Reynaldo Avila was nothing if persistent and so was his cause to find a proper home for a vast collection of conjunto music memorabilia.

Avila toiled for over two decades to locate a permanent home for the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame & Museum. In the 2010s, the museum was shoehorned into a 650-square-foot space in a San Benito city-owned building shared with other historical collections. Avila was promised that he could move into a much larger space at the next-door San Benito Cultural Heritage Museum that was under construction in 2017.

City officials would renege on that promise. It was a continuation of broken promises made by the city as to where Avila’s collection could be housed. The memorabilia chronicles the birth and history of conjunto music in San Benito and the South Texas region. At the end of his life in 2019, as he lay ill, Avila told his daughter, Patricia, “we’re done.”

Avila didn’t want his grown children to take up his years-long quest.

“He didn’t want to put that burden on us,” Patricia said.

Her brother, Peter, recalled the “hard questions” the family asked after their father’s passing. What would they do with all of the records, posters, equipment and other material highlighting the history of an American genre of music? Avila’s widow, Aurora, and her children decided to “push forward,” Peter said, refusing to give up on their father’s dream.

Home By The Resaca

In the summer of 2023, the dream of Reynaldo Avila was fulfilled.

The story of conjunto music starring its historical figures and featuring replicas of recording studios and radio booths is now at San Benito’s Aztec Building on Robertson Street. It’s history inside history given the iconic status the 1930s-era Azteca has in San Benito. And the conjunto hall of fame is now situated on the banks of the city’s signature resaca that runs through the heart of San Benito.

“It’s what my dad always wanted,” Peter Avila said. “He wanted the museum on the resaca.”

The multi-floor Aztec Building in its nine-decade existence has housed City Hall, the chamber of commerce and most recently Head Start administrative offices. The building, which some have described as looking like a battleship by the resaca, was renowned during its first few decades for having Saturday night bailes on its rooftop.

The Feb. 18 grand opening of the Texas Conjunto Music Hall Of Fame & Museum brought back the glory days’ swagger to the Aztec. The Avilas signed a Nov. 22, 2022 agreement with the city to move the museum into the historic structure. It took nearly three months to arrange and stage some of the best pictures, records and other items from Rey Avila’s extensive collection. Going room to room, it’s all there, the story of the South Texas music from Narciso “El Huracan del Valle” Martinez, the father of conjunto, to Freddy Fender, a hometown boy, and beyond to other legends like Ramon Ayala and Flaco Jimenez. 

“My dad would be so happy and so proud,” Patricia Avila said.

A Place In History

Entering the museum, in first room to the immediate right, black lettering on a big glass window says, “Ideal Records.”

It’s a centerpiece exhibit and for good reason. In the post-World War II era, the San Benito-based record company became one of the Southwest’s biggest producers and distributors of a new American music that became to be known as “conjunto.” Its origins go back to the mid-1930s when a San Benito-area accordionist named Narciso Martinez teamed up with bajo sexto guitarist Santiago Alemeida to figure out a new way to blend their instruments to create a sound and beat never heard before. 

The sound made its way across Mexican-American communities in Texas and across the Southwest and all the way up to Washington, where farm-working families congregated to harvest crops. The birth of conjunto music resonated in these communities and inspired a new generation of musicians. Among them was Baldemar Huerta, who became known to the world as Freddy Fender, a San Benito boy who made early recordings in his hometown.

The history of it all fascinated Rey Avila and set him off on a 30-year effort to collect and curate records, posters, equipment and materials of all sorts that chronicle the birth and establishment of conjunto music. His work and collection have come alive in a museum that he envisioned and has been set up by his children to honor their father.

“All together, we don’t equal one of him,” Peter Avila said.

“I can, I can, I will, I will,” Joe Avila said, recalling his father’s spirit and attitude.

Now they have in their father’s memory, pushing forward.

The Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame & Museum is located at 402 W. Robertson Street in San Benito.