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Photo: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lydia_Mendoza_Grave.jpg">Larry D. Moore</a> via Wikimedia Commons, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0">CC BY 4.0</a>
ADDRESS & CONTACT
Address
San Fernando Cemetery No. 2, 746 Castroville Rd, San Antonio, TX 78237
GPS
29.41704, -98.55167
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Long before Selena, there was a girl with a 12-string guitar singing in a San Antonio plaza. The Lydia Mendoza gravesite rests in San Fernando Cemetery No. 2 on the city’s West Side. A Texas historical marker now stands beside her stone. It tells a story that began with spare change and ended with a National Medal of Arts.
Mendoza came into the world in Houston in 1916. Her mother and grandmother taught her to sing and play strings. Then her family formed a group, Cuarteto Carta Blanca, and cut records for OKeh in San Antonio in 1928. Lydia was just 12. Afterward, the family sang for tips in the city’s restaurants and in the old Plaza del Zacate.
The Lark of the Border
In 1934, a radio host heard her in the plaza and invited her on the air. That same year she recorded “Mal Hombre” for Bluebird Records. The song became an overnight sensation across the Southwest and Mexico. So began a career that ran six decades.
She played the 12-string guitar alone, and she needed nothing else. Her voice carried the hard lives of farmworkers, wives, and travelers. Hearing her feels like sitting on a porch on Guadalupe Street as a summer storm rolls in. Fans called her La Alondra de la Frontera, the Lark of the Border.
She sang at President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Then she received the National Heritage Fellowship in 1982 and the National Medal of Arts in 1999. Later, the U.S. Postal Service put her face on a stamp. A stroke ended her performing in 1988.
A Marker on the West Side
Mendoza died in San Antonio in December 2007, at 91. Her family laid her to rest beside her first husband, Juan Alvarado. Then, in 2019, more than 100 people gathered at her grave. They unveiled the marker on what would have been her 103rd birthday.
Every Tejano singer who followed walked a road she cleared. That includes Selena, whose voice carried the same border music to a new generation. Read more about Lydia Mendoza and her recordings.
Stand at her grave and listen to the traffic on Castroville Road. Somewhere nearby, somebody is probably playing her song.
Photo: Larry D. Moore via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
