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¡Bienvenidos! Welcome!
My name is Araceli Garza. I'm 26, I grew up in Corpus Christi, and now I live in Houston where I do hair at a salon on the north side. I learned how to do a perfect red lip from watching Selena on TV, and I have been doing it on brides and quinceañeras ever since, so she's still part of my job every single day. I made this page because it's been more than four years now and I don't want anybody to forget her, especially the little girls who come in my chair who were babies when she died. They know the songs. I want them to know about her. (Pictures? My sister has all our pictures from the Astrodome and she keeps saying she'll get them scanned at her work. Pronto, Yoli!) |
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Su vida ★ Her life
★ April 16, 1971: Selena is born in Lake Jackson, Texas, the youngest of three kids of Abraham and Marcella Quintanilla. ★ Early 1980s: Her dad puts together a band with his kids: A.B. on bass, Suzette on drums, and Selena singing. They play at the family's restaurant, and when it closes and times get hard, they move to Corpus Christi and play weddings, fairs, and anywhere that will have them. She grew up speaking English and learned to sing in Spanish first and speak it later. ★ 1987: At fifteen she wins Female Vocalist of the Year at the Tejano Music Awards. She wins it again and again after that. ★ 1989: Signs with EMI Latin. ★ April 2, 1992: Marries Chris Pérez, the guitar player in Los Dinos. ★ 1992: Entre a Mi Mundo comes out with "Como la Flor" on it, and suddenly she is everywhere. ★ 1994: Selena Live! wins the Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album. That spring Amor Prohibido comes out, and it's one of the biggest Tejano records ever made. She opens her own boutiques, Selena Etc., in Corpus Christi and San Antonio, with clothes she designed herself. ★ February 26, 1995: The Houston Astrodome. (See below. I was there!!) ★ March 31, 1995: Selena is shot and killed in Corpus Christi. She was twenty-three years old. ★ April 1995: Governor George W. Bush declares her birthday, April 16, Selena Day in Texas. ★ July 1995: Dreaming of You, the English album she was working on, comes out and goes straight to number one on the Billboard 200, the first album mostly in Spanish ever to do that. ★ 1997: The movie Selena, with Jennifer Lopez. I saw it four times. I cried four times. And a bronze statue of Selena goes up on the seawall in Corpus Christi, at the Mirador de la Flor. |
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¡Yo estuve allí! The Astrodome, February 26, 1995
It was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and my sisters Yolanda and Nelda and I drove up from Corpus in Nelda's Cutlass with the air conditioning broken, in February, which tells you how bad we wanted to go. We were way up high. We didn't care. She came out in a purple jumpsuit covered in sequins that caught every light in that building, and she opened with a disco medley, the old Donna Summer kind of songs, and the whole Astrodome was dancing, cowboys and grandmas and little kids, everybody. Then all the hits. When she did "Como la Flor" the whole place sang it with her. Nelda cried. I pretended I didn't. Five weeks later she was gone. That night is the best memory I have and the saddest one, both at the same time. |
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Where I was
March 31, 1995 was a Friday. I was at beauty school, doing a practice perm on my friend Lety, and somebody ran in from the parking lot and said to turn on the radio. The Tejano station was just playing her songs, one after another, with nobody talking. That's how we knew it was true. That weekend Yoli and I drove home to Corpus. Thousands and thousands of people lined up to say goodbye to her, in the rain and the sun, with white roses and candles and pictures and little kids on their daddies' shoulders. We stood in line for hours. Nobody complained once. I have never seen anything like it before or since. |
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Mis canciones favoritas
Como la Flor — the one she always saved for last. A girl letting go of the man who left, with her head up. Every quince DJ in Texas still plays it. Bidi Bidi Bom Bom — about your heart going crazy when that certain boy walks by. You can't sit still to it. Try. No Me Queda Más — the saddest one. She wishes him happiness with somebody else. I can't listen to it in the car anymore. Fotos y Recuerdos — did you know it's her Spanish version of the Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang"? I didn't, until my cousin told me. La Carcacha — about a guy with a beat-up old car, and the girl doesn't care. Pure fun. Nelda's Cutlass was our carcacha. Dreaming of You — she never got to hear it on the radio. Every time I do, I think about that.
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Para Selena a poem by Araceli You were the girl from down the road who made it all the way, who sang in the language of our grandmas and dressed the way you wanted to anyway. The bay still shines where you are standing, bronze now, looking out to sea. Descansa, reina. Rest now, queen. You sang enough for you and me. |
