Juan Gabriel’s music school

Tweet

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
When the Mexican border city of Juarez is in the news, it’s almost never for a good thing. One of the city’s biggest problems is a lack of social institutions that prevent young people from being recruited into organized crime. This was an issue one of Juarez’s most famous artists – Juan Gabriel – noticed 22 years ago when he founded a music school for boys. Reporter Monica Ortiz Uribe visited the school and discovered how it’s making a positive difference in the city. (Photos:Monica Ortiz Uribe)

---

Juan Gabriel is a musical icon in Mexico. In his 30-year career, he’s written more than a thousand songs and sold some 100 million records– about as many as Cher. But what most endears this singer-songwriter to so many Mexicans are his humble roots. He grew up poor, right here in dusty desert city of Juarez.

As a boy, Juan Gabriel would hop on city buses to sing and strum his guitar to an audience of mostly factory workers. Years later, he moved to Mexico City where he earned his fame.

But Juan Gabriel never forgot his hometown or it’s troubles. So, 22 years ago, he founded a music school for boys. The school continues today in the heart of downtown Juarez, just a few blocks from the American border.

Luz Alicia Gallegos is the proud director the school. She strides down the halls in a black and white checkered jacket her chin up and shoulders back. The school is elegantly built in a hacienda-style with coral-colored pillars and Mexican tile.

Gallegos says the school was created by Juan Gabriel to educate boys from low income families who have a desire to learn music. She adds that most of the boys are the children of single mothers.

Boys ages 6-13 live and study at the school Monday through Friday. Older boys, up to age 18, also attend the school, but only in the afternoons when there’s music instruction.

Raquel Cadena de la Cerra says she’s very proud of her son, a baby-faced 13-year-old named Joel who plays the saxophone. Cadena is a single mother of three who works in a furniture store. Joel is the only one of her children who attends the music school.

“At home my other kids say, Mom can you see the difference? He uses words that we don’t use. He can carry on a conversation like an adult, even though he’s only 13.”

Outside the school, in the rough barrios where some of the students live an ill-fated future is easy to come by. Some 600 gangs exist in Juarez. Drug cartels regularly recruit gang members to do their dirty work, from taking drugs across the border to commiting murder. About 80 % of the nearly 5,000 people killed in Juarez over the past two years were under the age of 25.

21 year old Marcel Acosta Ramirez is a graduate of Juan Gabriel’s music school. Now he’s the school’s mariachi teacher and a music major in a local university. Acosta says could have easily ended up as a henchman for the cartels. A year ago, one of his best friends was killed because of his invovlement in drug trafficking.

“He was on the wrong path. He suspected he was on the hit list and told me how proud he was of me and what I was doing. He told me, ‘It’s a shame the path I took is not like yours.’… That was the last time I saw him.”

School director Luz Alicia Gallegos says past students come back to visit with their own families. A few are still in the music industry, but so far no graduates have reached the same level of fame as their benefactor , Juan Gabriel . Most are professionals working as accountants, attorneys or teachers. Gallegos says 90 % of her graduates are successful in life. What we do on a daily basis, she says, is the true formula for sucess in Juarez.

For The World I’m Monica Oritz Uribe in Ciudad Juarez Mexico.>

• Homepage of the school
• Global Hit archive
• Global Hit on Facebook