Mexicans mourn the death of Vicente Fernández

Miguel del Toro went to the hospital where he died this Sunday Vicente Fernandez in the Mexican city of Guadalajara, consoling his pain with a conviction: “He is already singing to the Virgin.”

Mexican idol Vicente Fernández died at age 81

Miguel arrived with a printed compendium of the artist’s career, who died at the age of 81 after being hospitalized for five months for a fall at his Los Tres Potrillos ranch (as he called his sons) in Guadalajara.

“I have sadness, also joy because he is singing to our little Virgin there,” says this 65-year-old man with moistened eyes.

“See the day you chose, December 12” to die, he adds, underlining that the death occurred on the same date that Mexicans honor their patron, the Virgin of Guadalupe, to whom one of the most Catholic pilgrimages is dedicated. greats of the world.

Miguel remembers that Chente (as his followers called him) “was a devotee of the Virgin” and that he met him in the 60s, when he performed for the first time in his hometown, Tamazula (Jalisco state), and performed With a glass of wine.

“He is alive in the hearts of all Mexicans,” says Miguel, wearing a cap and dark vest, shortly before singing The king, a song that Fernández performed, but composed by the famous ranchera singer José Alfredo Jiménez (1926-1973).

With the book titled But I’m still the king (chorus of that song), Miguel also evokes the rapprochement he had with the so-called Charro de Huentitán, winner of three Grammys and nine Latin Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“It was in 1986 at the Casa de San Pedro Tlaquepaque, at a wedding that he sponsored Mr. Rubén Álvarez and a woman named Dora. There I had to live with him when he was singing that of Seven to nine”, He recalls.

Simple man

Juan Manjarrez, 64, also came to the clinic. With shaking hands he held an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and a photograph of him with Vicente Fernández.

“He was a great man!” Manjarrez exclaims, sharing an episode that according to him clearly showed the simplicity of what was considered the last great idol of ranchera music, a genre full of spite and evocations of life in the country.

“I went to work once as a waiter with him and I told him if I could bring my mother, and he said yes, ‘just let me know’. He came to us, a great detail ”, he tells the AFP.

From moving cars, which made a brief stop at the hospital door, Fernández’s fans sang choruses of his songs, honked horns and left flowers. Some did not lose hope of seeing him leave in the hearse to say his last goodbye.

Guadalajara authorities sent patrols to the scene, anticipating crowds of fans.

Ranch The Three Foals Vicente Fernández Júnior arrived, the idol’s eldest son, and his wife, María del Refugio Abarca, Cuquita. Vicente, visibly moved, limited himself to thanking the Mexicans for their affection for his father, according to television images.