In the 1970’s, a little girl named Tuchi dreams of playing in a mariachi ensemble. But according to her teacher, Mr. Sanchez, “Mariachi is only for boys.” How can this be? Doesn’t music belong to everyone? Kalamazoo children’s book author Isabel Estrada takes on the story of how girls and women broke into mariachi music. Her new book La Mariachi received the Own Voices, Own Stories award. Launched in 2021 by Cherry Lake Publishing Group’s imprint, Sleeping Bear Press, it recognizes new authors from marginalized groups with a mission to highlight the universal experience of our shared humanity through diverse and multifaceted experiences.
“Mariachi, the word itself, is used for many purposes,” Estrada says. “It can be the music itself, it can be the person making the music, and it can also be the culture, all the community that creates the mariachi music. It is a very particular music that comes from Mexico, but also with the immigration into the United States, and some of the Mexican people were here in parts of what became the United States later.”
Estrada says that when she was growing up as a second-generation Mexican American in Tucson, Arizona, the mainstream culture was not inclusive, so mariachi was a way to celebrate the Mexican culture and community.
“It was very much a bicultural existence going back and forth,” Estrada says. “It was a much more open border back in those days. Just a little fence basically. It was even like that when I was growing up, so it wasn’t as hard to get through.”
Estrada says a bigger challenge at the time was for girls and women to join mariachi bands. Only boys and men were allowed to play the various mariachi instruments—violins, guitars, vihuelas, the guitarron, and others. In her book, Estrada tells the story of little Tuchi, who finds a guitarron in her grandmother’s storage shed, and, with the help of her grandmother, learns how to play it. She then proves at a school audition that she can be a mariachi too.
“A lot of barriers were broken in the 1970’s and 80’s,” Estrada says. “Some very brave women broke the barriers and joined mariachi. There was resistance, but they were persistent.”
At the conclusion of Estrada’s children’s book are photographs and descriptions of some of the women who first joined mariachi, along with a glossary of Mexican terms used throughout the book.
Isabel Estrada now lives in Kalamazoo and is an author and retired educator. She enjoys sharing her love of music, dance, and drama.
The book’s illustrator is Addy Rivera Sonda, who was born and raised in a little town in Mexico called Minatitlán, near Veracruz.
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