The couple taught their two daughters to play accordion and trumpet from a very young age, and now everyone int he family plays cumbia, Norteña music, Tex-Mex, and a large repertoire of other traditional Latin American music. Fernando Andrés Torres has this story about these three generations of extraordinary musicians in California. Juan Santiago also contributed to this story, which is part of the series Raíces: Stories About Grassroots Artists.

Their strings have found clients all over the world and are used by famous groups such as Mariachi Vargas, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, and Los Tigres del Norte. The artisans are training others in the craft so that the art of stringmaking is not lost.

But the huge demand caused delays and more than 900,000 new applications are still pending. From Los Angeles, Araceli Martinez reports on the backlog.

At the end of this experience, musicians from Veracruz and from California collaborate to collectively create new songs, in the son jarocho style, that sing of the reality of day laborers.

(Español) Zuñiga vive de su arte y nos cuenta que parte del dinero de sus ventas lo dona al Colectivo de Artes Urbanas del cual es su principal mentor. El artista afirma que ha logrado hacer realidad los sueños más importantes de su vida. Se considera a si mismo un intérprete de la realidad de su pueblo y sus sentimientos.

(Español) En este torneo por primera vez participaron cuatro niños, dos de Fresno y dos de San Fernando. Los ganadores fueron premiados con un trofeo. El torneo de la pelota mixteca se realiza durante dos días en Fresno, pero solamente una vez al año; los equipos viajan a competir a otras ciudades de California.