Valentin Gonzalez was just 7 years old when he picked up a vihuela for the first time to play the music that has run through his family’s veins for five generations.
He learned mariachi from his father, who learned from his father in Mexico and has played with renowned Mexican ensembles, founded a mariachi academy and led top groups in the borderland.
Now, Gonzalez is working to keep his culture and family’s legacy alive by teaching the next generation of mariachi musicians at Del Valle Middle and Del Valle High schools.
Valentín González, Jr., left, and his father, also Valentín González, recount their family’s history as multi-generational mariachi musicians, Dec. 11, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
“The best mariachi community in the nation is in El Paso, Texas. The way that the community accepts it and includes it in the tradition. Mariachi is found in any form of life in our culture,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve played at births of kids, and baby showers. We’ve played to people passing away in hospice and to celebrate people who have passed. We play at celebrations like Christmas parties. … It strengthens our identity here.”
When school is back in session after the holidays, Del Valle students will be among a handful of public school groups gearing up to compete in the University Interscholastic League Region Mariachi Contest in February. The winners will advance to the state-level competition where they will compete against mariachi groups from all over Texas.
Aaralyn González, granddaughter of Valentín González, Sr., and niece of Valentín González, Jr., plays the violin during a performance of Mariachi Los Conquistadores, Dec. 11, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
One of the students preparing to compete for Del Valle High School is Valentin Gonzalez’s 16-year-old violin-playing niece, Aaralyn Gonzalez, who began learning mariachi at 4 years old.
“Being in mariachi, it connects you with every type of emotion, whether you’re mad or you’re sad or jumping out and you’re happy,” Aaralyn said after performing with Mariachi Los Conquistadores on Dec. 11 at the YISD School Board Holiday Reception.
Many of his students echoed the importance of mariachi in El Paso’s culture.
“Every time we do a mariachi group, it really hypes up the place and it’s something that comes from years and years from the Hispanic culture. So, I think it’s very important for us and other school groups playing mariachi,” 17-year-old Chantel Escorza said.
Mariachi bands typically comprise violins, trumpets, guitarrones, vihuelas and sometimes, an accordion and harp, and is also known for its traditional charro dress and the popular gritos – wails conveying passion, pain, love or celebration.
While mariachi as we know it was likely created in the mid-1800s, its origins date back to the 1500s when Spanish colonizers, African Slaves and Native Americans in Mexico began sharing their customs, traditions and music, according to the Smithsonian Institute’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
Historians believe it came from ranches and small towns of western Mexico, and was often played by poor or working class people. As mariachi music made its way to the U.S., its songs about love, loss and the beauty of Mexico became a source of pride for many Mexican-Americans and Mexicans living in the country.
A family’s legacy
For Gonzalez, mariachi music is also about family: His father, Venacio Gonzalez, whose stage name is Valentin Del Castillo, learned from his own father in Mexico.
Del Castillo, 62, grew up in Valles, Mexico, a small city about 240 miles north of Mexico City known by tourists for its lush forests and scenic waterfalls.
His home was the type of place that didn’t have much but the bare necessities, with a metal roof to protect them from the elements, an outhouse in the back and dirt floors that needed to be sprinkled with water to compact the earth and prevent dust from kicking up in the air.
Valentin Del Castillo’s childhood home in Valles, Mexico. (Photo Courtesy of Valentin Gonzalez)
“It was very simple, you know, very humble,” Gonzalez said.
Del Castillo learned mariachi alongside his five brothers from his father, Arturo Gonzalez, and his grandparents when he was 10 years old.
At 16, he began working at an oil refinery making a meager living, but quit soon after the skills his family taught him nabbed him a job in Mexico City.
He performed at Teatro Blanquita, a now-closed historic venue where many iconic Mexican entertainers performed including Tin Tan, Cantinflas and Marco Antonio Muñiz, and Salon Tenampa, a cantina that’s hosted live mariachi for nearly a century.
Del Castillo said he went from making 1,400 to 30,000 pesos (from about $70 to $1,500) a day, which changed his family’s life.
“Dije, ‘Adiós refinería; me quedo con los mariachis,’” Del Catillo said in Spanish about the time he got his first paycheck. “I said, ‘Goodbye, refinery, I’ll stick to the mariachis.’”
His home went from dirt floors to concrete and carpet. He bought his mother a refrigerator, a radio and other modern amenities that were once out of reach for them.
Del Castillo visited the U.S. for the first time in the 1980s as a recording artist with Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, a renowned Mexican ensemble with roots dating back to the 1890s. After touring the country with the group, he went back to Mexico, but didn’t stay for long.
“He liked the U.S. more,” Gonzalez said about his father. “So, when Mexico City had its famous earthquake in 85, everything got destroyed and my dad said, ‘I’m out.’ And he took off to the United States.”
Del Castillo said he moved to Anthony, Texas, 40 years ago and started playing mariachi throughout the borderland. He was eventually recruited to play for Viva! El Paso, where he got his first taste of the region’s love for mariachi music.
“La gente es muy alegre, muy bailadora. Y el mariachi, pues, no pasa de moda. Las bandas de rock pasan, pero el mariachi nunca va a pasar,” he said about El Paso’s connection to mariachi. “The people are very joyful and love to dance. And mariachi, well it never goes out of style. Rock bands go out of style, but mariachi never will.”
Over the years, he performed with the local groups Mariachi Los Galleros and Mariachi Real de Jalisco and became a staple of the annual musical performed at the McKelligon Canyon Amphitheater.
Middle-school mariachi musicians rehearse during a class with their director, Valentín González, Dec. 16, 2024. (Luis Torres/El Paso Matters)
Del Castillo’s passion for mariachi also helped him find love: He met his wife, Edelmira Gonzalez, while working for Viva! El Paso in 1985.
“Pense que tenia mucho talento y era muy bonita,” Del Castillo said in Spanish. “I thought she was very talented and she was very beautiful.”
They both worked under the musical’s creator Hector Serrano, who died unexpectedly of a heart attack on Christmas Eve.
Del Castillo said Serrano often forbade relationships among his performers, but eventually made an exception for them. Many of Edelmira’s fellow dancers often told her Del Castillo was too focused on a career to pursue a relationship.
“Nunca pensamos que nos íbamos a enamorar,” he said in Spanish. “We never thought we were going to fall in love.”
When Del Castillo had children of his own, he passed his passion down to them.
He said Valentin Gonzalez had a natural talent for learning mariachi.
“Él es fanático de la música Mexicana. Yo apenas iba a agarrar el libro cuando él ya se sabía la canción,” Del Castillo said. “He is a Mexican music fanatic. I was barely going to get the book and he already knew the song.”
His other son, Manny Gonzalez, teaches mariachi at the Harmony School of Excellence, and his daughter, Ruby Gonzalez, plays with the University of Texas at El Paso Symphony Orchestra.
The life of a mariachi kept Del Castillo busy in the early days of his career, but that began to change over the years as it became less common to hire professional mariachis over students who were willing to play for free, Gonzalez said.
“Growing up, my father used to play nonstop Tuesday to Sunday and perform at around 10 to 12 places a day,” Gonzalez said. “As the years went by, they weren’t being utilized anymore. It was dying off.”
Eventually, Del Castillo’s wife encouraged him to step back from the spotlight and teach others the music he loves.
Together they started the Academia Internacional de Mariachi Los Toritos — the International Academy of Mariachi Los Toritos — and the youth mariachi group Los Toritos de Valentin Del Castillo in 2001 to teach his children and their friends about mariachi music.
“It wasn’t to teach them a short act to go and play at bars and make money. It’s about using your culture to survive and becoming much better than when you were sent to be here,” Gonzalez said. “Not only did we learn to play notes, but my dad taught us responsibility in how to grow to become better citizens in the United States.”
Though Gonzalez said his dad has been the face of Los Toritos, his mom was the “brains” and the “motor” behind it, often planning sold out concerts at the Chamizal National Memorial Cultural Center with little or no sponsors.
“My mother is a person who is passionate about our culture and makes it a point for us to respect that tradition. She was that person that would remind you at a performance to make sure (you) don’t forget your neck now or tuck in your shirt. Letting you know that you are disrespecting the traje de charro,” Gonzalez said.
Many past members of Los Toritos have gone on to teach mariachi in El Paso County, including Clint Independent School District choir teacher Luis Rodriguez, Socorro High School mariachi teacher Juan Gonzelez, Riverside High School mariachi teacher Ramon Acosta and Fabens High School mariachi teacher Natalie Carrasco, who is engaged to Valentin Gonzalez.
Del Castillo has also taught mariachi throughout the U.S., including in Tucson, San Antonio and Los Angeles. He currently teaches at the Lydia Patterson Institute private high school in South-Central El Paso.
Teaching a new generation
Though mariachi has been a category in regional UIL competitions since 2006, it wasn’t recognized at the state level until 2017.
Gonzalez said that many of the mariachi programs in schools throughout El Paso are relatively new.
Many of the programs are proving successful.
Last year, the mariachi groups at Hanks, Franklin, Americas and Socorro high schools received Division I Superior rankings, the highest rating possible at the state championship.
Del Valle High School ensemble Mariachi Los Conquistadores received a Division II Excellent ranking. Gonzalez said it was the first year some of his middle school students took part in the high school level competition.
While Del Valle had music teachers who showed students mariachi in the past, the schools did not have official mariachi classes until Gonzalez joined the district and started the program in 2019.
Now he has 40 middle and 40 high school students in his classes and another 80 on a waiting list.
“Me siento bien orgulloso de él. Como ha llevado nuestra música, nuestra cultura, sus enseñanzas son bien bonitas,” Del Castillo said in Spanish. “I feel very proud of him. The way he has carried our music, our culture, his teachings are very beautiful.”
Valentín González, director of mariachi bands at Del Valle Middle School and High School, instructs his middle school students during rehearsal, Dec. 11, 2024. (Luis Torres/El Paso Matters)
Gonzalez said he designed the program for students who are already in a music class and only offers intermediate and advanced level courses.
“Every student that was going to join mariachi actually has to be participating in a mother program, which means they will be getting fundamentals and basic training of their main instrument in band, choir, piano, orchestra (and) guitar,” Gonzales said.
Many of the students who join mariachi already had an interest in the music or family who encouraged them to learn it.
“Usually, it’s the most vocal, outgoing kids,” Gonzalez said about the students who join mariachi. “I get a lot of kids that listen to Mexican music at home with their parents, and it calls their attention.”
Chantel, his student, said she started learning mariachi when she was four after her parents noticed she had an interest in music.
“My parents noticed that I started singing by myself when I was little, and then I really told my parents that I wanted to join a mariachi group,” Chantel said.
His niece, Aaralyn, a fifth-generation mariachi musician, said her family’s long history with the music got her interested in playing it.
“Being around the music so much and just being so involved seeing it growing up, I just have to do it,” she said.
Rudy Hernandez Gutierrez, a sophomore harpist in Mariachi Los Conquistadores, listens to an after-performance speech by director Valentín González, Dec. 11, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
Sophomore Rudy Hernandez-Gutierez, who grew up in Chicago, said his parents always loved mariachi music and encouraged him to learn it when they moved to the borderland.
“Once we had the chance to move to El Paso, they were like, You know what? You should join mariachi. Be more Hispanic,” Rudy said.
Even with a waiting list of students and a network of teachers introducing mariachi to students, Gonzalez has gone beyond his comfort zone hoping to attract a new generation of mariachi musicians.
“I’m a very traditionalist mariachi person. Since I am an advocate of education and preserving mariachi in its natural form, I am against mariachis playing popular music in regard to Peso Pluma and all that stuff you hear on the radio. But at the same time, I do understand that mariachi groups have to play a little bit of that to connect with a different audience,” Gonzalez said.
Some of his younger students echoed the importance of keeping with tradition.
“I agree with not playing modern music because we’re really playing for our parents sometimes, and older groups of people. So I feel like if we played older traditional music, we would help connect with them,” said 14-year-old Derek Estrada during his mariachi class at Del Valle Middle School.
Others thought it was vital to embrace old and new music alike in mariachi.
“Once in a while, for younger kids of this generation, to play them a song … it’s kind of fun,” 13-year-old Julia Lopez added.
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