Belle Ortiz was instrumental in bringing mariachi programs to Texas schools

Spanish was forbidden during her time as a student, but she saw it as a way to reach her own students when she became an educator.

By Voces Oral History CenterOctober 8, 2024 2:47 pm, , , ,

From the Voces Oral History Center:

Isabel San Miguel Ortiz, or Belle Ortiz, was born in San Antonio in 1933. By the age of four she was already learning how to play the piano.

At home her grandparents loved to sing in Spanish. But at school, Spanish was forbidden.

Ortiz recalled that time of her life in an oral history interview collected by the Voces Oral History Center.

“What was so strange was that when I went to school at J.T. Brackenridge, I was not allowed to speak Spanish. We were punished if we did,” Ortiz said in the interview.

That stuck with her – speaking Spanish and celebrating Mexican music could be a tool for reaching her Mexican American students, and a way to instill cultural pride.

By the time Ortiz graduated from high school, she could play violin and piano. She went on to earn a bachelor’s in performance and music education at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.

She and her first husband, Daniel San Miguel Jr., had five children. One of her daughters, Leticia Van De Putte, became a state senator.

Ortiz started her teaching career first as a music and choir teacher in the largely Hispanic Edgewood School District until one day when she was approached by a principal in the San Antonio School District.

“The principal came and talked to me and said ‘Do you think you can come to the San Antonio district and teach?’ and I said ‘Yes, but you know what I want to teach? I want to be able to teach guitar,’” Ortiz said in the oral history interview. “I just had it in my mind that I had to do that.”

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And that’s how “Los Tejanitos” from Barkley Elementary came to be.

Los Tejanitos was a Mexican folkloric dance and music program that showcased the children’s culture. The group was a huge success and attracted attention from throughout the city.

In 1970, Ortiz was recruited to start a mariachi program at Lanier High school.

“I met opposition at the beginning. ‘Why did I want to bring that type of cantina music into the schools?,’” Ortiz said.

Again, Ortiz made the program successful. Within a few years, she started teaching choir and mariachi at San Antonio College and showed other schools how to start up their own mariachi programs.

But she didn’t stop there. In 1978, Belle and her second husband Juan Ortiz formed the Campanas de America, an award-winning mariachi that performed at the White House for five presidents, and at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Camille Phillips / Texas Public Radio

Belle with her husband Juan Ortiz, pictured in 2018.

Belle and Juan Ortiz were instrumental in establishing the Texas Association of Mariachi Educators, which promoted mariachi as a category for statewide UIL competitions. In 1979, Belle and Juan co-founded the first International Mariachi Conference and Festival in San Antonio, bringing in international artists Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán.

In an interview last fall for San Antonio’s KABB-TV, former public school mariachi instructor Gino Rivera spoke of Belle Ortiz’s crucial role in introducing mariachi education.

“Now it’s a part of our education system, across not only in Texas, but across the world. That wouldn’t have been possible without Miss Belle Ortiz,” Rivera said in the interview.

Belle Ortiz died at the age of 90 in 2023.

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