How trailblazer Rebecca Gonzales broke through mariachi machismo in the 70's

From its start over 200 years ago in central Mexico to the late 20th century, the mariachi genre was traditionally dominated by all-male groups.

Until Rebecca Gonzales helped bust open the door.

“It was very difficult for me in the very beginning,” Gonzales said in a recorded interview now available as part of UCLA's oral history project, Mariachi Music in Los Angeles and beyond. “I felt like all the eyes were on me."

All eyes were on her.

Keep up with LAist.

If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.

Subscribe

As the sole woman in the leading mariachi group Los Camperos de Nati Cano, the house band at famed La Fonda restaurant in the 1970s, and one of a handful of women in the scene at all, she was a rarity. Gonzales was not the first woman to play music in the genre, but she was the first to be asked to join such a high profile all-male mariachi in either the U.S. or Mexico.

A third generation American integrates a very Mexican genre

Rebecca Gonzales was born in 1953 in San Jose, California. Her mother was born in Arizona and her father in Texas. Her grandparents immigrated from Mexico.

“I never learned Spanish… I started taking Spanish at a community college,” she said.

She started playing violin at 10 years-old and would practice at home with her younger sister.

Rebecca Gonzales, center, joined Los Abajenos de Isidro Rivera before joining Los Camperos de Nati Cano in L.A.

(

Rebecca Gonzales collection, courtesy Mary Alvaro Velasco.

)

“I was an average student. I mean, the only thing I was really good at was music,” she said.

And she was painfully shy, she said. But that all changed when she was 16 and had her first boyfriend.

“He was a musician, so we had that in common, and we would go to concerts all the time. And back then, there was fantastic concerts going on at the Fillmore in San Francisco, where he was, an hour drive from my house,” Gonzales said. That's where she saw Carlos Santana, Jethro Tull and other late 60s rock stars.

Those experiences fed her love of many musical genres, but her music studies still focused on classical violin.

Mariachi wasn’t part of her cultural upbringing. Her father liked and played norteño, the accordion-focused music played by small musical groups on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.

But when she signed up for a mariachi class at San Jose City College after graduating high school, it was a revelation. The joy and smiles on the faces of the students in that class were contagious, a far cry from the serious face she made, she said, when playing classical music.

“I'll never forget coming home to let my father know that night. I said, 'You know what? This music is really great… I think this is going to be a big part of my life,'" Gonzales said.

She began playing and singing in local Mariachi bands. But that wasn't enough to leave classical music just yet. She transferred to Cal State L.A. and Cal State Northridge to continue studying classical music.

Her big break in L.A.

Mariachi’s pull, however, continued in L.A. The leader of a local mariachi ensemble asked her to join and she jumped at the chance. She also visited La Fonda, to hear what was arguably the best mariachi group outside Mexico at that time, Los Camperos de Nati Cano, the house band at the club on Wilshire Blvd.

Rebecca Gonzales, front-left, was the first woman to join an established all-male mariachi in 1976 in either the U.S. or Mexico.

(

Rebecca Gonzales collection, courtesy Mary Alfaro Velasco

)

“My big break came when I… went there one night to visit, and there was my friend that I worked with in the mariachi in San Jose," who was playing for Los Camperos, she said.

The friend asked Gonzales to come up on stage. A few more impromptu performances followed, until the group's manager asked her to come back again so the founder, Nati Cano, could see her.

“He hired me that night,” she said.

Gonzales was not even 25 years old.

“That took a lot of guts. That's inspiring," said Mary Alfaro Velasco, an L.A. based bolero and mariachi performer who interviewed Gonzales for the archive. “That she went into this all-male, paisa-man environment, as a young Mexican American girl, pochita, that didn't even speak the language."

Gonzales spent eight years playing with Los Camperos, where she became a celebrity of sorts in the U.S. mariachi scene.

“A lot of movie stars used to come to La Fonda,” Gonzales said, noting actors Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Montgomery, and former Beatle George Harrison, who brought his Latina wife, Olivia.

There’s even a photo of her in a mariachi outfit dancing with President Ronald Reagan.

Rebecca Gonzales, left, dances with Ronald Reagan in a photo dated 1982, when Reagan was U.S. President.

(

Rebecca Gonzales collection, courtesy Mary Alfaro Velasco

)

But it was not always glamorous. Gonzales told Velasco about some of the painful parts of being the first woman in such a famous all-male mariachi band.

“I remember her describing what it was like, playing in restaurants [when she was a young woman] and literally being assaulted, men touching her,” Alfaro Velasco said.

La Fonda’s house mariachi made it a tourist destination, including visitors from Japan. The group’s leaders recognized that and included songs outside the Mexican repertoire, like Sakura, a Japanese folk song that’s become representative of Japan.

“I would sing it… and they loved it because we're connecting with their culture,” Gonzales said.

Eight years of performing at La Fonda ultimately took its toll on her health. Patrons smoked inside La Fonda because it had not been banned yet. She began feeling sick, and asked that ventilation be put in. But, she said, the managers refused.

“That was one of the things that turned me off and made me want to leave the group,” she said.

After she left the group in the mid-1980s, she joined other groups and founded her own. In 2004, she was inducted into the Tucson International Mariachi Conference Hall of Fame and in 2023 the Mariachi Spectacular de Albuquerque also inducted her into its hall of fame.

One of her aspirations was for a woman to do what she'd done in the home of mariachi music.

“I'm hoping that I live to see the day that a woman is part of one of those big groups in Mexico,” she said in the interview.

But that didn't happen. Gonzalez died last year at the age of 71, just a few years after recording the oral histories.

Meanwhile, Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlan and Mariachi Sol de Mexico de Jose Hernandez, two of the biggest bands in Mexico, remain all-male.

Her story is in the historical record

With her story now in the UCLA archives, it's part of the historical record.

“[Mariachi] is such an important form… everybody who lives in L.A. hears mariachi music and nobody really knows very much about it in terms of the general public,” said Jane Collings, the project manager for the series.

The oral histories of Mexican Americans and other non-white people, she said, are very important in this day and age.

“There's a clear attempt [by the Trump administration] to erase this history and that makes the work of an archive such as this ever more important,” Collings said.

And it's the mission of the UCLA archive, she said, to keep those stories alive for current and future generations.