The ending of a life and the making of an immortal Latina legend took place at a Days Inn Motel in Corpus Christi, Texas, on March 31, 1995 when the Tex-Mex singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was fatally shot by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar. The success Selena enjoyed while alive has continued and perhaps even grown since her death. Rafael Molina characterizes Selena with the words “mito, industria, culto y negocio” (myth, industry, cult, and business) in his article commemorating the fifth anniversary of her death. Others refer to her as a sort of Madonna latina, and label her enormous popularity as selenamanía (Cruz Bárcenas 1). However one chooses to identify the phenomenon, there is no denying the tremendous impact that she and her music have had on the border culture between the United States and Mexico, as well as her growing importance in the United States’ Latino/a population and mainstream America.

Selena's iconization is the result of particular factors that in many ways parallel those that were found in the River Plate region at the beginning of the twentieth century. Questions of identity and themes of border crossing surface repeatedly in the Chicano and Latino communities along the divide between Mexico and the United States in much the same way that they appear in Argentine and Uruguayan cultures, which are heavily marked by immigration from Europe. The hybridization of cultures along the border between the United States and Mexico finds its expression in the diverse rhythms of Tex-Mex music and in the Chicana entertainer Selena. Selena, like Gardel, provides the public with a role model for achieving success despite negative odds. Like Gardel, Selena marketed and sold her image of success to the public; and after her death, the sales continue. She created music in different languages and in diverse styles for a variety of audiences.

The multiplicity inherent in the images Selena performed and in the music she produced also makes her a powerful symbol for traditional theater, because she represents many facets of popular culture along the border. By reviving Selena in works that dramatize her life and death, authors are able to re-examine questions of identity, racism, and cultural bias for and against Latinos and Chicanos. Performances by Selena and by others portraying her on the stage mark the uneasy divide between cultures and between the perception of one's self and others.