in his ranch near Guadalajara, capital of the state of Jalisco, cradle of tequila and stronghold of the most dangerous active drug cartel.
The sentimental and macho interpreter assumed of “Por tu maldito amor” (“For your cursed love”) and of the very bittersweet “Que te vaya bonito” (“I wish you the best”) has sold 70 million records in fifty years of a career crowned by three Grammys and nine “Latin Grammys”.
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Kidnapped son
Icon of a Mexico all in shadows and lights, refined and violent, “Chente” had known the tragedy of his life during a tour in 1998 when his son Vicente Fernandez Jr was kidnapped for 121 days against a demand for ransom of 10 million. dollars by a criminal gang who cut off two fingers.
One of his other sons would have been the friend of a capo of the Sinaloa cartel, according to the Argentinian journalist Olga Wornat who has just published a biography unauthorized by the family, “El ultimo rey” (“the last king”) .
With his boots, sideburns, thick eyebrows and mustache, the “Sinatra of music ranchera” – as the American newspaper has dubbed him. The Houston Chronicle in 1991 – hated fierce hatred for one of his rivals who died in 2016, Juan Gabriel, “because he was gay and ‘Chente’ was a man from another era”, adds Olga Wornat.
Very symbolically, Fernandez bows out on the day when tens of thousands of pilgrims converge on the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, the source of inspiration for mariachi bands. And the day a Guadalajara football club, Atlas, will try to win their first title in decades on Sunday night.
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