Together with Dolores del Río, Tito Guízar, Ramón Novarro and Lupe Vélez, he was among the few Mexican people who made history in the early years of Hollywood.

[1] Born in San Gabriel, Jalisco, Mojica was raised in a coffee and sugar plantation community until the age of six, after his step-father Francisco died.

When his mother's extended family suffered financial challenges, they moved with limited means to Mexico City where he studied at the Academy of San Carlos and later attended the National School of Agriculture.

[1] Shortly after the United States entered World War I, funded with $500, Mojica moved to New York City and worked petty jobs before joining an opera company.

[4] While in Chicago he landed secondary roles, with his career slowly gaining momentum in 1921 when playing leading parts in Debussy´s Pelléas et Mélisande and Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, the former alongside renowned soprano Mary Garden.

Going to California, and except for individual trips back to Chicago and New York for singing engagements, his career continued in films in Hollywood and throughout Latin America.

In 1933, after leaving Chicago, Mojica made a trip across the Atlantic, singing at the Mexican Embassy in Berlin and performing in Italy and Egypt.

His popular musical recordings show an attractive lyrical voice being used with skill and imagination in songs such as Júrame, composed for Mojica by María Grever, released by Victor in 1927.

Mojica signed a contract with Fox Film Corporation in 1930, making his debut the same year as a Spanish outlaw in the romantic musical One Mad Kiss (1930), co-starring Argentine actress Mona Maris.

A short time before his retirement, Mojica originally performed the song Solamente una vez,[9] written by Agustín Lara, in the 1941 film Melodías de América.

[10] This song was known later as You Belong to My Heart, with English lyrics written by Ray Gilbert, and has been recorded by many other artists, including Andrea Bocelli, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Charlie Haden and Elvis Presley.

[11] Antigua Villa Santa Monica is located at San Miguel de Allende, a city and municipality in the state of Guanajuato in North-Central Mexico.

Abandoned at the time of the Mexican Revolution, the villa sat in ruins for years; Mojica acquired it in 1933 and rebuilt it for his mother, whose health was declining.

It was his joy to introduce his professional friends to the beauty of Colonial City and his guests included composers, writers, opera stars, actors and painters.

[13] Fate stepped into the picture when Mojica met two young Americans travelling across Mexico on a train and invited them to visit him in San Miguel.

Nevertheless, the lure of the stage could not be long absent from his life, for Mojica began directing amateur plays and later became a painter to continue his artistic legacy.

After suffering for years from acute hepatitis, he died in 1974 of heart failure at the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima, just six days after his 79th birthday.