In 2003, Jenni’s career took another turn. Instead of just recording another banda album, her next project was Homenaje a las grandes, a concept album in which she paid tribute to the greatest women of Latin music, reinterpreting their hits with banda arrangements, her unwavering voice accompanied by a brass band. The songs as well as their original singers held a great deal of meaning for Jenni, and many of them—Lupita D’Alessio, Lola Beltran, Rocio Durcal—were artists she had openly admired ever since she had first started singing. In Homenaje a las grandes Jenni also did cover versions of songs by Gloria Trevi (“Papa sin catsup”) and Alejandra Guzman (“Hacer el amor con otro”), both artists who would become her friends, and who she would eventually perform on stage with. She also included a track in English, a cover of the Motown hit “Where Did Our Love Go,” demonstrating once again her interest and love for the music in English that she had listened to so much as a child.
Beyond the music, the album marked a new direction in Jenni’s look and aesthetic. After several album covers featuring Jenni in cowboy hats, here Jenni just wore a long, straight, strawberry blonde hair style against a white background. And instead of looking straight into the camera, as she always had before, her gaze is lowered, looking to the side, and her face looks slender. It’s a decidedly timeless, classic look, placing her in the same company as the “greats” she is paying tribute to on the album. The cover image says that Jenni is not just a banda singer; she is an artist with international potential, and can sing whatever she wants.
The first single released off the album was “A escondidas,” made a hit years earlier by Marisela. Jenni’s version was her third single to appear on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Airplay list, debuting at number 40 on June 6, 2003, and climbing to number 23 on July 17, staying on the list for eight weeks. Jenni was also very pleased to include “Homenaje a mi madre” on the album, a song she wrote for her own mother, Rosa Rivera.
Showing just how far she had come, Jenni celebrated the album’s launch with a concert that summer at the historic Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, becoming the first regional Mexican artist to perform on that stage.
But bitter disappointments came along hand-in-hand with her triumphs. On April 19, 2003, Homenaje a las grandes became Jenni Rivera’s first album to debut on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums list, which tracks sales of Latin albums all over the country. The record debuted at 70, and rose to number 37, positions which weren’t necessarily high, but it was an enormous achievement for an artist who’s fame had mostly been concentrated in California and the West Coast. Everything seemed to be coming up roses for Jenni. Except her marriage.
That same April, as her album was released, Jenni separated from Juan Lopez, her second husband.
“I fought, I suffered, but Juan wasn’t with me anymore,” Jenni explained in an interview with TVNotas. “My name was getting bigger, and my husband didn’t handle what was happening in our lives very well. There was a lot of fighting and I felt like he wasn’t being supportive, and he didn’t have faith in what I had done.”
Rivera made the decision to separate. She had done all she thought possible to try and save her marriage. And, as she told La Opinion, she had consulted a marriage counselor. But things had not gotten better.
“I had to be a little more selfish; and stop thinking about everyone else and think about me,” Rivera said. “We had been fighting for a long time. One day I filled out the paperwork, I went down to the courthouse and filed for divorce. He [Juan] never believed that I would do it, but I knew I would have no regrets, that I was doing it for my own happiness. All I wanted was to try to find some peace and calm.”
Peace and calm would not come so easily. By late August, when Jenni gave the interview with La Opinion, Juan was demanding that Jenni give him a financial settlement after the divorce, and monthly alimony payments to cover all his expenses.
“I’m used to struggling to get ahead, and not take anything from anybody,” Jenni said. “I know it’s the law and I respect it, but it doesn’t seem right to me that [Juan] is asking me to financially support him.”
In a September 2003 interview in Furia Musical, Jenni was asked if she thought it was fair of Juan to ask for half of every thing after their divorce. She replied: “Well, I’ve always worked hard for my children, they are the most important thing to me, and it’s painful for me to see something that belongs to them get taken away. It’s not about him or about it, it’s about my children and their future, keeping in mind that the two smallest ones are both of ours. But, no doubt, he thinks he has a right to part of whatever was earned while we were together, which I will leave in the hands of the justice system and God.”
In the United States, it is customary for the spouse who earns the most to pay support to the other after a divorce, so it is possible that Jenni was legally required to pay spousal support to Juan, whether she agreed with it or not. But it was very clear that she would do all she could to fight for her children.
Jenni never publicly revealed how much she paid in alimony, if any, to Juan, or for how long, and the whole process of the divorce was not easy. “Of course it hurts,” she said soon after they separated, in the interview with Furia Musical. “Since I’m so busy with work, sometimes I get distracted for a minute and forget about it, but it’s very hard to set aside something that was the most important phase in my life. He was a man I loved very much. It’s impossible to just wipe out eight years of a shared life from one day to the next. But I’m strong and I’ll keep going, I have faith that I can close this chapter.”
Jenni did manage to maintain a cordial, positive relationship with her ex-husband after their divorce. Even in the interviews she granted soon after they separated, Jenni never spoke badly of Juan. This was always her approach, throughout her life. When she broke up with Esteban Loaiza years later, she never spoke ill of him in public, either. Jenni was always very respectful of her partners, and always conducted herself with nothing but class when it came to making statements about her personal life in the media. As she said many times, she was always a good wife, and she believed that a husband and wife were a team, who mutually supported each other. She would never be disloyal in that way. She told it like it was in her songs, but she never got into the unseemly habit of saying bad things about the men she had once loved (with the exception of Trino, for obvious reasons). As for Juan, he was not only Jenicka and Johnny’s father, he had also acted like a father with Jenni’s older three children, who he had known ever since they were small.
But things would end very badly for Juan. Four years later, in October 2007, he was sentenced to three years in prison for drug trafficking. By that time, Jenni was a huge star, having earned countless awards, and having reached the number one spot on Billboard’s radio charts and sales charts.
Juan was incarcerated at the California City Correctional Center in Los Angeles, California. Jenni set aside whatever differences she may have had in the past with her ex-husband. They had promised to be friends until the end for their children’s sake, and Jenni took them to visit their father as often as she could.
Life behind bars is not easy for those on the inside, or for their family members on the outside. In Jenni’s case, all of her children behaved like a cohesive unit, all supporting each another. A three-year sentence doesn’t exactly pass in the blink of any eye, but it is bearable; Juan Lopez must have been looking forward to seeing Jenicka and Johnny, still children, when he was released. But once again, destiny had other plans.
In June 2009, with over half of his sentence served, Juan Lo pez got sick in prison. According to an article published by Bandamax TV, Juan’s cellmate said that at first, the prison doctor did not want to attend to him. And when he finally did, Juan was already seriously ill. Then he was rushed to the Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster, California on June 17.
His family did not find out about what had happened to Juan until June 23, when he was in critical condition. Jenni and her children went to see him immediately and were constantly at his bedside, until the hospital barred them from visiting, saying they were attracting too much media attention. Not only were Jenni and her children not allowed to visit, Juan’s parents were no longer allowed, either. What happened next was one of the most painful episodes in Jenni Rivera’s life.
Since Jenni wasn’t allowed to visit Juan anymore, she took her children along with her to attend a dedication ceremony for a new music wing at a local school. Meanwhile, in that lonely hospital room, Juan Lopez died…all alone.
“My children were at an elementary school with me that was dedicating its new music and arts department, named after me,” Jenni said in interviews later. “It was very beautiful. Six hours later, their papi died, all alone, in a hospital in Lancaster.”
Juan Lopez died without his family around him. The cause of death was reportedly pulmonary failure, although some sources say it was a heart attack.
“The point is he died alone,” Jenni said. “How sad. Because he had been married to and had children with a celebrity.” She added that “it’s crazy that on the one hand, because of my name and what I’ve achieved in my career, I’m commemorated and honored, but at the same time they deprive me of the chance to visit the man I once loved in the final moments of his life.”
At the end, Jenni offered some words that now seem to sadly foreshadow the future: “[My children] are devastated. They can’t believe it. I pray to God to give me the strength and wisdom to guide them in the days to come. The funeral, the burial and the rest of their lives. There’s no instruction book on how to be their guide. Their mommy fixes everything, but this can’t be fixed.”