"Here ends my story that started from nothing," read one message that appeared on the Costa Rica-born star's Twitter account moments after her death at a hospital in the southern Mexican city of Cuernavaca.
"At around one in the afternoon, a few minutes ago, Chavela died. She went peacefully and did not complain," said the artist's close friend Maria Cortina, outside the hospital.
"Silence, silence: After today, bitterness will again be bitter," read another message on her Twitter account.
According to the post-mortum Tweets, Vargas left "like the greats: with her (signature) shaman medallion and her red" poncho.
During her stay of just over a week in intensive care after returning from a trip to Spain to promote her album "La Luna Grande," the artist asked for her shamanic medallion, a gift from the Huichol indigenous people, who called her a shaman. The Huichol believe that among other spiritual gifts, shamans can transcend death.
"I'm not going to die, because I am a shaman and we do not die, we transcend," Vargas said Friday. That night, a group of fans came to the hospital to serenade her.
Born Isabel Vargas Lizano, she moved to Mexico when she was a teenager. Vargas began her career singing with a guitar on the streets of Mexico City, where she was discovered by composer Jose Alfredo Jimenez.
Famed around most of the Spanish-speaking world and with many fans elsewhere, the hoarse-voiced singer, was perhaps best known for songs such as "De un mundo raro," "La Llorona" and "Paloma Negra," was also a living legend for her relationship with alcohol, her homosexuality and her friendship with other Mexican cultural icons such as painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.