THE RELEVANT QUEER: Chavela Vargas, Critically Acclaimed Mexican Ranchera Music Singer

“What hurts is not being homosexual, but that they throw it in your face as if it were a plague.”

TRQ: Chavela Vargas, Born April 17, 1919

Singer Chavela Vargas, critically acclaimed for her interpretations of traditional Mexican ranchera music, was born in San Joaquin de Flores, Costa Rica. After an unhappy childhood spent in the care of an uncle after her parents divorced, and in which she contracted the disease poliomyelitis, Vargas left for Mexico at the age of seventeen. 

Breaking with gender stereotypes, Vargas cultivated her instantly recognizable style by wearing a red poncho over men’s clothing, carrying a gun, smoking cigars and drinking tequila. Traditionally sung by drunk men, the masculine, yet emotional, ranchera suited her well. Starting out at a young age singing on the streets, Vargas was performing in nightclubs by the 1940’s, where she met José Alfredo Jiménez, one of Mexico’s most iconic ranchera musicians. He became a close friend and professional collaborator. 

In the 1950’s, Vargas lived the Mexican bohemian club life, and socialized with prominent artists and intellectuals, including painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Kahlo is said to have written of her unrequited attraction to Vargas, who had started performing in Acapulco at the restaurant La Perla and sleeping with the wives of the rich and famous. She claimed to have slept with Ava Gardner at Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding. 

Even though she did not record her first album, Noche de Bohemia, until 1961, Vargas would eventually record over eighty more. Her recordings of “La Llorona” (The Weeping Woman) and “Piensa en Mi” (Think of Me) are particularly well regarded. However, by the mid 1970’s, Vargas suffered from alcoholism and retreated from public life. She spent many of these years in a relationship with Dr. Alicia Pérez Duarte, though the two would eventually separate over Vargas’s tendency towards violence. 

In 1991, Vargas re-emerged to perform at El Hábito in Mexico City. For the first time in her career, she took to the stage sober. Her performance was such a success that her career was relaunched to even broader international acclaim. At the age of 81, Vargas wrote her autobiography, And If You Want to Know about My Past, in which she came out as lesbian. At a concert in Spain in 1992, she met Pedro Almodóvar, who had considered Vargas a muse and helped make possible her first ever Carnegie Hall performance in 2003. 

“The years take you to a different feeling than when you were 30,” Vargas, at the age of eighty-three, said in an interview with The Times, the night before her Carnegie Hall concert. “I feel differently, I interpret differently, more toward the mystical.” She also announced that she had not drank alcohol in over twenty-five years. 

Vargas also appeared in Frida, the 2002 film starring Salma Hayek, and performed her signature classic “La Llorona.” Five years later she won a Latin Grammy for her career of musical excellence. 

In 2009, Vargas shared in an interview with the newspaper El Pais, “I am proud that I do not owe anybody anything, and it is wonderful to feel free… Now I have the desire to lie down in death’s lap, and I am sure that will be quite beautiful.” 

In 2012, after promoting her album dedicated to the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, Vargas returned from Spain and at the age of ninety-three, died of multiple organ failure in Cuernavaca, Mexico. “I leave with Mexico in my heart,” were her final words. Friends, fellow musicians and fans gathered at Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City, one of Vargas’s favorite drinking spots, for a night of musical tribute. 

Vargas was inducted into the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco’s Castro neighbourhood in August 2019. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Authors

Troy Wise is currently a PhD student at UAL Central St Martins and teaches fashion and graphic design at London College of Contemporary Arts. His background is in marketing and is founder and co-editor of Image Amplified. He lives in, and is continually fascinated by, the city of London.

Rick Guzman earned his most recent MA at UAL Central St Martins in Applied Imagination in the Creative Industries. He currently holds two MA’s and an MBA in the New Media, Journalism and International Business fields. Co-editor at Image Amplified since its start, he lives in London, is fascinated by history and is motivated by continuing to learn and explore. 

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Sources: 

LA Times

NY Times

Queer Portraits

The Guardian