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Date Posted: 04:31:49 03/14/05 Mon
Author: Tribune foreign correspondent
Subject: Trevi ready to shine after prison

Trevi ready to shine after prison
By Hugh Dellios Tribune foreign correspondent

She descended to the stage in a cage. She cracked a whip. She treated the crowd to her old standard of luring up a young fan and stripping off his clothes.

But she also shed a few tears. She did not rip her stockings or wear a bandoleer of condoms as she used to do. And sitting in the front row, in a little suit and tie, was her 3-year-old son, Angel Gabriel, clapping for Mommy.

Gloria Trevi, the wild-child pop singer once known as the Mexican Madonna, is back in concert, six months after walking out of prison when prosecutors dropped rape and kidnapping charges against her in one of Mexico's most lurid scandals.

Trevi, 35, opened her "Trevolution" tour in her hometown of Monterrey this month. She was to perform in Mexico City this weekend, and will soon head to Chicago and 19 other cities in the U.S., where her album of prison-written songs has sold better than in her native Mexico.

As she took the stage, the big question for fans and critics was whether the one-time symbol of sexual liberation and teenage rebellion can regain the huge following she had in the 1990s, now that her image is entwined with a tawdry affair in which she was accused of helping entrap wannabe starlets for the sexual pleasures of her manager.


Some believe the image she now promotes--innocent victim exploited by her manager and persecuted by authorities--will help her sell CDs, if not in conservative Mexico then among the immigrants in the U.S. who may remember her best days and may relate to her tale of hardship.


"I hate the word `victim.' I don't like the word `martyr' either. I am a survivor," Trevi said in a telephone interview on the eve of her first concert, insisting that it's her music rather than the scandal that will propel her comeback.

"I don't think the problem I had gives me fans. Whoever says something like that is stupid," she said. "Nobody is going to buy a record of Monica Lewinsky. You buy a record when you like the song, when you like the singer."

A hot commodity
A decade ago, nobody was hotter in Mexico.

Trevi, who began her singing career at 14 after a difficult childhood, shocked the more conservative in Mexico's macho culture with the openly sexual and rebellious message in her songs and rowdy concerts. She attracted hordes of fans with her music, movies, TV appearances and fast-selling pin-up calendars.

Then came the scandal. In 1998, a former backup singer published a book in which she said she was tortured, starved and sexually abused by Trevi and their manager, Sergio Andrade. She said dozens of girls had been similarly victimized.

After the woman filed a criminal complaint, Trevi, Andrade and their entourage of young women vanished. They were arrested in Brazil in 2000, but only after one of the girls, 14, had allegedly abandoned a baby in Spain. Authorities said other girls had come forward to say they were abused as well.


For two years, Trevi fought extradition to Mexico. During that time, she mysteriously became pregnant inside an all-women's prison in Brazil.


She initially said she was raped by a prison guard, but DNA tests showed that the father was Andrade, who was suspected of bribing a guard to arrange trysts with Trevi. Police suspect the couple conspired to get Trevi pregnant to help fight extradition.


Finally, in December 2002, Trevi and Andrade agreed to return and face trial in Mexico, where the scandal created a media frenzy. But last September, prosecutors dismissed the charges against her, saying they did not have enough evidence.


While Andrade still sits in prison awaiting trial, Trevi's release was greeted by ecstatic fans, and she lost no time in staging her comeback. She released her latest CD in December and appeared barely covered on the front of a Mexican men's magazine. As the Michael Jackson trial unfolded, she was interviewed as an expert on celebrity trials.

And, of course, there are the rights to her life story. "Yes, there are some offers," she said. "But not now. Right now I am concentrating in my concerts."

Hotter in U.S.

Her new CD, titled "How the Universe was Born," had lukewarm sales in Mexico. But it sprang onto the Latin pop charts in the U.S.

"We really love martyr stories," said Ernesto Lechner, a Los Angeles-based Latin music critic. "It's almost like a novella, and we love the novella. An immigrant who struggled to come here may identify with someone who has suffered and gone through hell."

Jackie Madrigal, Latin formats editor for Radio and Records, a trade publication, said Trevi's early sales were "pretty decent," although they appear to have trailed off a bit.

"I feel the big thing with Gloria Trevi is whether she will be able to have success after the controversy has worn out, whether people will buy the second or third album," Madrigal said. "I heard a lot of people say [the new CD] is very much the Gloria Trevi of the '90s. Musically, there is no evolution there."

While her tepid sales in Mexico probably reflect many Mexicans' distaste over the scandal, some young fans say Trevi is even more of an inspiration than before. That was the feeling among members of a fan club that meets outside Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts every Sunday.

"She says to us that there is always a tomorrow and that there are no limits on achieving what we want," said Gabriel Sanchez, 27, who drove nine hours and paid $80 to see Trevi in Monterrey. "On stage, she was a little less explosive than before. We cried with her through half the concert."

In the interview, Trevi said her "trevolution" is inside more than outside. She said her legal travails and motherhood have made her more thoughtful and emotional, although she is still not ready to give up the wild side.

"I can use a more elegant dress and pretend I'm a serious girl, or I can wear a purple dress with an iguana on the neck and say I'm crazier than ever, but I think that's a false evolution. You know, it's just image," Trevi said.

`Stronger than ever'

"I am happy because many people wanted to destroy me," she said. "But now I'm prettier than ever. I'm stronger than ever. I have a beautiful son. I know there is a new generation that is just getting to know me. And there is a generation that I know will never forget me."

Trevi, who now lives part time in Miami, insisted on doing the interview in her carefully practiced English. So it was deliberate and blunt but without the saucy choice of words her fans are used to hearing. Only a couple of times did she resort to Spanish, such as when she wanted to emphasize that prosecutors "recognized that I wasn't guilty."

Over the phone, Trevi broke into one of her new songs "El Domador," or "The Tamer," the lyrics of which describe how she was corralled and mistreated.

When asked by whom, she said, "Oh baby, that's a very, very long story. You want to see the movie."

Trevi criticized Mexican society for presuming she was guilty. She admitted there were "immoral things that were not well done, you know, and I disapprove [of them]." But she said she doesn't think what was done to the girls was criminal. She said it was consensual.

She portrayed herself as being under the spell of Andrade, who began managing her career when she was 14. Trevi said she was in love with him "for many years."

"Nobody can be in a problem like that without making a mistake," she said. "I trusted the wrong people. I was in love with the wrong people. I was friends with the wrong people.

"I don't think God is going to be angry because I dance that way. I think he has more important things to think about. There are more important things than how you dress, for example, or how you don't dress."

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