By Tejano Nation
Mar 9, 2021
An homage to the First Queen of Tejano Music, Lydia Mendoza, by artist Richard Duardo (Source: McNay Art Museum)
Decades before fans called
Lydia Mendozaheld the crown as Tejano music’s first female icon.
Born in 1916 to parents who migrated to Texas during the Mexican Revolution, Mendoza began her music career in a family band that performed on street corners and in open-air markets to make ends meet. One of her first gigs as a solo artist involved playing live on San Antonio’s only Spanish-language daily radio program for $3.50 per week.
“With that three-fifty we felt like millionaires,” Mendoza wrote in her autobiography. “Now at least we could be sure of paying the rent. Life was nothing but working in order to live. That is the reason I had so little gaiety in my youth, just bitterness and sadness.”