2024-04-01 11:22:45
Selena Quintanilla had the world at her feet when her life was taken. At the time of his murder, which occurred on March 31, 1995, The singer was considered the queen of ‘tex-mex’, a dance musical style originating from the border of Mexico and the United States, and had made many young Latinas dream for whom it represented the cultural rise of the Hispanic community. She had recently given a great concert at the Astrodome in Houston (USA), before nearly 67,000 people, and The previous year she had become the first Tejano music artist to win a Grammy. At only 23 years old, in addition to being about to ascend to a pop firmament dominated by celebrities she idolized, she had made her first steps as an actress and model, and was talking about starting a family with her husband and bandmate, Chris Perez. But all his plans went to hell when a woman named Yolanda Saldívar shot him in the back after being fired as president of his fan club and personal secretary.l.
Recognized simply as Selena, the artist was an active and athletic girl who spent her childhood in the Texas cities of Lake Jackson and Corpus Christi. Her father, a frustrated musician named Abraham Quintanilla, put her to work alongside her two siblings, AB and Suzette.in a musical ensemble, baptized Selena and the Dinos, of which he would be administrator and sound engineer. The Tejano band began performing on the small stage of the clan patriarch’s Mexican food restaurant, before achieving fame, in the early eighties, at local carnivals and family parties held in the state of Texas. Selena’s talent was enough to lift her family out of the poverty in which they were plunged after the oil crisis, but it also invited her to dream of achieving something big in the world of entertainment.
Selena Quintanilla even gave a great concert at the Houston Astrodome (USA), in front of nearly 67,000 people. / EFE
At 17 years old, Selena signed a contract a year with Coca-Cola and appeared in advertising campaigns in English and Spanish in the main Hispanic media in his country. At only 18 she released her first solo album, Selena (1989), with the Latin label EMI, and was awarded at the Tejano Music Awards as the best female vocalist of the year. She would later release several more studio albums and, in 1994, she won a Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album for her ‘Selena Live!’ (1993), recorded during a concert in her hometown. That award contributed to consolidating Spanish-language music in the United States and, in the process, established its owner as the most important Tejano music artist.
Authenticity
Her biographers say that Selena won the public’s affection for her personality as an ordinary woman who appeared authentic and candidly combined her Mexican and American identities. “I feel very proud to be Mexican,” she commented in an interview. “I didn’t have the opportunity to learn Spanish when I was a child, but… it’s never too late to get in touch with your roots“.
On stage, Selena was overflowing with talent and challenged with her powerful aesthetic what many fans expected of her as an artist who performed in Spanish.l. His charisma dazzled people like Yolanda Saldivara shy, simple-looking woman who, she once said, was left speechless the first time she saw her in concert, in mid-1991. “The impression was so great that, at the end of the show, she busily looked for a position sales of souvenirs of the singer, to take something as a souvenir. To her astonishment, there was no product for sale that promoted her. Thus the idea of creating a fan club was born,” said the presenter. María Celeste Arrarás in her book ‘Selena’s Secret’.
Shortly after, Yolanda called Selena’s father three times – although he claimed it was 15 – and, on the third call, Quintanilla agreed to set up a meeting between the two. From there came the idea for the woman to open an official fan club to support the singer. Saldívar left her job as an intern nurse for cancer patients and worked hard in that fan club dedicated to the artist. of her loves, someone who had become the embodiment of all the attributes and goals that she was incapable of realizing in her own life. Little by little, the Quintanillas allowed Yolanda to get closer to her family, with whom she shared many moments, as demonstrated by some home videos to which journalists had access. Such was the level of trust between all of them that, when the Selena Etc. boutiques were inaugurated in 1994, first in Corpus Christi and then in San Antonio, Abraham Quintanilla recommended her to manage the store business.
Control of employees
Yolanda seemed competent as an administrator, but there are various complaints of mistreatment towards some employees. Arrarás says in his book that he even fired a good part of the company’s employees simply because they were not to his liking, and that a person who worked for a time in the boutiques assured him that Yolanda “was very possessive and looked for any pretext to keep Selena away from the others. She thinks Yolanda wanted to isolate the singer from her employees to exert greater control. But Yolanda argues that she always wanted to serve as a shield for Selena, so that the singer would not have to worry about the nonsense that arose every day in managing the operation.”
The designer didn’t buy it either Martin Gomez, who accused her of distorting the work of the clothing workshop “with interference and Machiavellian methods.” Apparently, arguments between the two were frequent and, at one point, Yolanda began recording her conversations with Martín without him knowing. “Yolanda ended up winning,” Arrarás wrote about it. “Selena decided that she was going to start creating her designs herself, which would eventually relegate Martín to the background, and, little by little, she entrusted more responsibilities to her friend. Yolanda had the key to her house, several credit cards company credit in his name, signed corporate checks, managed the business and often accompanied the singer on her trips.
When Abraham warned his daughter that Yolanda seemed like an unstable and lying woman, Selena played down the matter and reminded him that he always distrusted peopleas she had once distrusted her husband Chris, whom she secretly married in 1992. But her mind made click after the patriarch of the Quintanilla discovered that Yolanda was stealing part of the income obtained from the family business and warned him that he planned to call the police. “She was a dissatisfied employee,” he would later say. “We suspected she had embezzled money, we started surrounding her and she went crazy.” Fearing a possible tax investigation, Selena demanded that Yolanda return several financial documents about the company, and in early March 1995, she removed it from her bank account and replaced her as president of the fan club.
A well thought out plan
It was then that Yolanda bought a 38 caliber revolver and began plotting revenge against her. “If Saldívar had been fired, she could have gone back to her job as a nurse, in which she was doing very well. What she couldn’t accept was the fact of not being close to Selena anymore,” the secretary of the Esperanza fan club later noted. Heron. At the end of that month of March, Yolanda begged Selena to meet her privately at the Days Inn motel in Corpus Christi, where she was staying, with the promise of giving her the documentation that Selena needed to present her next tax returns. rent. The artist went to that appointment accompanied by her husband, so Yolanda did not have the opportunity to speak alone with her, but that fact did not make her give up her efforts.
So much so that The next morning she called Selena again to tell her that she had been raped when she was in Mexico. and that he needed your help. Selena accompanied her to the hospital, where after being examined it was determined that there had been no such rape. She then took her back to the hotel, where they began to argue in Yolanda’s room, at which point she pulled out her gun and shot her in the back. Several motel employees testified that they heard a gunshot and then saw the murderer, with the revolver still in her hand, chasing Selena, while she fled the room, bleeding and asking for help. Norma Martínezthe establishment’s housekeeper, explained that she heard Yolanda call Selena a ‘bitch’, and that she saw how, at one point, she turned around, apparently calm, and re-entered the room.
Life imprisonment
When the singer reached the lobby, she collapsed to the floor. Before losing consciousness, she identified the person who had shot her and the number of the room where she was hiding. The ambulance arrived within two minutes, but Selena, whose subclavian artery had been severed by the bullet, was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. Her attacker was detained in her car while trying to escape. In her defense, she assured that her shooting of Selena had been involuntary, that everything happened when she tried to commit suicide and the singer, while trying to avoid it, was shot by accident. But in October 1995 a jury determined that the crime occurred with premeditation and He sentenced her to life imprisonment without the right to parole for 30 years. —Currently serving time at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
Selena’s death stunned her fans and prompted almost non-stop coverage on Spanish-language radio and television stations. According to ‘The New York Times’, Selena’s family chose to leave her coffin open during the massive funeral held in Corpus Christi. All of her fans en masse supported the posthumous release of her first bilingual album, ‘Dreaming of you’, which sold 175,000 copies in a single day and led her to fulfill her dream of conquering the Anglo-Saxon market. Furthermore, in the months after the tragedy, in front of her house, the same home in which she had grown up and lived humbly, her devotees made an altar for an artist who in 2017 received a posthumous star on the Walk of Fame. from Hollywood.
Although almost three decades have passed since his disappearance, his memory seems to be more alive every day. In fact, as a journalist from ‘Texas Monthly’ pointed out in an article, Selena has been canonized, sanctified and resurrected since then: “He has starred in a lavish Hollywood biopic, a touring musical, and a series of labels.. In South Texas and beyond she has gone from popular singer to something more ethereal, a cult heroine, a martyr, a patron saint. Thousands of fans continue to travel each year to Corpus Christi, where her family’s recording studio—as well as her home, her former boutique, and her grave—have become the Graceland of Texas.”
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