Reflections on Selena

A few days ago was 25 years since Selena Quintanilla Perez's untimely death.

I don't really like to commemorate the anniversary of someone's death. It's a strange way to celebrate someone's life. I would have preferred to wait until Selena Day (April 16th!) to post this, but it's on my mind and I can't go outside because of quarantine.

For those not in the know: Selena Quintanilla Perez was a pioneer. There was, or maybe still is, a sub-category in the music industry that encompassed like basically all Spanish language music and the category was called "Latin music". I don't know if this is still a thing. Back in the day (literally like the 90s), there wasn't a whole lot of cross-over between Latin music and mainstream pop music. So you were either a "Latin singer" or a "mainstream singer".

Selena Quintanilla Perez was famous for Tejano music (which slaps). Selena grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas. She was the lead singer of a band (Selena y Los Dinos) that was composed of her siblings. Her dad was famously her manager. Obviously the family band started small but Selena became very big in Tejano music. She won Grammys. She was declared the Queen of Tejano Music.

(I'm limiting myself to three youtube links here because otherwise I would link a whole bunch of songs and it would take over the post)

In 1995, Selena recorded Dreaming of You. (What. An. Album.) Whereas her other albums had been Tejano music and songs with Spanish lyrics, Dreaming of You had pop songs and English lyrics. Selena was on the verge of crossing over. She was on the precipice. Her star was ascending. She had not yet peaked.

She was also married to a guitarist in her band, Chris Perez. She was getting into fashion. She was getting into acting. She was going to take over the world.

And then, in March of 1995, Selena was shot by the president of her fan club. The president of the fan club (who I do not care to name) gave this weird story that didn't make sense. It kind of seems like the president of the fan club was mentally disturbed or something. Selena did not survive. She was only 23.

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I have early memories of Selena. My mom owned Dreaming of You and Amor Prohibido on cassette tape and we used to listen to them all the time. In the 90s, you had to keep the car running to keep the radio/tape player going, so I can distinctly remember sitting with my Mom in her Jeep, parked outside of the K Mart, which was the only place to shop if you were trying to ball on a budget in our small town in the middle of nowhere, and my Mom keeping the car running so we could finish out a Selena song. 

There have been a lot of things that have happened since Selena's death. MAC made a Selena palette. Her face has been printed on t-shirts and bags and painted on murals in Pilsen. George W. Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, declared her birthday, April 16th, Selena day. And most notably, J. Lo starred in a movie about Selena's life. Playing Selena was Jennifer Lopez's big break.

We owned the Selena movie on VHS tape and I watched that movie all the time growing up!! If you have not seen it, please stop what you are doing immediately and find it on whatever streaming service you subscribe to. If you have to buy it on Amazon or something, DO IT. Selena is the kind of movie that whenever it comes on cable television, I stop whatever I am doing and watch it. I have to. I can't help it.

The movie is perfection, and although I knew Selena's music from my Mom's cassette tapes, I learned about Selena's life from the movie. The movie shows Selena's ascent from county fair to the Astrodome, while dealing with family pressures, industry pressures and cultural pressures.

Selena's first language was English, and I don't really know how fluent she actually was in Spanish. The movie shows her dad like phonetically helping her with the pronunciations of words in lyrics early on (I always over enunciate reloj bc of this movie). There's a part in the movie where Selena's dad is talking to her and A.B. about performing in Mexico. He tells them they're too American for Mexico but too Mexican for America (and a bit about getting the runs from hot food in Mexico lol). 

I looked up the quote and here's what it is: "We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, nobody knows how hard it is to be Mexican-American, it's exhausting!"

Movie Abraham is also like "Selena your Spanish is iffy and if you start speaking Spanish in Mexico, they will rip you apart if it's bad."

I felt this scene in my bones 

My first introduction into Chicanismo was by Cheech Marin! He was giving a talk at the university I attended for undergrad. It was the first semester of my freshman year. He was talking about his vast art collection and Chicanismo and what it means to him. Cheech said he felt drawn to Chicanismo because he didn't really feel like he identified as Mexican (he didn't grow up or live in Mexico, and he can't really speak Spanish), but yet he was too Mexican to be assimilated and mainstream in America. It's like a feeling of not really fully belonging in either place and thus feeling stuck in between the two. I think Cheech said it better than I'm typing it now. But the root is basically not fitting in and crafting your own place for yourself in the world. Cheech said it's a philosophy, it's a state of mind. I think Chicanismo means different things to different people, but that's what it means to me, and it's a philosophy I subscribe to and something that's very central to my identity as I understand it. I also think it's an empowering philosophy.

So even though I didn't realize it when I was listening to Selena and watching the movie growing up, I think Selena is a Chicana icon. It's a politicized term, and I don't know if that's how she would have identified....but Selena was a brown kid growing up in America, who was told she was too American to be Mexican but too Mexican to be American...

And yet, she almost conquered the world. Both worlds! She silenced all of Mexico with Como La Flor (which is a scene in the movie, but I accept as canonically true)! She was winning Grammys! She was on the cusp! It was within her grasp!

I used to turn the movie off right after her triumphant performance in the Astrodome, because that way she could stay on top of the world in my head maybe. Now I always watch it all the way through because Selena's death is as much a part of the story as her life. The important narrative being that she was a pioneering visionary who was taken from the world far too soon.

Rest in peace, Selena. I like to think you would have conquered the world if you had had a few more years. It's cool to have heroes who look like you, who probably grew up like you, who probably wanted the same things you want, and fought some of the same battles you fight.

This post is solely about Selena's impression on a small town girl from rural Eastern New Mexico. I'm sure there are much more thought provoking works about Selena's legacy, and now, being the 25th anniversary of her death, is a perfect time to do a deep google dive and read about her broader legacy. Or just to re-listen to the Dreaming of You album, and day dream about a world where we could have Selena for a little bit longer.