Mariachi Potosino gallery at Pilsen art museum honors the legacy of Chicago musicians

For decades, generations upon generations of Mexican families in Chicago considered one mariachi essential to any great celebration.

From backyard parties and wedding receptions to Black Panther Party of Chicago marches and former mayor Richard J. Daley's birthday events, Mariachi Potosino was there for every important and often historical moment.

More than 20 years since the death of Mariachi Potosino founder José Cruz Alba, his legacy comes to life in an exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art — from his birthplace in Ignacio Allende, Durango, Mexico in 1918, to his life on the South Side of Chicago, where his love for music spread among the working-class immigrant communities searching for reminders of home in the bold brass, strings and vibrato of mariachi.

The Pilsen museum has preserved the more than 60-year history of the musical group in Chicago and beyond through archival newspaper clippings, photographs, sheet music, instruments and more.

Amador Alba, 79, is Cruz Alba's son and the last surviving member of Mariachi Potosino. Founding member Cesáreo Villalobos played trumpet until the group's disbanding in 2019 and died in March.

When Alba's cousin and co-curator Roberto "Beto" Vargas told him about the idea for the exhibit, Alba admits that though "we did a lot of great things for the city," he hadn't considered the mariachi anything "out of the ordinary" — probably because, for him, it was just life.

"But when [Beto] brought this together, and I look at it, even my kids couldn't believe it," he said.

Vargas, a retired artist, began sifting through photographs and documents after his youngest daughter, Micaela, asked to hear a story about her great-uncle — so she too could one day pass on her family's history.

He called on his cousins to recover anything they could related to Mariachi Potosino. While re-discovering the rich family history of Mariachi Potosino with the help of co-curator Rita Arias Jirasek and the museum's chief curator Cesáreo Moreno, Vargas realized: "[We] got something good here."

Members of Mariachi Potosino were blue-collar men: they were "braceros" employed in Chicago's famous steel mills, working hard to create good lives for their families. On weekends, they'd trade their work uniforms for charro suits, guitars, trumpets, and violins.

"These were people that were part of the community fabric," Jirasek said. "They were workers, they weren't famous movie stars.

"They transformed themselves into these matinee idols."

At age 17, Alba became the youngest member of Mariachi Potosino, with the next-youngest member aged 34. He joined the group after his father told him a few years prior: "I want you to take trumpet lessons."

"He wasn't asking," Alba told the Sun-Times during a recent visit to the gallery. "I took that as an order."

He described his father as well-loved by the community; he stood for what he believed in and never forgot his roots. Born two years before the end of the Mexican Revolution, Cruz Alba was always influenced by music and politics. He raised funds to repair his hometown's church and school, even purchasing an ambulance for them.

Alba fondly remembers the night his dad gave him his first beer while on a break at a gig, and is thankful for Mariachi Potosino because the group helped him meet his wife of 56 years, Yolanda Alba.

Amador Alba first saw the gallery with his wife and sons, their grandchildren, and his 103-year-old mother Virginia Sánchez Alba — who cried at the sight of Cruz Alba's charro suit.

Vargas considered Crúz Alba a "father figure" because his own passed away when he was just a year old. He recounted childhood memories of traveling to gigs with the mariachi and wearing the men's sombreros.

"They were too big," Vargas said, chuckling as he remembered trying to wear them to sleep while they rode in the back of their uncle's car while he played in mariachis all over Mexico.

The same hats eventually emigrated with the Albas to the U.S. in 1956 and two years later helped form Mariachi Potosino. They're forever preserved in the family photographs that now hang in the museum next to images of important figures like Jesús "Chuy" García, now a congressman for Illinois' 4th District, and Patricia Nixon, wife of former President Richard Nixon.

"He brought joy to everyone. In a way we're paying him back," Vargas said of his uncle. "That's the legacy that we brought to this museum ... to show what Don José Cruz accomplished in his lifetime."