Mexico

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘¿Y Cómo Es Él?’ Review: A Fraught Buddy Comedy

      by

      A jealous man tries to exact revenge on his wife’s lover, but ends up taking a road trip with him instead.“¿Y Cómo Es Él?”, a Mexican love-triangle comedy by the Argentine director Ariel Winograd, translates to “And What’s He Like?”“He,” we find out immediately, is Jero (Omar Chaparro), a taxi driver and businessman, who is the lover of Marcia (Zuria Vega), who is married to Tomás (Mauricio Ochmann).The film opens with Tomás, our edgy protagonist, scrutinizing pictures of a dashing hunk while on a flight to Puerto Vallarta.Tómas, unemployed, jealous and insecure, tells Marcia he’s traveling for a job interview. He’s actually on his way to kick Jero’s butt — or tase him, or blow him to pieces with a machine gun. These violent fantasies play out in comic bursts, but when faced with the opportunity to exact revenge, Tómas gets cold feet. Then, he accidentally stabs himself, passes out, and wakes up in his nemesis’s back seat.It turns out that Jero is a pretty nice guy — he even offers Tomás a ride back to Mexico City.Cue the fraught male bonding, which (predictably for this kind of straight guy buddy comedy) includes a trip to a brothel and run-ins with thuggish debt collectors.The film, a remake of a 2007 Korean film bluntly translated as “Driving With My Wife’s Lover,” will seem retrograde to contemporary viewers. In addition to homophobic quips, the premise relies on the idea that an adulterous wife is the greatest offense to a man’s dignity. As such, it caters to an older, more traditional Latino audience who might still be tickled by such a conceit — and for whom the cast, which includes Chaparro (a prolific comedian and singer), along with several other popular Mexican personalities, will be a draw.Though Winograd questions the film’s gender biases in the conclusion, he does so unconvincingly. At a quick 95 minutes, at least the whole thing zips by, however brainlessly.¿Y Cómo Es Él?Rated PG-13. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘La Mami’ Review: Tough Love

      by

      This documentary about the den mother of dancers at a Mexico City cabaret is vérité at its best.At the Cabaret Barba Azul, women get paid to dance and drink with the male patrons, a custom that dates back to the 1930s. In the beautifully-rendered documentary “La Mami,” the director and cinematographer Laura Herrero Garvín (“The Swirl”) immerses us in the behind-the-scenes world of these dancers through the lens of their den mother: Doña Olga. Like them, Doña Olga also used to spend her nights dancing for pesos, but after 45 years working various jobs at the cabaret to support her five children, she has settled into her post in the club’s dressing room-bathroom combo. There she regulates the distribution of toilet paper with an iron fist, and doles out a charming mix of motherly nurturing and fierce rebukes. Like this bit of poetry: “Men are only good for two things: for nothing, and for money.”Garvín’s adept camerawork allows the story to unfold so seamlessly in its vérité style, that the film emanates the magic of a scripted drama without revealing any noticeable interference. And it creates a palpable depth of intimacy too: from Doña Olga waving incense and whispering prayers throughout the club before the doors open, to the nervous new girl Priscilla putting on makeup in the mirror.The triumph of “La Mami” is that in depicting how Doña Olga and the Barba Azul dancers navigate a job where male pleasure dominates, the film does not look down on them, but instead revels in their humanity. And in so doing, this remarkable portrayal of female friendship offers a poignant, elemental take on the lives of working-class women in urban Mexico today.La MamiNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Vicente Fernández, the King of Machos and Heartbreak

      by

      The singer’s brand of machismo may have frayed, but for many, he was the ideal of what it means to be hard-working, hard-loving Mexican man.The singer Vicente Fernández was “El Ídolo” and “El Rey” — the idol of Mexico and the king of ranchera music. These lofty titles reinforced his profound cultural influence, which spanned decades and countries far beyond Mexico.Fernández, who died on Sunday at 81, long represented the ideal of the Mexican man, proud of his roots and himself. His music often centered on love and loss, though also with a high degree of confidence and attitude. His iconic rendition of the song “Volver Volver” propelled him to fame, but it’s in another major hit, “Por Tu Maldito Amor,” that his agony and longing are on full display.In 2016, Fernández, known as Chente, recorded “Un Azteca en el Azteca,” a live album featuring some of his biggest hits, at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the largest venue in the country, which holds over 87,000. It was billed as his farewell concert, and it also turned out to be the last before he experienced a series of health problems.During his performance of “Por Tu Maldito Amor” (“Because of Your Damn Love”), the sea of fans sing the chorus back to him.Por tu maldito amorNo puedo terminar con tantas penasQuisiera reventarme hasta las venasPor tu maldito amorIt’s become a musical standard at any special occasion hosted by someone of Mexican descent — everyone knows the lyrics. The night doesn’t begin to end until someone starts pouring tequila, plays this song, and belts out a grito in their best Chente voice — operatic and soaring with a tinge of melancholy.Despite the subject matter of his music, it was always tempered by his manly persona — he dressed in full charro regalia, took swigs from fans’ bottles and performed atop his horses. Fernández’s brand was this: a brawny, mustachioed man gallantly fighting for the woman he loves.And his persona was not unlike the idols that preceded him, Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete, Mexico’s earliest ranchera stars who rose to fame in the 1930s with their interpretations of love songs. And like them, he parlayed his music career into acting roles. Fernández starred in more than 30 films with titles like “El Macho” and “Todo Un Hombre,” in which he plays hard-living rancheros who romance beautiful women.To be sure, after so many decades of influence, Fernández and his work will remain beloved. His music will endure in the Mexican songbook. But his brand of machismo has frayed — at least for a younger generation less interested in a narrow view of what it means to be a man.In 2019, Fernández gave an interview to “De Primera Mano,” a Mexican entertainment news show, where he described receiving a cancer diagnosis in 2012 after doctors found a tumor on his liver. He said they suggested he get a liver transplant, which he rejected, saying: “I’m not going to sleep next to my woman with the organ of another man, not knowing if he was a homosexual or a drug addict.”There was an outcry on social media over the homophobic remarks, and even his son, Vicente Fernández Jr., tried to walk back his father’s interview, asserting that his father’s music was for everyone.Regardless of Fernández’s views on sexuality — though they seem to be pretty apparent — Vicente Jr. might be right. After decades in the spotlight, Chente’s music no longer belongs just to him — it belongs to the people. His musical influence extends far beyond Mexico, permeating much of Latin America and the United States. Fernández’s popularity hasn’t waned, as demonstrated by the memorials and outpouring of condolences on Sunday, ranging from the likes of President Biden to that other “king,” the country singer George Strait.Fernández wasn’t one to shy away from politics. In Mexico, he was a known supporter of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which long held power in the country. And his influence extended into U.S. politics. He performed at the 2000 Republican National Convention, where George W. Bush secured the nomination. But more recently he supported Democratic candidates in the U.S., even writing a corrido for Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential run.Though he is emblematic of a type of dated machismo, many people will still choose to listen to his music and belt out his songs at karaoke or at a cousin’s wedding. Perhaps another one of his memorable songs, “El Rey,” explains this dichotomy.You might say you never loved meBut you will be very sadAnd that’s why you will have to stayWith money and without moneyI always do what I wantAnd my word is the lawI don’t have a throne nor a queenNor anyone who understands meBut I’m still the kingYou probably don’t remember the first time you heard one of his songs because they were always a part of the soundscape, imprinted in your mind. His music is imbued in the fabric of American Latino culture, much like in the rest of Latin America. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Vicente Fernández Knew His Way Around Your Broken Heart

      by

      First breakups. Final goodbyes. For generations, Mr. Fernández, who died on Sunday, provided a soundtrack for moments of anguish and heartache, and a pathway to healing.After four years of dating, this is what it came to for Art Castillo: sitting alone in his blue truck in Waco, Texas, listening to his girlfriend on speaker. Long distance wasn’t working, she told him. She had found another man. The relationship was over.“I hanged up and put Vicente Fernández on,” said Mr. Castillo, 30. He played “La Cruz de Tu Olvido,” in which Mr. Fernández bellows, “As I looked at the evil in your eyes, I understood that you have never loved me.” He played it louder, again and again, until he was done crying.“With his songs,” Mr. Castillo said, “you just feel it inside you.”For generations, Mr. Fernández’s often sorrowful songs have served as a balm for the heartbroken. Over a career that spanned six decades, Mr. Fernández, the Mexican ranchera superstar who died on Sunday at 81, recorded hundreds of songs and dozens of albums, singing of unrequited love, scornful partners and tarnished romance.In that time, Mr. Fernández, known to millions as Chente, became a beacon for the brokenhearted, a man to listen to when love has gone awry and all you want — besides, perhaps, some tequila — are plucky guitars, harmonized horns and someone to give voice to your most intimate feelings.“For a lot of people with Mexican descent, his voice is home,” said Rachel Yvonne Cruz, a professor of Mexican American studies and a music specialist at the University of Texas at San Antonio.That explains why so many people, mostly Latinos, turn to him when they are down, she said.“When Vicente Fernández sang, he expressed all of those emotions that we keep held inside: that silent cry, that silent scream that’s happening when you’re heartbroken, when you just cannot anymore,” Dr. Cruz said. “And when you listened to him, you were able to have that release that you needed.”Who broke Mr. Fernández’s heart? That remains a playful mystery among his fans. He married María del Refugio Abarca Villaseñor when he was in his early 20s, and the two stayed together until his death.But however and whenever his heartbreak occurred, his fans say, his anguish came through in his lyrics.Tu boca, tu ojos y tu peloLos llevo en mi mente, noche y día“Your mouth, your eyes and your hair, I carry them in my mind, night and day,” Mr. Fernández sings in “Las Llaves de Mi Alma.”Por tu maldito amorNo puedo terminar con tantas penas“Because of your damn love, I can’t bring an end to so much shame,” he roars in “Por Tu Maldito Amor.”En un marco, pondré tu retratoY en mi mano, otra copa de vino“In a frame, I will put your portrait, and in my hand, another glass of wine,” he croons in “Tu Camino y el Mío.”That was the song that helped Fernanda Aguilera.“I had been with someone since, I guess, high school, and then you think, ‘Well, this is going to be my person,’” said Ms. Aguilera, 27, of San Antonio. But when college came and they went their separate ways, she realized that the relationship “was just an illusion in my head.”She played “Tu Camino y el Mío” (“Your Road and Mine”), and recalled thinking: “This is exactly how I feel, but I could just never find the words. And it’s like he put the words together for me.”On a cool March night in Oxnard, Calif., a brokenhearted Jaime Tapia grabbed some beers, invited a friend to his house and put on a Vicente Fernández playlist. Mr. Tapia was 19. He and his girlfriend of four years had decided to cut off their relationship earlier that night.Mirroring the way Mr. Fernández had dealt with heartache in the movies (mostly with alcohol, a somber stare into the middle distance and buddies who reassure him he will be OK), Mr. Tapia and his friend kept the beers coming as they sat on the hoods of their cars.“Just dozing off, looking at the stars,” he said. He was lonely and drunk for the first time in his life.“A lot of the songs that Chente talks about are about breakups, being in a cantina, stuff like that,” Mr. Tapia said. “So even though you feel sad at the time, you felt good that you were bonding with a buddy and that you weren’t by yourself.”Ranchera music “can be thought of as a sung exposition of one’s most honest emotions,” said Mónica Fogelquist, a professor of practice in mariachi and ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin.“In Mexican culture, men are supposed to be strong, valiant, proud and void of any sentiment,” she said. “They don’t cry, and they don’t express vulnerability, including heartache. However, through music, all the unexpressed or prohibited emotions are free to come out.”People have used Chente’s romantic tunes to try to win back an estranged partner through serenatas, a musical message of love delivered by a mariachi band in front of a lover’s window — a tradition that Mr. Fernández popularized in films.“It’s pretty popular; we’ve been hired a couple times to help win that person back,” said Giovanni Garcia, who manages the band Mariachi Estrellas de Chicago. He added, “There’s been a couple of times where they’ll tell us, ‘Oh, I’m in the doghouse right now and hoping this will help me.’”Sometimes it works, he said. Often, it doesn’t — even if the band plays one of Mr. Fernández’s songs.Someone tried it on Laura Figueroa once. It did not end well.A mariachi band knocked on her door in Chicago. Her little brother let them inside, and the musicians marched through the kitchen and into her bedroom. She was 22 at the time.“I’m sitting there looking down at the floor like, ‘Oh my God, there’s literally a mariachi in my house,’” said Ms. Figueroa, now 39. She does not believe the band played Chente, and in any event she did not take her former lover back.Jesus Gutierrez, 37, of Chicago said his father used to sing “Hermoso Cariño” (“Beautiful Darling”) by Mr. Fernández to his mother, Juana, when they were dating in Guanajuato, Mexico. She used to be embarrassed when telling the story, Mr. Gutierrez said, because his father, Nicolas, was “not a good singer.”But perhaps it worked, he said, because they married, had children and listened to ranchera music together for decades. She saved nearly all of her Chente vinyl records and screamed every word of his heartbreaking songs at his concerts, her son recalled.In 2019, Juana Gutierrez died, and Chente’s songs came to represent a new type of heartbreak for Mr. Gutierrez. He said he couldn’t play some of his mother’s favorites anymore because “it’s too much.”But on Sunday, when he heard Mr. Fernández had died, he knew right away how he would spend his evening: the same way he and so many others had gotten through their first breakups and final goodbyes.He scrolled through his playlist until he found “Hermoso Cariño.”Precioso regaloDel cielo ha llegadoY que me ha colmado de dicha y amor“Precious gift, from heaven it has come,” Mr. Fernández sang. “And that has filled me with happiness and love.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      Vicente Fernández, ‘El Rey’ of Mexican Ranchera Music, Is Dead at 81

      by

      A beloved Mexican singer, Mr. Fernández was known for his powerful operatic range and marathon performances, delivered in a signature charro outfit and intricately embroidered sombrero.Vicente Fernández, the powerful tenor whose songs of love, loss and patriotism inspired by life in rural Mexico endeared him to generations of fans as “El Rey,” the king of traditional ranchera music, died on Sunday morning. He was 81.His death was announced in a post on his official Instagram account, which did not give a cause or say where he died. He had been hospitalized for months after a spinal injury he sustained in August, according to previous posts from the account.Accompanied by his mariachi band, Mr. Fernández brought ranchera music, which emerged from the ranches of Mexico in the 19th century, to the rest of Latin America and beyond. In his signature charro outfit and intricately embroidered sombrero, a celebration of the genre’s countryside origins, he performed at some of the largest venues in the world.He recorded dozens of albums and hundreds of songs over a career that spanned six decades. His enduring popularity was reflected in a series of industry accolades, including a place in the Billboard Latin Music Hall of Fame, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, three Grammy Awards and eight Latin Grammy Awards. He sold tens of millions of copies of his albums and starred in dozens of movies.He was known for giving epic, hourslong concerts, communing directly with his fans and taking swigs from bottles of alcohol that were offered to him. Known fondly as “Chente,” he would tell his audiences that “as long as you keep applauding, your ‘Chente’ won’t stop singing.”Reviewing a 1995 performance at Radio City Music Hall for The New York Times, Jon Pareles wrote that Mr. Fernández “sang with operatic power and melodrama,” flexing his “ardent tenor” to “prodigious crescendos and a vibrato that could register on the Richter scale.”He continued to give marathon performances well into his 70s. At a 2008 concert at Madison Square Garden, Mr. Fernández held court for three hours. A lingering note, delivered in his “lively, if slightly weathered tenor,” could render the audience silent, Jon Caramanica wrote in his review in The Times.Vicente Fernández was born on Feb. 17, 1940, in Huentitán El Alto, in the state of Jalisco in western central Mexico. His father, Ramón Fernández, was a rancher and his mother, Paula Gómez de Fernández, stayed at home to raise their son.He grew up watching matinee movies featuring the Mexican ranchera singer Pedro Infante, an early influence. When he was 8, he received his first guitar and began studying folk music. He left school in the fifth grade and later moved with his family to Tijuana after their cattle business collapsed. He told The Los Angeles Times in 1999 that he took whatever work he could, laying bricks and shining shoes, and even washing dishes.“I’ve always said I got to where I am not by being a great singer, but by being stubborn, by being tenacious, by being pigheaded,” Mr. Fernández said. He gravitated to a public square in Guadalajara called Mariachi Plaza, where he performed for tips, he told The Los Angeles Times. His career took off after he won a competition called La Calandria Musical when he was 19, he said in a 2010 interview with KENS 5 of San Antonio. He moved to Mexico City where he sang at a restaurant and at weddings, and unsuccessfully pitched himself to local record labels.The labels came calling soon after the death in 1966 of Javier Solís, one of the most popular Mexican singers who specialized in bolero and ranchera music. Mr. Fernández then recorded his first albums, including hits like “Volver, Volver,” which elevated him to a level of fame that he had never envisioned, he told KENS 5. Other hits, including “El Rey” and “Lástima que seas ajena,” would follow.“When I started my career, I always had the confidence that I would one day make it, but I never imagined that I would reach the heights at which the public has placed me,” Mr. Fernández said.His public statements occasionally got him into trouble in his later years, such as when he said in a 2019 interview that he had refused a liver transplant because he feared that the donated organ might have come from a gay person or a drug addict. Earlier this year, he apologized after he was seen in a video touching a female fan’s breast without her consent while they posed for a photo.Mr. Fernández married María del Refugio Abarca Villaseñor in 1963. She survives him, as do the couple’s children, Vicente, Gerardo, Alejandra and Alejandro, a Grammy-nominated ranchera performer.Asked if a routine or exercise was a key to his longevity as a performer, Mr. Fernández told KENS that he walked every day for an hour and rode horses when he was home on his ranch. But when he was on tour, he said, “I don’t leave the hotels.”“Still, that keeps me healthy,” he said. “My voice is well rested. When I hear the public’s applause, I don’t know where the voice comes from, but it does for three hours. You’ll have to ask God to find out how he blesses me every time.” More

    • 38 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Fauna’ Review: Narcomythologies

      by

      This lean meta-drama tackles the fictions typically associated with Mexican culture with droll humor and bold conceptual play.In “Fauna,” the Mexican Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda teases with and deconstructs the fictions typically associated with contemporary Mexican culture in a lean 70-minute running time that abounds in droll humor and bold conceptual play.At first, the film starts out like a deadpan indie comedy heavy on the cringe: Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and her boyfriend Paco (Francisco Barreiro) drive out to a depopulated town in the Mexican hinterlands to visit Luisa’s parents for the weekend. Once they’ve reached their destination, they encounter Luisa’s churlish brother, Gabino (Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez), unfolding a tense, awkward dynamic that only worsens when Luisa’s father and mother arrive.When Luisa’s father (José Rodríguez López) takes the two men out for a beer, Paco — who plays an actor in the Netflix series, “Narcos: Mexico” — is asked to reprise his role right then and there, pitting his nervous disbelief against dad and Gabino’s stoic entreaties. Barreiro, who in real life acted in the drug trade drama, is eventually pushed to perform a monologue drawn directly from the finale of the first season, resulting in one of the most exciting, and wonderfully mortifying bits I’ve seen in quite a while.Pereda then deftly reorients the film by bringing to life the plot of a hard-boiled novel that Gabino is midway through reading. The actors from the first half of the film are recycled in this nested narrative, playing detective story archetypes involved in narco-adjacent intrigue ripped straight from the original characters’ dreams.Brimming with postmodern flourishes, “Fauna” calls attention to the slippery nature of performance and identity, lodging a complex, yet highly engrossing critique of narco culture’s influence on Mexican storytelling — and it does so without a drop of that pesky didacticism.FaunaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Television

      Jimmy Kimmel: Texas in Crisis, Ted Cruz Says, ‘Adios, Amigos’

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Winter StormsliveLatest UpdatesMapping the ImpactTexans DesperateConnection to Global WarmingHow to HelpAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightJimmy Kimmel: Texas in Crisis, Ted Cruz Says, ‘Adios, Amigos’“Snake on a plane, right there!” Kimmel joked. “Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build the wall around.”“And on a day when the most newsworthy landing should have been the NASA Rover successfully touching down on Mars, instead, it was a senator from Texas touching down on Cancún,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday.Credit…ABCFeb. 19, 2021, 1:04 a.m. ETWelcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Feeling the HeatLate-night hosts couldn’t resist coming down on Senator Ted Cruz for taking a trip to Mexico after a winter storm left millions without power and water in his home state, Texas.“Snake on a plane, right there!” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Thursday. “Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build the wall around.”“Hundreds of thousands of Texans are still without power. And on a day when the most newsworthy landing should have been the NASA Rover successfully touching down on Mars, instead, it was a senator from Texas touching down on Cancún.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“While his fellow Texans are freezing with the power out, Ted Cruz did what any great leader would do when his state needs leadership most — he booked a flight to Mexico and said, ‘Adios, amigos!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Ted Cruz! No, man, you got to be [expletive] me, dude! Your people are literally eating snow right now, and you’re jetting off to Cancún? I’m not even mad that you were selfish — I’m mad that you were so stupid. How can you be in politics for 10 years and still have no idea how bad this would make you look. What were you thinking?” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean, seeing Ted Cruz skip town for the beach has been very frustrating for the people in Texas. But on the other hand, it has been really exciting for the people in Cancún who got to meet him on the street: ‘Wow, bro, I didn’t know that Señor Frog was a real guy. That was awesome.’” — TREVOR NOAH“I mean, look, I get that Ted Cruz is tired. The man deserves a break after trying so hard to overthrow the government, but this is not the time, Ted!” — TREVOR NOAH“When your constituents said they need clean water, they didn’t mean go find a wet T-shirt contest in Cancún.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Total Ted Cruz Edition)“And what is even worse is that when he got caught, instead of owning up to it and apologizing, he acted like a total Ted Cruz.” — TREVOR NOAH“Seriously, Ted Cruz blaming his daughters for this is just gross. Being a good father means putting them on a bus, not throwing them under one.” — TREVOR NOAH“Oh, I see — we all got this thing wrong. Ted Cruz wasn’t going on vacation, people; he was just chaperoning his girls on the flight to Cancún. So, in some way, this was like a reverse ‘Taken’: [imitating Ted Cruz as Liam Neeson] ‘I want you to know that I am a man with absolutely no skills whatsoever, and I’m going to safely accompany my daughters on this trip.’” — TREVOR NOAH“He booked his return ticket at 6 a.m. this morning, after he got busted. But I guess we were supposed to believe he was just chaperoning his wife and kids to Mexico and was planning to come back the next day all along, with a carry-on bag stuffed like a piñata.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingDesus and Mero weighed in on “The Bachelor” host Chris Harrison stepping away from the show after recent controversy.Also, Check This OutCredit…The New York TimesThere’s something for everyone in the essential works of Toni Morrison in celebration of what would have been her 90th birthday.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      ‘Anything for Selena’ Examines a Singer’s Legacy and Latino Identity

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Anything for Selena’ Examines a Singer’s Legacy and Latino IdentityWhile the podcast is a biography of the Tejano star, it also weaves in the personal story of the host and examines why the singer has had a lasting effect on culture.Maria Garcia, the host and creator of “Anything for Selena,” in El Paso, Texas, where she was raised.Credit…Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021Maria Garcia has a distinct memory of when her connection to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez began. It was the early 1990s and she was 7, watching the Tejano star perform on television.“She had this cascade of black hair, red lips, brown skin,” Garcia says in the first episode of the new podcast “Anything for Selena.” “She sang like she felt every single word of her songs, like the music was emanating from her body.”It was a pivotal moment for Garcia, the podcast’s host. Born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and raised in El Paso, Texas, she struggled to figure out who she was and where she belonged, describing in the podcast how she felt “a rejection, a stigma, in both countries.” Yet, here was someone who looked like her, uncompromising in her biculturalism and appearance. Selena was Mexican as much as she was American. Her first hits, like “Como La Flor,” were in Spanish, but “Dreaming of You,” her posthumous English-language album, was a mainstream success and the 1997 biopic starring Jennifer Lopez further cemented her legacy.While the show, a 10-episode podcast co-produced by Boston’s NPR affiliate WBUR and Futuro Media, serves as a biography of Selena, it also weaves in Garcia’s personal story. And she makes the case for how the singer’s life and death (Selena was fatally shot by the president of her fan club in 1995) were profound flash points for Latinos like herself that had lasting effects on the cultural landscape. The episodes drop each Wednesday and are paired with Spanish-language versions.Selena was Mexican as much as she was American, uncompromising in her biculturalism and appearance.Credit…Arlene Richie/Media Sources/The LIFE Images Collection via, Getty ImagesI also grew up in Texas, 100 miles north of Corpus Christi, where Selena was from, and like Garcia, I am a first-generation Mexican-American. Whether it was at a quinceañera or blaring from the kitchen radio, Selena’s music was part of the soundtrack to life. Tejano music, which fuses Mexican, European and American influences, was an expression of what it means to be from Texas. She embodied all those influences.Garcia is currently staying in El Paso, where she spoke on the phone about the series and how much it hinged on a meeting with Selena’s father, Abraham Quintanilla, who is known to be very protective of her legacy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was the inspiration for “Anything for Selena”?The podcast has been my own search to figure out where I belong in the world and how I belong in the world. Everybody who knows me knows that I have always been a huge Selena devotee from the time I was a little girl to my adolescence and to my early adulthood.The last home video I have with my father before he died, it’s of us dancing to Selena music. I realized there were all these moments in my life where Selena was there, and I really wanted to unpack why she felt so profound to me even in my 30s. I knew the answer was more than just she was this Mexican-American performer in the ’90s — a time when that really incentivized assimilation. I wanted to go even deeper and try to connect the dots through the decades and really try to do her legacy justice in music and in culture.The other thing about this series is that it’s partly a memoir about your upbringing and life on the border and struggling to fit in. It made me think of this saying in Spanish, “ni de aquí, ni de allá,” neither from here nor there. Why did you want to open up about that?I wasn’t thinking of it as a memoir when I started writing it. For me, I was telling this story because when I was 7 years old and I have the first memory of Selena, I didn’t have the language to articulate what she meant to me.There was this tension between these two parts of me, and to see somebody who embodied both of those parts fully in the States and in Mexico, who traversed the two countries without code switching, who was the same person on both sides of the border — I’d never seen anything like that. It struck me at a young age and it stayed with me all of my life.Garcia was filled with trepidation in meeting Selena’s father, known for tightly controlling the singer’s legacy.Credit…Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesThe most recent episode has topics that listeners may find intriguing.We explore race pretty deeply in these next episodes. I have this theory that there is a direct historical lineage from Selena to today’s mainstreaming of big butts. Black women have always been at the forefront of celebrating curvaceous bodies, but there is this moment in the mid-90s, after Selena’s death, and particularly at the time of her biopic, when Latinas made it a feature that became desirable in the mainstream.To me, that story is about Latino identity’s fraught relationship with Blackness and the way Latinidad (the concept of U.S. Latino identity) has dehumanized and erased Black people while capitalizing on and obsessing over Black features. And the way that Latino identity has served to make these features palatable for white audiences.In the second episode, you talk about going to meet Abraham Quintanilla, Selena’s father. What was that experience like and did you have concerns about what might happen?Oh absolutely. I was terrified. I flew to Corpus Christi without any guarantee that he would even see me. We had been trying to acquire the music rights for Selena’s catalog. We had heard from the record label and they told us that not only the family rejected it, but that they were not supportive of the project.But I knew Abraham was one of the foundational keys to understanding Selena. It’s amazing how often and how devotedly she talked about her father. They had a creative bond over their craft, over music.He’s this really imposing character, especially in Spanish media. There’s been so much salacious coverage about him, and I wanted to get to know him as a person, without an agenda. I think he realized that after he spent some time with us and opened up.It felt like he let his guard down with you.And I with him. It was reciprocal.He is genuinely a complicated person. He admits that he was an incredibly demanding father. But he told me he has moments where he wonders if he had not pushed Selena to be a star, would she still be here? That’s a very real tension he has lived with for the last quarter century.Young mourners outside Selena’s home the day after she was killed in 1995.Credit…David J. Phillip/Associated PressThe series also discusses how after Selena’s death, Howard Stern became a flash point on how Latinos were portrayed in the media. It was startling to hear the rhetoric now (in a clip, he makes fun of her and the Latinos grieving her death; he later apologized). Do you think much has changed since then?A lot of people listen to that archive tape and feel distressed. I say this in the episode — this is his thing. But I really wanted to focus an episode on that because that is the moment in the Selena journey that it became clear to me how political [her death] was. To make fun of the people who mourned her was to dismiss the life of Latinos.When I heard this tape, all I could think about were the women in Juarez who have been murdered over generations and nobody cared. And it feels like to this day, nobody cares. So many of them looked like Selena. These are women who were poor and brown like Selena had been. But Selena was afforded a different path because she was born on this side of the border.Even if she did everything right, even if she played by all the rules, still to Howard Stern, her life didn’t matter. That’s the moment where her symbolism took off, the weekend after her death. After her death, her symbol then transformed even more. She became this vessel to look at the polemics, tensions and narratives around Latino life and its worth.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More