CULTURE MIX - Taps sound for mariachi mecca - The MacArthur Park landmark La Fonda de Los Camperos is closing. Oct. 28 is the last show.
In almost 40 years at the same Wilshire Boulevard location, La Fonda de Los Camperos has been buffeted by social forces that would have sunk other businesses. Almost every decade, it seems, some catastrophe scared away customers from the Mexican restaurant, home to the concert-class Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano.
In the '80s, the business survived the infestation of gangs and drugs that drove people away from the area around MacArthur Park in the infamous Rampart police division. In the '90s, it survived the Rodney King riots that kept visitors away from Los Angeles as a whole. Then at the start of this decade, it survived the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that temporarily halted the flow of international tourists who regularly frequented the restaurant, hungry to get a taste of local culture.
But about four years ago, Natividad Cano and his business were hit with a more direct challenge that turned out to be the final blow. It came in the form of an eviction notice tacked up on the restaurant's heavy, hacienda-style doors.
The building at 2501 Wilshire Blvd. had been sold, and Cano and his Camperos were being unceremoniously kicked out -- violins, guitars, trumpets and all. La Fonda made a final stand, fighting the eviction in court. But after many sleepless nights and some $80,000 in legal fees, Cano has finally decided to walk away from the business he founded to bring honor and respect to the humble mariachi.
"When I first opened La Fonda, people told me that I was crazy, that I wouldn't last a year," says Cano, 74, a native of the Mexican state of Jalisco, the cradle of mariachi music. "But I did it. I survived and Los Camperos went straight to the top. For me, it was never a matter of power or money. I just wanted to prove to the world that mariachi music could be rescued from mediocrity, from the cheap cantinas where we used to play for a dollar a song.
"People are willing to die for their beliefs and for what they feel," he continues, "and what I feel is mariachi."
On Oct. 28, Los Camperos will give their final performance in the restaurant that has been their home since 1969. Los Camperos, who are slated to perform Nov. 1 at UCLA's Royce Hall, will continue to tour. And Cano vows to reopen in a new location, possibly downtown, within a year. Yet the closing of La Fonda marks the demise of a cultural landmark in Los Angeles, one that represents the striving of Mexican American culture for a worthy place in its adopted homeland.
