The queen of «Tex-Mex» and the murderer: Selena’s myth is still alive 30 years after her death

The Selena Quintanilla-Pérez Museum in Corpus Christi, a Hispanic majority city in southern Texas, in front of the Gulf of Mexico, contains almost the entire universe of the Queen of Tex-Mex Music: hundreds of portraits of the singer, her red Porsche, the collection of Fabergé eggs, the prizes and gold and platinum discs, about twenty of the costumes that she designed and flood of fans that are going through groups every few minutes. Of the woman who killed her in the back, Yolanda Saldívar, there is no trace. And a subtle ellipsis accounts for? In the letters of condolences, among others, President Bill Clinton and George Bush son, then Governor of Texas? of death on March 31, 1995 of a 23-year-old artist who had already made history in the Latin pop industry and in the Mexican-American community in the United States.

By The country

«It is not necessary to remember what happened; everyone knows it, and it still hurts for many of us,» they said on March 20 in the parking lot of the Dos Amigas museum, «Singer’s fans», arriving from far away, Montana and Mechigan.

This Monday, 30 years of “what happened”, and for more than Selena’s family and some of her followers prefer to forget it, the memory tide insists on returning those memories. The anniversary is not especially round, but it coincides with the first occasion in which he could aspire to probation Saldívar, a small 64 -year -old woman who was president of the Fans Club and took the singer’s fashion businesses. The Texas Indult Board denied his clemency last Thursday by understanding that «the aggressor represents a continuous threat to public security.» The Board ruled that it must remain between bars at least until 2030, when you can request again the review of the case.

A Judge of Houston sentenced her in 1995 to life imprisonment, after a trial trial that she marked? Together with OJ Simpson, held shortly before? The beginning of a golden age in the spectacularization of justice in the United States. The popular jury was enough for a little more than two hours to find it guilty of first degree murder for shooting Selena in a room of a Motel of Corpus Christi.

A spokesman told El País last week that «neither the family, nor the heirs» had planned to «give interviews or comment» at this time. Nor did they give permission to reproduce part of a casual conversation with the patriarch, Abraham Quintanilla, while he signed a copy of his memoirs, a father’s dream. Quintanilla, 86, is the man who promoted his daughter’s career and who has maintained a strong control over his posterity from this watering building that the family turned into a place for memory when they saw that thousands of people pilgrimage to the offices of the company, q Productions, to cry the death of the diva. The site has a large and busy gift store and with a study in which they have continued recording artists of Tejana and Pop music.

After meeting on Thursday the opinion about Saldívar, Suzette, sister of Selena and drummer of the Dinos, the band that accompanied her, published on Instagram a message, signed by the family and by Chris Pérez, widower of the singer and guitarist of the Dinos, which said: “This decision reaffirms that justice continues to defend the beautiful life that was taken from us to world too soon. ”

Everything indicates that the Board of probation still does not believe the version of Saldívar, which has been maintaining that everything was an «accident». Nor, that of the person in his surroundings that, in a recent article from the tabloid The New York Post, said anonymously that the victim’s «aggressiveness» caused the murderer to press the trigger.

«The thesis of the accident, which is the one who grabbed during the trial, never held,» Mark Skurka explained in a telephone conversation, who worked as a prosecutor in the case when he was a young lawyer from Corpus Christi, a working -class city that Selena never left, nor in the top of her fame. «We had a confession, which was admitted as proof, in which she never pronounced the word ‘accident’. We convinced the jury that (Saldívar) was angry with Selena and that she terrified her to take her away from her side, as well as the idea of ​​having to return to her insignificant life before knowing her. As for self -defense: what to say? It is very difficult to believe that you are defending you. back.

It was not the case. After receiving the shot, Selena crawled to the reception, where she collapsed. Motel employees called Emergency, but doctors could not save her.