Selena Biography

Selena Quintanilla Pérez (April 16, 1971 – March 31, 1995), best known as Selena, was a Mexican-American singer who has been called the "queen" of Tejano music. The youngest child of a Mexican-American couple, Selena released her first album at the age of twelve. She took the award for Female Vocalist of the Year in 1987 at the Tejano Music Awards and landed a recording contract with Ade Records a few years later. Her fame continued to grow throughout the early nineties, especially in Spanish-speaking countries. Her album Selena Live! won a Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American album at the 36th Grammy Awards and her 1994 album Amor Prohibido was nominated for another Grammy and produced four number one Spanish hits.

Selena attained further notability in the United States and Mexico after Yolanda Saldívar, the president of her fan club, murdered her at the age of 23. On April 12, 1995, two weeks after her death, George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, declared her birthday "Selena Day" in Texas. Warner Brothers made a film based on her life starring Jennifer Lopez in 1997. As of June 2006, Selena was commemorated with a museum and a bronze life-sized statue (Mirador de la Flor in Corpus Christi, Texas). Both the statue and museum are visited by hundreds of fans each week.

Born in Lake Jackson, Texas, to the Mexican-American father Abraham Quintanilla and a Panamanian mother Marcella Ophelia Zamora. She began singing at the age of six; when she was nine her father founded the singing group Selena y Los Dinos, which she fronted. They initially performed at the Quintanilla family's restaurant, "Papagallos," but the restaurant failed shortly afterwards.

The family soon went bankrupt and was evicted from their home. Taking all their musical equipment in an old bus, they relocated to Corpus Christi in Southern Texas. There, they performed wherever they could: at street corners, weddings, quinceañeras, and fairs. These efforts at spreading their name paid off in 1984, when Selena, then twelve years old, recorded her first album for a local record company. The album was not sold in stores, and her father bought all the original copies. It was later released in 1995 under the title Mis Primeras Grabaciones.

Selena did well in school, but as she grew more popular, the travel demands of her performance schedule began to interfere with her education. Her father pulled her out of school altogether when she was in eighth grade. She continued her education on the road; at age seventeen she earned a high school diploma from The American School of Correspondence in Chicago and was accepted at LSU. Selena released her second album, Alpha, in 1986.

In early 1995, the Quintanillas discovered that Yolanda Saldívar, the president of Selena's fanclub and the manager of her boutiques, was stealing money from the boutiques and decided to fire her. Soon after the fallout, Selena agreed to meet Saldívar in a Days Inn hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the morning of March 31, 1995 in order to retrieve paperwork for tax purposes. At the motel, Selena demanded the missing financial papers. Saldívar delayed the handover by claiming she had been raped in Mexico. The singer drove Saldívar to a local hospital, where doctors found no evidence of rape. Saldivar returned to the motel where Selena again demanded the missing financial papers.

An argument ensued and Saldívar drew a gun from her purse, pointing it first at her own head and then at Selena. As the singer turned and left the room, Saldívar shot her once in the back. Selena fled to the manager's office in the lobby for help, with Saldivar chasing her, calling her a bitch. Before collapsing to the floor, Selena named Saldívar as her assailant and gave the number of the hotel room where she was shot. An ambulance and the police arrived on scene and Selena was transported to a local hospital. She died there from loss of blood at 1:05 P.M., at the age of 23, sixteen days shy of her 24th birthday. The gun used to kill Selena was later destroyed and the pieces thrown into Corpus Christi Bay.