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Raquel Ontiveros, the earliest ranchera to rise to prominence in the Chicago music and cultural scene, passed away at age 88.

The female mariachi performer popularized Mexican heritage in a city that received thousands of immigrants throughout the 20th century, but was nevertheless unfamiliar with Latin America.

Ontiveros and her 9 siblings grew up on Roosevelt Rd. and Peoria St., where the UIC gym now sits, an area that became Chicago’s Mexican immigrant enclave before construction by the University of Illinois-Chicago pushed entire families southward to 18th St. in Pilsen.

The Ontiveros family spoke Spanish at home and played traditional Mexican music regularly. Her parents had deep roots in the states of Guanajuato, Nuevo Leon and Jalisco, the birthplaces of many geniuses of Mexican folk music, mostly men.

She attended St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School across the street and later St. Procopius High School, where she learned to type, audio record via dictaphone and write in Gregg shorthand. For most of her life, she took administrative roles at the Union League Club of Chicago, a distinguished social club.

Since the 40s, Ontiveros performed with various local and visiting mariachis, like El Mariachi Jalisco from Chicago, singing a vast repertoire of ranchera songs and dancing in elaborate dresses and imported rebozos. She was an active member of the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company and choreographed all their presentations.

In that era, Chicago’s recording studios and music venues attracted musicians from everywhere. Acclaimed artists from Mexico would hold concerts in Chicago, like Pedro Infante, who Ontiveros met, Antonio Aguilar and Lola Beltran.

However, she was not a commercial artist herself. Ontiveros was a “culture promoter,” said musicologist Juan Dies who interviewed her in her home in 2007. “She was part of the cultural boom when the Mexican community exploded in the city,” he said.

Ontiveros was a greeter when Chicago hosted the 1959 Pan American Games that attracted 40,000 people from all over the world, including comedian Groucho Marx who Ontiveros also met. She and other women dressed in traditional outfits that represented all the countries in Latin America.

The international games were “a catalyst for Latinos in Chicago” to bring their visibility to the mainstream, Dies said. Ontiveros would go on to perform in other conferences and conventions in the city, he said.

Her contributions were highlighted in a 1997 Chicago Historical Society exhibit titled “Pilsen Little Village: Our Home Our Struggle”, and the Smithsonian Institute’s Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. featured some of her interviews in 2006.

She died of cancer on July 7 and is survived by her son, Robert, sisters Katy Gomez, Mona Gonzalez, Tina Huerta and Florence Ontiveros, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.