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Sunday, June 11, 2000
No way to honor Selena
Graffiti artists and initial-carvers sully her bayfront memorial.
Selena Quintanilla-Perez - just Selena to her legions of fans - has in the years since her tragic death in 1995 become far more than a remarkably talented entertainer: She has become a kind of cultural icon for the Hispanic community, and has sparked an awakening in American society of interest in Tejano music.
Given the strength of the emotions she still inspires, you find yourself confronting an all but unanswerable question: Why do so many of her fans, on making their pilgrimages to her hometown of Corpus Christi, feel constrained to mar her memorial on the bayfront with painted messages and - worse - initials carved into the statue?
This has become an serious problem for the community and a burden on the City Park and Recreation employees who at least once every week must clean up and paint over the damage.
Some seem to feel this is the only way they can communicate their love of Selena's music, and the sense of loss they experienced when she was fatally shot by the former president of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar.
That, however, doesn't stand up under close scrutiny. Such acts bespeak more a hey-look-at-me attitude than they do true respect for Selena's life and music. What we have here, however well-intentioned it may be, is not veneration but vandalism.
Recently, the city's Water/Shore Advisory Committee authorized City Park and Recreation Director Tony Cisneros to contact both the Quintanilla family and local philanthropist Dusty Durrill, a prime mover in creating the memorial, to seek possible solutions.
One option is some kind of barrier to keep fans at arm's length. The symbolism - separating Selena from her fans - would be unfortunate. The status quo, however, has become so tawdry that some kind of corrective action is imperative.
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