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During the 1990s, both mainstream and marginal communities in the United States took part in conspicuously celebrating the Latina celebrity. This (re)emergence of the highly visible, hyper-sexualized Latina performer coincided with numerous legislative and discursive attacks on Latina/ os and with shifting and renewed assertions of Latina/ o identity, or latinidad.1 More precisely, the Latina body was often and variously celebrated both as the means through which hegemonic forces sought to occlude and thereby to ignore the political economic plights of Latina/ os and as the site upon which Latina/ o communities attempted to stage their presence within the nation. One of the most visible Latinas during this time was Selena Quintanilla Perez, whose popularity and eventual posthumous iconization enabled the visibility of other Latinas throughout the decade and set into motion the most recent Latin Music Boom that exploded in the 1990s.2
Selena initially achieved phenomenal success within and ultimately took part in transforming Tejano music, a popular Latina/ o performance genre that emerged from the dynamic Texas-Mexico border region. Within the rhythms of Tejano music, one can trace the legacy of power occupations and negotiations that have marked South Texas; Mexican rancheras and cumbias collide with German polkas, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and mainstream US pop, hip hop, and country western influences often all within the same song.3 Selena mastered traditional Tejano musical conventions with a repetoire that included Spanish-language Mariachi ballads, English-language pop love songs, and code-switching cumbias, even while she reinvented the male-dominated genre with performances that highlighted the racialized and sexualized Tejana body. And yet, despite her regional Tejana markings, which traditionally connote a decisively unhip, non-urban, blue-collar sensibility within the larger Latina/ o imaginary,4 Selena gained overwhelming popularity among diverse and often divided Latina/ o communities across the US during a historical moment characterized by emergent and often competing articulations of political and cultural identity among Latina/ os. That is, Selena represented and ultimately redefined Texas-Mexico border culture, while simultaneously succeeding in crossing over aesthetic, cultural, and national borders.5
Selena's popularity gained tremendous momentum after she was murdered at age 23 by the former president of her fan club in 1995. Following her death, a staggering number of memorial tributes, public performances of grief, and a proliferation of Selena impersonations were...