Iowa high school senior Miranda Estrada is a star student, a trumpet player and a drum major for the school’s marching band. She’s also part of an extracurricular group that, 20 years ago, would have seemed unusual to find in a small Iowa town: A mariachi group called Reyes del Oeste.
“I grew up listening to mariachi, and it has always been a huge part of my life,” said Estrada, a first-generation student whose parents came to the United States from Mexico 18 years ago. “To me, Reyes del Oeste is like family.”
For Estrada and her peers, mariachi is more than just an extracurricular. At her high school in Denison, Latinos made up 68% of the student body in the 2022-2023 school year. That number is reflective of the city at large, whose Latino community has been growing for years and finally feels represented in the halls of Denison High School.
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