It’s the 1960s and the first Beatles album is playing in a prepubescent room in the Federal District. The record spins under the needle of a small record player, which turns into a suitcase when closed. This one is pink, a gift that José Alfredo Jiménez brought his daughter Paloma from Los Angeles, probably after one of his last tours. He bought it from his friend Larry, who runs an appliance store in the city of Hollywood. These are the years when rock ‘n’ roll begins to turn the music industry on its head, and the singer, the throneless king of ranchera music, looks with curiosity and suspicion at the inexorable advance of this current of electric guitars and quirky guys.
After his tours, he usually brings home records by artists who are successful abroad, like Elvis, a different kind of king north of the border. But the Beatles album was bought by Paloma. And the composer of Que te far bonito, perhaps the most beautiful, dignified and heartbreaking farewell in music history, loves the four long-haired men from Liverpool. “They are very good musicians,” he says to his daughter. Other afternoons he searches for answers in the wind with Bob Dylan or loses himself in the psychedelia of Pink Floyd, which his other son, José Alfredo Jiménez Jr., introduces him to.
According to legend, José Alfredo was the singer of cantinas, partying and excess. But “when I was home, I wanted to be there,” answers Paloma (69 years old), who still has fond memories of these afternoons with her father six decades later. You can hear the same thing with rock in English and tangos by Carlos Gardel. Or the albums fresh out of the oven from the composer himself. “He came with the album under his arm like warm bread,” he remembers. “There was always music in the house.”
The first album as a soloist by José Alfredo Jiménez, on display in the artist’s house museum. Inaki Malvido
On November 23, 1973, José Alfredo Jiménez died of liver cirrhosis in a hospital in the Mexican capital at the age of 47. Fifty years later, his character has become a mythological chimera; a controversial character shrouded in the fog of legend and difficult to unravel to reach the flesh and blood person. Joaquín Sabina once said that the singer “embodyed the soul of Mexico (beautiful and loved) like no other in this century.” Critical voices would counter that, if so, it also represented its dark side, that of machismo and violent masculinity, could symbolize: He was accused of abuse by his last partner, Alicia Juárez, who died in 2017.
For José Alfredo, the press, television and cinema made him a tailor-made suit: that of the country man, rough but loving, womanish but family-oriented, generous, out of date. And the platitudes elevated him to a kind of author of marginality. “The great popular poet of the 20th century in Mexico,” was how Carlos Monsiváis defined him. A sentimental cowboy who composed the soundtrack of spiteful drunks – “the epic of drunkenness,” Monsiváis summarized again. Those who knew him say that it is not easy to define him: the composer was a man of extremes, with a tendency to depression and euphoria; Tenderness and sometimes violence.
A city charro
If José Alfredo is for some the symbol of the Mexican man of the 20th century, his country, Guanajuato, could be a statue from the Mexico of the films of the revolution. The dust and the hills, the cacti and the cows, the ghost villages on the side of the road. The singer was born in 1926 in a house in the center of Dolores Hidalgo, the city that has the patriotic nickname “Cradle of National Independence”; where Miguel Hidalgo rang the church bell in 1810, signaling the starting signal for Mexican independence.
When the singer was born, this political anniversary was already a long way off. It was the decade after the revolution, a time of nationalism, promise and home. The government sought to consolidate the idea of a unified Mexican identity in a country as large and diverse as Mexico. He chose the character of Charro, the stereotypical country man with his hat perpetually bowed, the role that José Alfredo played his entire life in front of the limelight.
The Church of Dolores Hidalgo, on November 15th. Inaki Malvido
A visit to the house where he grew up, which is now a museum about his character, helps to see how far the singer really was from this rural icon. The residence is by no means the house of a farmer, but rather that of a wealthy provincial family at the time. It is one of those typical houses in the Mexican countryside: one story, with no windows to the outside, but with three courtyards around which the rooms are arranged. His father was the city’s first pharmacist, a well-filled position at the time. “The problem is when his father dies in 1936. It’s a blow for José Alfredo and he has to go [Ciudad de] Mexico to earn a living,” says José Azanza (62 years old), nephew of the singer and director of the house museum, during a tour.
After the shock of his father’s death, the singer moved to the Santa María de la Ribera neighborhood in the Federal District at the age of 10 with his aunt Cuca. He composed his first songs with whistles – for fear of losing his touch, he never learned the musical language. He drops out of high school. Start working in a restaurant. He founded the musical trio Los Rebeldes, with whom he toured the neighborhood’s bars and balconies for a few pesos and calmed down the neighbors. In a twist of life, he plays as a goalkeeper – football is his great passion, along with music – in the first division, first in Oviedo and then in Marte, where he will replace another legend, Antonio Tota Carbajal, the first football player to win at five World Championships wore the jersey of the Mexican national team.
At the end of the 1940s he was discovered by the musician Andrés Huerta. He brings it to the radio. In a country increasingly dependent on the transistor, José Alfredo’s voice is reaching homes across the country. In just a few years he is already one of the most sought-after singers. Hailed as the best composer in Mexico, his songs are heard in the mouths of the elite of the music scene: Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Lola Beltrán and Pedro Vargas. He appears in twenty films and associates with the artistic elite.
The lyrics of “Wine and Women”, an unreleased song until El Tri performed it by Alex Lora, handwritten in a notebook by José Alfredo.Iñaki MalvidoA suit worn by José Alfredo, seen in the house museum.Iñaki MalvidoJosé Alfredo Jiménez as a child. Iñaki MalvidoThe recording device and the microphone with which José Alfredo recorded the melodies of the songs that came to mind.Iñaki MalvidoJosé Alfredo in a photo of his time as a goalkeeper football, seen in the house-museum of José Alfredo Jiménez.Iñaki Malvido
Side A / Side B
Their songs are about heartbreak, oblivion and suffering. But also about joy, drunkenness and canteens. From these years come the famous evenings that close the Plaza Garibaldi and lean on the Tenampa bar with Chavela Vargas. Travel the country from one end to the other with the Corona Caravan, this traveling show that brought together the great voices of the time. Marco Antonio Muñiz (90 years old), historical bolero singer, is one of the few witnesses who can still remember it. In addition to the Caravana, he shared many moments on television and in some films with José Alfredo. “We met in a bar. He always had a preference for a small glass, but after two drinks he started writing lyrics with what he had at hand, a notebook, a napkin, anything, and from there the songs emerged with ease, with a quality. , great. I remember him among my great friends,” says Muñiz, sitting in a room containing his gold records in his home in Coyoacán, Mexico City.
This was the shining face, the success of a composer who wrote brilliant songs and made the city’s bars his artistic residence. On the dark side lived problems with alcohol that would ultimately kill him, depression and violence. “Perhaps José Alfredo was depressed and that’s why he was inclined to drink, suffering is a symbol in his lyrics. But there is always a salvation, love or God that is not lost in this pain, but is present,” explains his daughter Paloma. “He was a person who lived in extremes; he could be very happy or suffer very much. “I enjoyed a football game as much as I enjoyed a good meal or an evening of drinks,” says Azanza.
In 1952, José Alfredo married Paloma Gálvez. With her he had two children: Paloma, who is now the main executor of her father’s inheritance, and José Alfredo, who died in 2021. “He was a very loving father, very warm, who cared about his family. “He had a lot of tenderness and knew how to express it,” recalls his daughter, who tells how the singer taught her to manage money well or encouraged her to work when she stopped studying, despite the family’s comfortable situation wanted so that I learned to “be responsible”. Azanza remembers the time his uncle took them on a tour of California. “One day he kidnapped the four brothers, took us to a toy store and said to us, ‘Ask anything you want.’ “We arrived at the hotel like it was Christmas.”
Touring and recording were good excuses to justify time away from home. José Alfredo and Paloma Gálvez never divorced, but the musician found a parallel family with the dancer María Medel, with whom he had three more children: José Antonio, José Manuel and Martha. “You could say that José Alfredo led a double life. When I was very old, I learned of the existence of his other children. My mother was always very careful, she always let us see an impeccable image of my father. We weren’t the only family where the father had another family. Of course, my father was a public figure and a little more leaked out. One day a neighbor told me, “Your dad doesn’t tour, he hangs out with old women.” [mujeres]’. I must have been 10 years old and thought, this man is jealous,” says Paloma Jiménez.
Paloma Jiménez Gálvez in her home office in Mexico City.Iñaki Malvido
It wasn’t the only extramarital relationship. From time to time the gossip magazines found new lovers for him, mostly actresses, artists and other cultural elites. He spent the last years of his life with Alicia Juárez, a singer who achieved a certain international reputation thanks to José Alfredo. In 2017, the same year he died, Juárez published When I alive with you (Grijalbo), a book in which he talks about his years with the composer. In a promotional interview with TV Notas, Juárez assured: “In my case he was an abuser and I don’t doubt at all that in his previous relationships he was one too (…) When he drank he became very crazy and aggressive (…) When he broke out, the beatings and insults came, and then the honeymoon returned because he regretted it.”
Paloma Jiménez did not receive the book with affection. “I was about to sue Alicia Juárez because that lady just lied. My father was not a man. He’s never hit me with a Kleenex in my life. I never saw him violent or drunk. He was always very loving towards my mother.” Azanza is less categorical: “All of his women had difficult relationships with José Alfredo. I think that living with him was like marrying a hurricane.” José Alfredo never married Juárez – there was a ceremony, but it was not legal – and she was not part of the millionaire inheritance from which the children of his relationship with María Medel benefited.
The poster of a homage to José Alfredo in 1972, the last year of his life, with, among others, Alicia Juárez and Juan Gabriel.Iñaki Malvido
Juárez did not write the book. She gave her testimony during a year of interviews and writers Gabriela Torres Cuerva and Gina Tovar took care of putting it on paper. “She was a 16-year-old teenager when the romance began; He was over 35, he was a star and she longed to be a character in the ranchera song. It was a historical time when machismo was “allowed” and there was not the collective consciousness that exists today. The people around José Alfredo allowed his machismo. Once, at a party [José Alfredo] He pulls her hair and drags her across the floor, but no one does anything. There is not a single person who saved them,” Torres Cuerva says on the phone. “I shuddered more than once at what Alicia told me: the constant fear, the excitement when she was late or was entertained at a show where José Alfredo was not present…” adds the author.
Poet of the Ranchera
In 1997, Federico Velio had his heart broken. “I had a disappointment in love, they also say no to the beautiful ones,” he jokes, sitting in a room in the Guanajuato congress after a day at work. He went to have a drink with a friend and listen to boleros. They ended, like so many other early mornings, with the singing of José Alfredo. This was the germ of his book The Last Drink (2023), an approach from philosophy to the composer’s texts. “What José Alfredo has that other ranchera singers don’t have is the poetic quality of his songs,” he concludes.
He wasn’t the only one who studied the singer at the academy. There are at least four doctoral theses about him, one of them by his daughter Paloma, a doctor of literature, who conducted an in-depth analysis confirming the high literary quality of her father’s verses. A version of his dissertation was published in 2021 with the title “When they talk to you about love and illusions” by La Rana Publishing.
A painting by the artist Octavio Ocampo depicting José Alfredo and his actors, with allusions to his biography and his homeland.Iñaki Malvido
Velio refused to discuss the singer’s personal life because, in his opinion, ignoring the dark aspects of his personality would result in “serious failings,” but the opposite could lead to a moral judgment that he did not feel qualified to make. In his book he writes: “[José Alfredo fue] the repository of popular philosophy, full of frustrations and longings; of a predatory patriarchy that sang of love as a defeated man disguised as a proud man.” “In general, the character is confused: he is completely good or completely bad, but we all have light and shadow. “José Alfredo reacts to his time and circumstances, to the cultural model of unity: the Mexican charro,” he says now. For Velio, the composer’s lyrics represent a “less aggressive machismo than the machismo of his time, more nuanced, more moderate.” “He feeds into the culture of machismo and alcoholism, but he is a player, not an apologist.”
As an example, he cites his friendship with Chavela Vargas, a lesbian artist who “hosted” the singer in the area, or his support of Juan Gabriel, also gay, whom José Alfredo considered Mexico’s next big star. “Although he had an enormous phobia of homosexuals, he approved of Juan Gabriel as an artist when he first heard him. He said, ‘This boy is going to set a precedent for a different kind of music,'” agrees Torres Cuerva.
The last drink
At Dolores Cemetery, no one misses the visits. When a stranger enters this forest of tombstones and white crosses, the workers know where they are going without having to ask:
—José Alfredo’s grave is there, on the post on the right.
A man looks at the mausoleum of José Alfredo in the Dolores Hidalgo cemetery.Iñaki Malvido
The mausoleum is a kind of colored snake representing a serape, the typical garment of the Mexican countryside, zigzagging towards a huge charro hat the size of a small chapel. At the base is the inscription: “Life is worthless,” written by José Alfredo after the death of his brother Nacho in 1953. The grave where the remains of José Alfredo and his mother rest is clean. There are fresh flowers.
His believers make pilgrimages from all five continents. They pray, sing their songs, drink and smoke for their health. “The world is different, but José Alfredo has not died after 50 years,” says a cemetery employee. “He’s more famous than Miguel Hidalgo,” he preaches. Azanza assures that they have to restore the mausoleum due to erosion from so many visits every year.
Happiness is a capricious paradox. Next to the tomb of the symbol of the Charro and male Mexico is another, somewhat more neglected pantheon with a wall of peeling white paint covered with the small biography of its resident, Virginia Soto Rodríguez: the first female mayor of Mexico, the first federal representative in Guanajuato, one of those pioneers who paved the path that Mexican democracy is now treading, who, if nothing changes, will elect a President of the Republic in 2024 for the first time in its history.
José Alfredo didn’t want his mausoleum. He longed for a simple grave like the rest of the cemetery, with a small mesquite wooden plaque that would read, yes, his eternal epitaph: “Life is worthless.” His wish was granted, for a while. In 1998, the new Pantheon was inaugurated, a work by the architect Javier Senosiain – husband of Paloma Jiménez – more monumental and more in keeping with the size of the legend. The old memorial plaque is on display in the house museum. On it you can read his name, the date of birth and death, the well-known phrase “RIP”, a slanted cross, a treble clef and an eighth note. As if carved into the trunk of a tree with a knife by a love-struck teenager. “I think José Alfredo was a rocker,” Azanza philosophizes, looking at the memorial plaque.
A bust of José Alfredo seen in the House Museum of José Alfredo Jiménez.Iñaki Malvido
When 50 years have passed since his death, the shadows are darker from the perspective of time, but the lights are still there. You just have to go to a cantina or karaoke one evening to see it. The clubs close with The King. The world is witnessing the revival of regional Mexican music with artists such as Peso Pluma and his Corridos Tumbados capitalizing on the composer’s influence. Tribute albums, films, television series and festivals like the one taking place in Dolores this week are made from time to time. Azanza remembers a visit to the house museum of a young South African woman who learned Spanish with the songs of José Alfredo, another woman from Patagonia who called her mother Paloma Querida, and Russian and Turkish visitors. An international legacy that leaves behind a legacy that is both complex and contradictory to its loved ones. “It’s hard for you, but I’ve refined it over the years. I think that somehow you have to learn to heal your wounds, but my father taught me to be responsible for myself and that gave me the tools to cope with my situation, which was one of disappointment, sadness, ” he summarizes: Paloma Jimenez.
At the end of his days, when alcohol had already consumed him and he was recovering in the London clinic south of Mexico City, he decided to sing in the Siempre Domingo program. He said goodbye to his audience with a few songs. He returned to the hospital. One day, during a visit from Azanza’s father, also called José, the composer’s nephew and party partner, José Alfredo predicted:
—The journey to Dolores is getting closer.
A pianist plays “Serenata Huasteca” by José Alfredo Jiménez at the kiosk in the central square of Dolores Hidalgo on November 15th. Inaki Malvido
Subscribe here Subscribe to the EL PAÍS México newsletter and receive all the important information on current events in this country