Selena

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Tina Gianoulis

Perhaps Selena's greatest achievement, however, was in making Anglo-America take notice of its Latino counterpart. Though there are close to 30 million American Latinos, with over $300 billion in purchasing power, media and corporations often ignore them. After Selena's death, she became something of a folk hero in the United States Latino community, with her face appearing everywhere from street murals to bank checks, and hundreds of babies in Texas and California named after her. Business and the media responded to this surge of grief in unprecedented ways. People Magazine not only released a special southwest edition with Selena's death as the cover story, but followed up with a tribute issue, only the third such in the magazine's history, and continued to reach out to Latino readers with People en Espanol. During Yolanda Saldivar's trial, TV Guide provided bilingual coverage for the first time in its history, with English and Spanish versions of an article about the movie version of "The Selena Trial."

Perhaps in life Selena would not have been able to achieve the crossover she desired. Certainly it would not have come without conflict and controversy. Few Latin music performers have been welcomed into the anglo music scene, and those who have often alienate their Latin audiences by leaving too much of their roots behind them. Though her life was cut tragically short, Selena Quintanilla-Perez remains "una de nosotros" (one of us) to her Latino community, and she unquestionably opened the door for a wider awareness and appreciation of the Latin pop music she loved.