El Mariachi El Mariachi El Mariachi is a 1992 American contemporary western action film and the first installment in the saga that came to be known as Robert Rodriguez's "Mexico Trilogy". It marked the feature length debut of Rodriguez as writer and director. The Spanish language film was shot with a mainly amateur cast in the northern Mexican bordertown of Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico across from Del Rio, Texas, the home town of leading actor Carlos Gallardo. The US$7,225 production was originally intended for the Mexican home video market, but executives at Columbia Pictures liked the film and bought the American distribution
Mariachi rajes!" and "¡Así se quiere en Jalisco!" The main characters used his ability to sing mariachi as a way to show strength, virility, and aesthetic beauty. Its use in film also made the music popular and a symbol of ethnic pride for Mexican Americans in the United States. Its use in film also promoted a negative perception of mariachi music. The films associated the charros and mariachi music with machismo, womanizing and drinking, especially of tequila. The reason that the movies did this was that mariachi music was associated with bars and the lower classes in a number of segments