Selena Quintanilla Memorial Sites

Abstract

Selena Quintanilla, the Queen of Tejano Music, was gunned down by her fan club president on March 31, 1995. She was only twenty-three years old. She persists in public memory, resuscitated and resurrected in myriad ways. A short list includes the iconic film Selena (1997), the Netflix program Selena: The Series (2020), a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star. In addition, fans keep the singer’s memory alive through impersonation acts, T-shirts, podcasts, Instagram accounts, annual concert events, and visits to commemorative locations associated with the star. This essay examines three memorial sites in Corpus Christi, Texas: the motel where Selena was murdered, the singer’s grave in Seaside Memorial Park, and the Selena Memorial on the Corpus Christi bayfront. Bridging conversations in memory studies, scholarship on public memorials, considerations of celebrity status, and performance theory, I suggest that these places have performative potential that enables diverse groups to engage in creating specific temporary “communitas.” I analyze the possibility of altered temporal perception at the motel, enactments of what I refer to as Latina mother-daughter pedagogies of postmemory at Selena’s grave, and the expression of queer Latinx love at the singer’s commemorative statue.