Birth of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez

On April 16, 1971, Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was born in Lake Jackson, Texas, to Abraham Quintanilla Jr. and Marcella Quintanilla, a Mexican-American family whose musical aspirations would shape her future.[1][3][10]

Her father, a former musician, soon recognized Selena’s remarkable vocal talent and began nurturing her abilities within the family band Selena y Los Dinos.[1][5][6] Growing up in a bilingual, bicultural household in South Texas, Selena learned to sing in Spanish phonetically before becoming fluent, embodying the experience of many second-generation Mexican Americans in the United States.[1][3][6]

Selena’s birth is historically significant because she would become the “Queen of Tejano Music”, a groundbreaking figure in a genre dominated by male performers and rooted in working-class Mexican-American communities.[1][3][13][14] From modest beginnings in Lake Jackson, she rose to international fame, helping to bring Tejano and broader Latin music into mainstream American popular culture.[1][3][8]

Her life story, anchored by her birth in 1971, has become a touchstone in Latina cultural history—symbolizing perseverance, family entrepreneurship, and cross-border identity. For women in music and for Mexican-American communities, Selena’s origins in a small Texas town underscore how a local, community-based musical tradition could generate a global icon whose influence endured long after her death.[1][3][8]