The Rivera family’s craziest feuds over the years

In January 2022, after Juan held a press conference where he denied ever threatening Jenicka's life and basically implied that she lied, she tweeted: "I wouldn’t lie especially when it comes to death & being threatened." After getting a lot of questions in response to her tweet, she wrote: "Word for word from Brenda, 'you should be scared, I wanna come find you and [expletive] you up to show you some respect Nina malagradecida.”

Juan Rivera held a press conference in January 2022 and addressed the problems he has had with his sister Jenni's children and also problems he has with his brother Lupillo. Juan also defended himself against accusations of stealing money and threatening his nieces' lives. According to him, he never threatened Jenicka and she made the accusation up.

At one point, he started crying and asking his late sister Jenni to forgive him for all that has gone wrong between him and her children. Not because he stole anything from them or took advantage of them, but for somehow having failed them and getting to where they are now. Kind of like an "I'm sorry, but I don't know what for."

On January 9, 2022, Jenicka tweeted: "just so y’all know, if anything happens to my family and i, my sister and us were just threatened by Brenda and Juan Rivera tonight." Apparently, she and Chiquis were fighting with their uncle Juan and his wife Brenda.

Back in June 2021, Jenni Rivera's youngest son, Johnny, appeared on El Gordo y la Flaca after an audit of his mother's will ousted his aunt Rosie Rivera as executor and put his sister Jacqie in charge. He claimed that he and his siblings have never received a financial report from his mother's businesses as her will indicated they should. He said that every time they've requested one, his aunt Rosie and uncle Juan have failed to provide one and instead shamed him and his siblings and accused them of being disrespectful. He also indicated that he would be fine never seeing Rosie and Juan again.

After Johnny's TV appearance, his siblings—including the eldest, Chiquis, who reportedly was not included in her mother's will due to a falling out they had prior to her death (more on that below)—expressed their loyalty to each other. "Momma, the plan we had is still at work, and I know you’re helping and guiding me from where you are. Thank you! I see it and I feel it, daily. You are my rock, and now the wind beneath MY wings. I miss you, so much," she wrote on Instagram.

Jenni's brother Lupillo, who really doesn't speak to much of his family anymore besides his mother, decided to weigh in on the drama, saying in a statement to the press, "Here there are no sides, here the side that exists is reality, simply, here there is no side of the nephews, or the side of the brothers, here there is a reality … it is that my nephews do not have a father, no they have a mother and it is my responsibility as an uncle to advise them on life, not advise them on work, advise them on life. The key question is, now that you have been audited, does it mean that you are no longer going to help your nephews? Because they are not strangers. They are nephews, who do not have a mother or father," he continued, but some think he only spoke out to go against Rosie and Juan.

In early 2020, Jenni's youngest daughter, Jenicka, lashed out at her uncle Juan and her aunt Rosie on social media after she realized that they were participating in a charity event with her sister Chiquis' ex-husband Lorenzo Méndez. Both Rosie and Juan claimed they had no idea Lorenzo was going to be there until they saw Jenicka's post.

The singer's firstborn, Ayana Rivera, took to Instagram in November 2020 to thank a blogger for exposing her uncle, who supposedly had created fake social media accounts to attack her father after the singer and his father, Don Pedro Rivera, recorded a video singing at the site where Jenni died. The post has since been deleted, but here's what she wrote in the caption:

"Maybe it's true… maybe not. My sisters and I know the truth….the good thing about my sisters and I… is we DONT GIVE A [expletive] ABOUT LOOKING GOOD TO THE PUBLIC or making our image look 'great'. I don't care about what people say, but let me tell you that WE DO KNOW THE TRUTH…thank you @damavenenosa for confirming that Juan RIvera has fake pages…it was about time that people know about this[…] It will soon be confirmed 🙂 I enjoy watching your videos and how real you are. Your not fake at all Muuuaaw Muuuaaw."

Abigail went on Instagram Live to give her version of the events. According to Abigail, Chiquis tried to arrange a sit down with Ayana but she was not interested in discussing the issue any further. That is when Abigail decided to send Chiquis some messages that ended up making her angry. She expected Chiquis to ask her to meet up but she got a far different reaction.

Jenicka allegedly called her drunk at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, March 31, 2018, saying that she was outside of her house to fight her and Ayana. Abigail refused to go outside, stating that she was home alone with her 2-year-old daughter. She alleged that Chiquis was also on the phone, sounded drunk, and the sisters said all kinds of obscenities to her. Abigail claims that Chiquis dared her to leave her daughter asleep and come out and confront them.

At the time, the singer also took to Instagram to express how hurt she was to receive criticism from her own blood and admitted that she let her emotions get the best of her. But she said she doesn’t regret what she said. "At that moment I was like 'Oh my gosh, girl. I just want to slap you around a little bit because you need to learn to respect me. And I’ve never disrespected you.'"

Ayana went on Instagram Live and accused Chiquis of getting a boy who had naked photos of Johnny jumped before he came out as gay. This is what supposedly made Ayana fear for her family’s safety and go to the extreme measure of getting a restraining order.

When Chiquis’ fans began attacking Abigail during her Instagram Live, she responded, "Honestly, people can call me fat. I don’t care. Come up with something better. At least I didn’t [expletive] with my mom’s man. At least I didn’t do that."

And she didn’t stop there. "Honestly, I’m sorry, but my cousin doesn’t have talent and there’s nothing for me to be jealous about," she said. "I’m sorry, I’m not jealous about your lips. I’m not jealous about your body. You [paid] for it anyway." Ouch!

"Unfortunately or fortunately, we have to understand that there will always be people/women/men who are bitter," Chiquis said in Spanish, speaking very softly on Instagram Live, a few weeks later.

"It’s part of the show. It’s part of being in the entertainment business. We have to know that there will be people who will do whatever possible to make you look bad. The only thing we can do is continue moving forward and to do what you can to be a light in this world,” she added. It comes with the territory of being successful and "having something special," according to Chiquis.

And the cousins' feud is only one of many within this family.

The two hadn't spoken for several years until a few weeks before her untimely death on December 9, 2012. But the reasons have never been clear. "Our careers have nothing to do with it, music has nothing to do with it. Some mistakes were made that should have never been made and when people don't apologize, then you don't know how to forgive, or you can't forgive if you don't get an apology," the singer told New York's El Diario in 2012. "Now, if she wants to explain it, then let her explain it".

In July 2015, the late singer's mural in Long Beach, California, was vandalized and her children suspected that their uncle Lupillo may have had something to do with it. Well, not him directly, but they thought he had incited his fans to do it. "My uncle never wanted anything to do with us, not even when my mom was alive," Johnny said during an interview on Despierta América. However, Univision reported that the culprits may be gang members from the east and west sides of LA. Sadly, the family drama doesn't end there!

Mayeli, Lupillo's wife at the time, responded to allegations that her husband may have been involved in tagging and ruining his sister's mural. "The act of ruining the mural is truly disgusting, but even more disgusting is accusing Lupillo of being involved," she wrote on a since deleted Instagram post.

The famous uncle really went for the jugular when he publicly dissed her singing abilities. "To me, she's nothing special as an artist," he told Spanish-language media in 2014. Ouch! That's a mean thing to say about anyone, but to say it about a family member seems particularly mean. It's not like she wouldn't find out what he said.

The singer told TV Azteca's Ventaneando: "It's not fair that people say that we are all against Lupe, because it's not like that. If he is estranged from the family, is because he wants to, and he has done many things that I have never revealed and that I may tell one day. I love him dearly, but there are many things he has done that have hurt us a lot, especially the kids [of the family]. And I'm like my mom in that sense, if you hurt my siblings, I become a lioness. I learned that from my mom."

"I spoke about some issues with my sister [Jenni] and I stayed with what she told me," Lupillo said in October 2017. "That doesn't mean I don't love my niece or that I don't love so and so, it's simply that my sister told me many things and she died a week after, and so I stayed with those things [she told me]." This seems to be a reference to the fact that Jenni thought that something was going on between Chiquis and Esteban.

Lupillo's relationship with his siblings and the rest of the family has always been rocky, to say the least. After Jenni's death, things got even worse, to the point where Lupillo even told El Gordo y La Flaca in 2013: "I absolutely don't care to talk to them. I don't care at all." One of the reasons for their endless feud is that they have all accused each other of using Jenni's death for personal gain.

Although Lupillo has made it clear he wants nothing to do with his family, Rosie hopes they can work on their differences. "We all have our different options," she told TVyNovelas in 2014. "We have never fought over money or over who is more famous. We have all been mourning and we all have our own ways of dealing with things, but we will heal with time. Maybe one day we can ask each other for forgiveness. Lupillo was like a second father to me. He always gave me advice about men. Now I wish he could give me advice about my marriage." Years later, Lupillo posted a picture of himself kissing Rosie and thanked her for loving him even during times he may not deserve it.

"We are all very united," Doña Rosa told TVyNovelas in March 2017. "The only one that's not is Lupillo, but, as I have said, or he is crazy or I am or we are all crazy. But no, it's just that we think differently."

The Rivera family matriarch also said that she and Lupillo do not speak to each other and that she assumes he is upset "with his siblings … because I have not done anything to him and he has not done anything to me. He simply distanced himself and I have done the same."

But things change because in 2020, Lupillo posted this picture of himself kissing his mom and wishing her a happy Mother's Day.

The singer continues to be close to his father and they even work together every now and then. Lupillo never seems to have stopped communicating with his father like he did with his mother. His parents divorced in 2008.

Shortly after their trip to Mexico to search for Jenni's remains, the two brothers had a huge fight. What started as an argument escalated and it resulted in Gustavo hitting Lupillo's car with a bat, all while the singer was inside the car with his wife and kids. According to Lupillo, the fight broke out because Gustavo got upset after Lupillo made public a photo of them and their brother Juan next to a cross they had put up in their sister's honor at the site where the plane crashed. Apparently, as per the singer's own words, his brother "wanted to make some money" by selling the photo.

After his family accused his wife at the time of being the reason why Lupillo had distanced himself from the whole family, the singer lashed out against his brother Juan (pictured here with Rosie) and even accused him of stealing from the singer.

"So, it's my wife's fault that Juan is stealing from money from me, that he's stealing cars, oh, please!" the singer said on Univision's Sal y Pimienta in December 2015. "What my wife wants is for all of us to be united … We all make mistakes and you have to learn to recognize when you make them, to be a man is to say, 'I messed up, I'm sorry.' That's what you have to do."

According to sources, Rosie, who has full administrative control over Jenni's business ventures, told her dad he could not release any of Jenni's unreleased music without her permission. But apparently the two worked it out and in December 2017, Don Pedro released an album titled Angel Baby, which consists of 12 songs by the late singer.

When Jenni distanced herself from Chiquis a couple of months before her tragic death, thinking that her daughter was having a romance with her husband Esteban Loaiza, Rosie took her sister's side. But after Jenni's death, Chiquis was able to show her family that it was all a big misunderstanding. Both Chiquis and Rosie asked each other for forgiveness publicly and their relationship is now better than ever.

In October 2014, Chiquis was officially granted guardianship of her younger siblings, Jenicka and Johnny. At the time, it was rumored that Chiquis and Rosie's relationship continued to be on the rocks, after not speaking to each other since months before Jenni's death. Earlier that year, after Rosie gave a TV interview where she asked Chiquis for forgiveness for thinking she may have had something to do with her mom's then husband, Esteban Loaiza, the "Paloma Blanca" singer tweeted, "It's sad what 'certain' people will do for attention. God I will leave it in your hands."

In the fall of 2014, there were reports that Chiquis kicked her aunt out of the home Jenni left to her kids after she supposedly caught Rosie playing music in the late singer's bedroom and trying on Jenni's old clothes. Maybe Rosie was just missing Jenni. Still, it would have been upsetting for Chiquis to see.

This is by far the craziest feud in this family! Jenni stopped talking to her oldest daughter thinking that she was having a romance with Jenni's husband, Esteban. According to reports, Jenni saw a video that showed Chiquis leaving Jenni's room and fixing her clothes, all while Esteban was inside the room. While Chiquis has denied that anything happened between her and her former stepdad, Jenni took that pain to the grave.