Gonzalez left Los Lobos after a year, just before they went on to become the most famous Chicano rock group of them all. But the East-L.A. native nevertheless became a music icon of his own. He became an apostle for son jarocho, fostering relations between jaraneros in the United States and Mexico. He released solo albums and performed in venues as varied as colleges and prisons. His handmade strings for Mexico's family of guitars - the sonorous requinto, the high toned jarana, the deep bottomed guitarron, the warm bajo sexto, and others-were lifelines for musicians with no other options in the U.S. for their instraments. In Mexico, old timers said that Gonzalez's handiwork made instraments resonate with a sound they hadn't heard in decades. "For him, the culture of the people needed to circulate freely and not with dollar signs attached to it," his wife Yolanda said. "He was our own Chicano conservatory," said his son, also named Francisco. Suffering from cancer, Gonzalez died March 30, 2022. He was 68. His last project, a book about the history of son jarocho, co-written by his wife and another professor, will be published in June.