As I walk along Shoreline Boulevard on a clear sunny day in Corpus Christi, I see my hometown painted in a picturesque light.
The dark seafoam green of the bay meets downtown – the brown-hued building facades illuminated by the sun in a way that makes the scene look like something captured on Kodak Gold.
Before long, I begin to hear music that makes me feel even more like I’ve stumbled into the pages of my childhood photo album. The contagious rhythms of a cumbia give way to a familiar voice –
Yo sé que tienes un nuevo amor
Sin embargo, te deseo lo mejor
“Como la Flor,” the signature song of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, emanates from the speakers of the Mirador de la Flor – a structure that houses a life-sized bronze statue of the late Tejano superstar and hometown legend.
It was erected in 1997, nearly two years after her March 31, 1995, murder. This year marks 30 years since what, for many in the community, remains a dark day.
The Mirador de la Flor is just one of the many landmarks found throughout Corpus Christi – the city Selena called home after the Quintanillas relocated here from Lake Jackson when she was a kid. Even after achieving superstardom, Selena continued to live in her childhood neighborhood.
It’s also the city where she now rests at Seaside Memorial Park.
Tens of thousands visit the Mirador de la Flor yearly from all over the world. Many pose for photos, leaning on the rails that surround it.
But in earlier years, before the railing and signs were placed, many visitors wrote personal messages to the singer they so admired. The acts drew contentious debates over the proper ways of memorializing Selena.
Deborah Paredez, associate professor and chair of the writing program, School of the Arts at Columbia University, wrote about this in her book “Selenidad: Selena, Latinos and the Performance of Memory.”
“Memorialization is not something that easily gets contained,” Paredez said. “So people would then, when they ran out of room there, would write on the actual memorial.
For those fans, it was really about leaving these messages of tribute.”
It was an episode that fell within the myriad ways fans memorialize Selena – a central component of Paredez’s conception of “Selenidad.”
“The actions and activities can range from everything to gathering together to listen to her music at a dance party. Or it could include making an altar in her honor,” Paredez said. “It could include remembering her along with those loved ones who have departed in our own lives.”
It’s a concept that starts from the trailblazing impact that Selena had through her superstardom in life.
Selena’s accolades are well-known: A Grammy, best-selling albums, concerts for tens of thousands of fans. Her life and success has been chronicled in a movie, a Netflix series and even children’s books.
But perhaps one of the ever-enduring testaments to Selena’s legacy is the sense of nostalgia her music triggers for fans – no matter where, or who, they may be.
“I think for many Latinos, even more broadly, like Latinx communities and especially queer Latinx community, Selena did provide a way for folks to feel like they could come home in a kind of literal way,” Paredez said. “Sometimes that was the only point of connection they might have with their families of origins, who otherwise they had a fraught relationship with.”
La Molina
Home, for much of Selena’s life, meant the Molina neighborhood on Corpus Christi’s Westside.
It’s here that I find myself outside the Time’s Market on Bloomington Street at another Selena landmark. The street-facing wall of the business boasts a large, colorful mural depicting three images of Selena, with a quote occupying the central space of the composition:
“The goal isn’t to live
Forever
but to create
something that will”
It’s a relatively new mural – placed in 2019 as an update to one that local students had erected shortly after her death. And because of its location in her childhood neighborhood, it’s not unusual for fans to make a quick stop to snap a photo.
In fact, it wasn’t long before Vanessa Reyna, with her three young daughters in tow, pulled up to do just that.
“We took advantage of spring break to come show them everything,” Reyna tells me.
Reyna had planned a surprise trip for her three girls, who she says amazed her with their sudden fandom of Selena – an artist she only really played when driving with them. That morning, Reyna had only told them that they were hitting the road for a fun day.
After a six-hour drive from their home in Rockwall, the girls were ecstatic when they pulled into their first stop on their tour of Selena’s hometown – the Selena Museum.
So by the time they were making their next stop at the mural, 10-year-old Jayleen Reyna was ecstatic.
“I like her outfits and the jewelry that she wore, and I love her records,” she tells me, adding that the museum trip was a solid “10 out of 10” on the excitement scale.
The mural is just down the street from the home Selena lived in even after she hit stardom. It’s also near the site of the old West Oso Junior High School – long demolished and now a field – that Selena attended.
Those early years saw Selena juggling her schoolwork and a burgeoning career in music – something West Oso supported through occasional pep rallies in which she would perform for her peers.
Carmen Tejeda-Delgado, a professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, attended those rallies as a fellow student.
“I recall one time when they announced that she was going to be playing for us,” Tejeda-Delgado said. “I remember her rolling her eyes like, ‘oh god, I know you guys don’t want to hear me’ or something like that, and we laughed about it. Like, ‘no, you’re going to be good.’”
Tejeda-Delgado said Selena would sing Michael Jackson songs at those pep rallies. The Tejano superstar famously didn’t learn to speak Spanish until later in her career.
But when she did start performing more Spanish music, it further engrossed her with the working-class, predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood.
“Many of us come from homes that were either monolingual Spanish or bilingual Spanish and English,” Tejeda-Delgado said. “And so the fact that she was singing in Spanish, she was representing our culture. She was representing where we had come from, and she hadn’t forgotten that.”
Molina sometimes has a reputation for being a rough part of town – a designation Tejeda-Delgado says is a perception largely shared by those not from there. She recalls feeling safe growing up, citing a sense of community shared among neighbors – one Selena figured into well.
“It’s like a big, huge, extended family. And Selena was just another member of it,” Tejeda-Delgado said.
“I think that definitely the neighborhood will never forget her… We see her, I think, as, you know, a barrio girl. A homegirl. Somebody who is there with us.”
‘Symbol of promise’
Back out at the Mirador de la Flor, it’s not unusual to see young fans of Selena stopping to pose for photographs – sometimes wearing a T-shirt with her name and image or a piece of clothing resembling something from one of her famous outfits.
Among many shops in Corpus – from the official gift shop at her museum to the numerous vendors hawking memorabilia bearing her likeness at the Corpus Christi Trade Center – what’s also apparent in the city is Selena’s commercial impact.
But this extends far beyond the city – the singer’s image remains prominent to consumers around the world through new media productions and merchandise, like a MAC Cosmetics line.
Paredez, the “Selenidad” author, says while there is space for criticism for such hypercommercialism, it’s how consumers interact with these products that really showcases Selena’s legacy.
“I’m much more interested in what those young women who are standing in line do with that lipstick,” Paredez said. “Who does it help them feel like they can become? How do they wear it? Or young trans kids, standing in line to buy that. Or young drag queens – potential drag queens. I think that, to me, is a far more interesting question.”
She says remembering Selena can mean drawing inspiration from the way she carried herself. Embracing her image – for example, by dressing up as her – in ways helps fans to also capture her sense of confidence.
“I think that especially for communities who may not have generational wealth to hand down,” Paredez says, “there’s something about passing down a tradition of remembering Selena or memorializing or simply connecting with Selena that then becomes part of how young Latinas are learning to be Latina and Latinx figures in their own right.”
But it’s a sentiment that crosses cultural boundaries, as I learned talking to Wendy Gil, who was visiting the Mirador from California with her daughter.
“I’m Filipino, so I don’t really understand the language per se,” she says. “We have some words that are similar, but just the music itself is like… I started listening and I love most of the songs.”
She tells me one of the first songs she learned the lyrics to years ago when she first moved to the U.S. was “Como la Flor.”
“Even with different genres and with different age groups, people can still relate to the music,” Gil said. “It speaks to you somehow.”
Paredez says that ability to permeate across generations and cultural boundaries is a testament to the balance Selena was able to strike between her transcendent superstardom and a sense of downhome authenticity.
And because she died so young at 23, it’s a balance that stands frozen in time.
“She was so much a symbol of promise, that I think that those things make her uniquely available to us to continue to deposit our dreams for what could be,” Paredez said. “And also our grief over what could not be.”
Fotos y recuerdos
Corpus Christi has no shortage of landmarks to Selena. Along with the Mirador and neighborhood mural, there’s also the Selena Museum, Selena Auditorium and, of course, her resting place at Seaside Memorial Park.
But for my last stop, I decided to drop in for lunch at what was her favorite taqueria, the Hi-Ho Restaurant, not far from her neighborhood.
It’s a place characteristic of the dozens of other taquerias found throughout Corpus – unassuming, perhaps a bit chaotic when busy, and boasting a mouthwatering array of some of the best Tex-Mex dishes you can find in the state. But its association with the city’s most famous resident is apparent the minute you walk through the door.
Photographs of Selena and her band, Los Dinos, line many of the shelves and walls. They span the breadth of her career, from professional photos to some that look like old family or fan pictures.
A centerpiece of the restaurant is an image of her that appears rendered like oil painting. She’s dressed in a white gown and singing, painted in a way that looks as if light is reflecting off her in an almost dreamlike manner.
As I was taking photos of the restaurant walls, a man named Mario Gomez introduced himself to me. He was a familiar figure from my visit – his car with a “Selena y Los Dinos” decal often spotted near the Mirador.
While he politely passed on being interviewed, the Selena fan did share with me details about the singer’s visits to Hi-Ho: Her favorite order was carne guisada, and she often ate it at a corner booth facing the wall to get a bit of privacy.
It was a spot I recognized. I had inadvertently sat there the first time I visited months ago, wearing a Selena T-shirt from a visit to the museum. It hadn’t been long before the owner had come up to tell me how I had picked a special spot to enjoy my meal at.
Reflecting on what Mario had told me then, a realization came to me: Because I sat with my back to the wall, had she been there, I would have been facing her.
I was reminded then, thinking back to my conversations on that trip, of one particular sentiment – that while it’s now been 30 years since she’s gone, in many ways she still remains with us.
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