Why people still fall in love with Selena — in Colorado and beyond — 30 years after her death
A tribute singer dresses up like her and tours the West. Artists adorn walls and their bodies with her likeness. And music fans worldwide continue to celebrate her music. 30 years after her tragic murder, Selena remains a touchpoint for generations of Latin Americans.
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It was Prince who gave Mayra Alejandra the idea she could one day become the queen of Tejano music.
Or, rather, it was a guy named Phillip, performing as the artist formerly known as Prince.
A lifelong singer who’d lost her way with music, Alejandra decided in 2022 to make her way back to the stage. She was cast as a backup singer for the Paizley Park Band, a traveling Prince tribute act with weekly gigs all over Colorado.
“That’s when it all started,” Alejandra said.
Alejandra realized two things while she was swaying to “Purple Rain” and shaking to “Let’s Go Crazy.”
One: that tribute bands can provide a real career path.
And two: that she didn’t want to stand that far back on the stage.
“It was fun, but I knew that wasn’t where I belonged,” Alejandra said. “I longed to be at the front.”
She quit the band and quit her job and started performing songs as Selena Quintanilla, in tribute to the late Mexican American singer tragically murdered in 1995.
Quintanilla was known to her fans as Selena, queen of Tejano, una artista del pueblo — an artist of the people — a reputation bolstered by her well-documented love of pizza slices and Whataburger, the Texas-based hamburger chain.
She was the type of star who seemed born to perform, with a thousand-watt smile and rollicking vocals that packed out stadiums throughout Texas, Mexico and South America, where her dancy, Spanish-language music was widely adored.
Thirty years after the singer’s death, there is still an insatiable appetite for Selena. As her music is passed down between generations, her legacy shifts, too, inheriting whatever cultural and political attitudes are affecting the Latino population in the U.S.
Selena’s story has been told as a feature film and a Netflix show, an award-winning podcast, countless documentaries and articles. Kim Kardashian, Demi Lovato, America Ferrera have all dressed as Selena for Halloween. Christian Serratos has been Selena. Jennifer Lopez has been Selena. A digitally altered 13-year-old Selena, has been Selena.
There’s a lot of demand for Selena in the spring, Alejandra said.
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The singer’s birthday is in April, her death day in March. Commemorations pop up all over Colorado during this time of year, and Alejandra is there with her portable speaker, a laptop of wordless tracks and a microphone.
She can also count on Selena jobs during Cinco de Mayo in May — “when Selena always did car shows,” Alejandra said — and Fourth of July celebrations after that. In September and October, she books gigs celebrating Hispanic Heritage month. There’s Día de los Muertos in November, “which Selena fits perfectly with,” she said, and New Year’s Eve celebrations in December. “Everybody loves to dance into the new year to Selena’s music,” Alejandra said. “So basically every month there is a reason to have Selena in your life.”
These days, Alejandra travels around Colorado, California and Texas, performing some nights as Amy Winehouse, the late jazz singer known for her soulful vocals, and other nights as Selena, the energizing club favorite.
The audiences are completely different from one another, Alejandra said. Her Amy Winehouse crowd is full of people who like to “relax, listen and analyze art”; her Selena crowd likes to “party, dance and drink.”
“But the cool thing is the people who know me for one artist or the other, now they know both. So in a way, I’m also doing what (Selena) did, which was bring people from different cultures together,” Alejandra said. “That’s what I believe in.”
Endearing in-betweeness
On a Friday night in early April, people crammed into the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, a narrow brick gallery in Lakewood’s 40 West Arts District. It was snowing outside, 28 degrees. Still, the women arrived in skintight jumpsuits and cropped denim jackets, rhinestone bustiers, red lips, gold hoops, silver stilettos — signature looks from Selena’s performing life.
Artwork commemorating the singer was hung on the walls for the “Como La Flor” exhibition, a group show whose title is a popular Selena track.
This particular event was held once before in 2015, on the 20th anniversary of Selena’s death.
LEFT: Kataleya Torres, 10, left, and Aviannah Hernandez, 8, perform during the Selena Como La Flor Art Show Saturday on April 12 at CHAC Gallery in Lakewood. Grupo De Como La Flor is a Mexican folk dance group based in Cheyenne. RIGHT: Kayla Cameron, Elizabeth Baroa and Alexis Lovato pose for a portrait wearing iconic Selena outfits. “These are recreations of outfits she performed concerts in,” said Baroa, a costume designer. “The bustiers are her signature.” (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)
This year, just days after the 30th anniversary, fans had another reason to gather and celebrate. Selena’s murderer, Yolanda Saldívar, had just been denied parole.
“We are here honoring Selena with the great news that Yolanda Saldívar will not be released,” said a man in a tall feathered crown, part of the traditional Aztec dance group performing at the gallery. Everyone cheered.
It’s unlikely that Selena spent much time tromping through snow in her sparkly stilettos. Born in southern Texas, Selena was a singer of the borderlands.
It was her father who insisted that his daughter learn Spanish lyrics. Cynical fans believe this was a move to make her more marketable, while others say it was a way of encouraging her to connect to her roots.
Either way, her in-betweenness endeared Selena to her first- and second-generation fanbase. During interviews, Selena would shift among Spanish, Spanglish and English with a light Texas twang. She’d often stop and ask the interviewer, “cómo se dice …” or toss an English word into the middle of a Spanish sentence.
“I related to that a lot,” said Larysa Medina, a young Chicano artist based in Denver. Medina works as a car salesperson by day, and moonlights as a painter and graphic designer. She designed the Colorado Chicana/o license plate, which she presented to lawmakers last February, and is a drummer for the Aztec dance group.
“(Selena) can sing in Spanish but she can’t really speak Spanish. I can’t do either,” Medina laughed. “But just hearing that I’m not the only one who can’t speak Spanish, but who grew up with this culture — that was always important to me.”
Medina thinks about another part of Selena’s story often — a line recreated in the “Selena” movie by the singer’s father Abraham Quintanilla, played by Edward James Olmos:
“We gotta be twice as perfect,” Abraham says in the film. “We gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans, both at the same time. It’s exhausting!”
“That’s an important quote,” Medina said. “That stayed with me.”
She printed the quote on the first page of her senior thesis for the University of Colorado Denver, a nearly 50-page research paper about the loss of culture among younger Mexican Americans.
Anything for Selenas
During a lookalike contest that night at CHAC, Alejandra — emcee for the night — paced back and forth in front of six contestants, looking them up and down, lightly prodding them for a line from their favorite Selena song or a signature dance move.
“Tell us your name and where you’re from,” Alejandra said, holding the mic out to a contestant.
“Kayla, from Colorado Springs,” the contestant answered shyly, her voice barely coming through the speaker.
“You drove all the way from Colorado Springs for this?” Alejandra boomed. “Anything for Selenas!” she said approvingly, drawing out the “Selenaaas” and turning to gesture at the crowd.
The line — “anything for Selenas” — is shorthand for Selena fans to show their dedication to the singer. It’s lifted from a scene in the “Selena” movie, a 1997 biopic starring Jennifer Lopez.
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The movie did well at the box office and earned Lopez a best actress nomination at the Golden Globes. She became the first Latina to earn over $1 million for a film role. Lopez would go on to ride that fame straight into the so-called “Latin explosion” of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when pop stars like Ricky Martin, Shakira and the Ecuadorian American Christina Aguilera regularly topped charts.
As Los Angeles Times writer Andrea Flores has pointed out, these Latin superstars were more a product of marketing than a mainstream attitude shift — even Martin’s “Livin’ la Vida Loca” is entirely in English, save for the three title words.
Selena, on the other hand, was singing entirely in Spanish, to tracks that pulled from cumbia, ranchera, and the blended musical genre known as Tejano, despite the fact that her native language was English.
The singer’s popularity — especially after her death — became a touchstone moment in mainstream pop culture, which hadn’t yet acknowledged the potential of a Mexican American audience.
Following Selena’s death, People magazine printed a special Selena cover for its Southwest editions, while the rest of the country saw the cast of “Friends” on their covers. The Selena issue quickly sold out. So they published a special Selena-themed issue. That sold out, too.
A year later, People launched People en Español.
“The response to our two Selena covers redefined how successful an issue could be,” People’s managing editor at the time, Landon Y. Jones Jr., told the Los Angeles Times in 1996.
Latina Magazine launched the same year with Jennifer Lopez on their cover. (The magazine launch was timed to the announcement that Lopez had been cast as Selena).
Selena represents love, joy and resilience. This event is a tribute to her life and spirit, and we refuse to let fearmongering or political agendas diminish that.
— Tammy Yancey, “Como la Flor” event organizer
These days, Latino artists and all-Spanish songs aren’t the anomaly they once were in the record industry. Latin music in the U.S. has increased in popularity and value for nine consecutive years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. In 2024, the genre outpaced all other listening in the U.S., generating $1.4 billion in recorded music revenue.
Meanwhile, the nation’s Hispanic population, a group that includes people who identify with Central and South American countries, reached 62.1 million in 2020 according to the U.S. Census, and is the largest racial or ethnic minority, making up almost 20% of the U.S. population.
“It’s important to recognize that Selena, like many Latinos, grew up in an English-speaking household. Her journey embracing the Spanish language and her cultural roots played out under a public microscope,” said Tammy Yancey, who organized the “Como la Flor” event along with her husband, Rob. “Similarly, we too often live our lives under close scrutiny.”
“Let us be clear: We are not afraid,” Yancey said in a text message to The Colorado Sun. “Selena represents love, joy and resilience. This event is a tribute to her life and spirit, and we refuse to let fearmongering or political agendas diminish that.”
Medina, the young artist, said that she’s saddened by the rhetoric around Mexican and South American immigrants. It feels like things are going backward, she said, back to a time when her grandparents were scared to speak Spanish.
“I would have been very worried about them. I’m grateful that they don’t have to go through this,” Medina said about her grandparents, who have passed away. “I miss them every day, but I’m grateful that they’re not having to experience this reality.”
Medina grabbed her wallet. “Do you want to see a photo of my grandma?” she asked, unfolding a photo of her grandmother, Bertha Velarde. Velarde’s head is tilted to the side, she’s smiling wide in front of a wall of firewood, her hands resting on an ax handle. The photo, taken on their family property in Alamosa, is fading at the bend marks.
“She was very strong, ‘strong like a man,’ we used to say. She’d always be out there chopping wood,” Medina said. “They used to hunt for meat because at that time they couldn’t afford going to the grocery store for meat, so they lived off of elk, deer, stuff like that. I try to tell her story a lot, too.”
“Es el Tex-Mex”
Medina’s family moved to Denver in 2007 from Alamosa, where most of their family still lives. They keep a home there that has been in their family for at least four generations. She grew up with a mix of Chicano and Native traditions, but was taught not to flaunt her Mexican heritage.
“It was just that small-town attitude — like, don’t say you speak Spanish, don’t identify as Mexican, wait until you’re a little bit older. That was from the older generations, especially my great-grandmother and great-grandfather,” Medina said. “So they’d tell you not to speak Spanish in public, but at home with them, they won’t talk to you unless you’re speaking Spanish,” she laughed.
That sentiment echoed throughout the weekend, especially among younger attendees.
“I remember when I was a kid, I had a little CD player I would listen to (Selena) on, and I didn’t know what she was saying, so I just memorized the sounds,” said Alyssa Martinez, a 24-year-old folklorico dancer from Cheyenne. “I know more Spanish now,” she added. “When my parents were growing up it was a time when speaking Spanish was looked down upon, so it didn’t get passed down to me. I’ve been trying to teach myself through dance and music and social media.”
LEFT: Belinda Blea and her daughter Isabella, both dressed as Selena, pose for a portrait at CHAC Gallery on April 4, where people gathered to celebrate the singer’s life. RIGHT: Girls show their Selena-themed temporary tattoos. (Rebecca Slezak, Special to The Colorado Sun)
In a now famous clip on “El Show de Cristina,” a popular Spanish-language talk show, Selena is telling the host about her new clothing line, which is more size-inclusive than other lines in the 1990s.
“Let me tell you a secret,” Selena says to the host in Spanish. “Most of the time when designers say something is a size 16, it’s actually a 14,” she says, but uses the phrase “diecicuatro” to say “14,” instead of the Spanish word, catorce.
The host and audience burst out laughing.
“Catorce,” the host corrects, and Selena starts laughing along.
“Catorce! Perdon!” she says to the audience, then hides her face behind the host, still laughing.
“Dieci cuatro,” the host teases, “es el ‘Tex-Mex.’”
“Pero me entiendes, verdad?” Selena says to the crowd, still laughing.
“But you understand me, right?”
