Selena returns to Netflix to tell the tragic end of her short and intense life as a Latin music icon

Still from the Netflix series 'Selena'. NETFLIX

Selena Quintanilla returns with 20 years and has three more to tell the end of her story.

The biographical series based on the life of the Tex-Mex singer who rose in the nineties as a watershed in Latin music opens its second season this coming Tuesday.

She will return more independent, enterprising and rebellious to show her last years, the peak of her career before being assassinated by the president of her fan club.

The directors of the series, Katina Medina and Hiromi Kamata, have ensured that in this installment the artist will be shown from a more personal and independent profile, a more adult version in which she will take charge of her life, secretly marry and will jump from the ranchero song market to stardom with

international

hits

in English.

More information

• Selena Quintanilla: queen, icon and myth of Tex-Mex music

• Selena, the Latin revolution that is still alive 23 years after her assassination

The second and last part of the series leaves Selena behind to flourish, that girl from Lake Jackson, Texas, of Mexican parents who has to learn to speak Spanish to open a gap in the Latin music industry with her privileged voice. Also left behind is the funny but always obedient teenager to her strict and ambitious father, an immigrant from Mexico who settled in the southern United States to support his family. In the new season, that young woman finally achieves recognition with a gold record. The sacrifices of dropping out of school, traveling and living on a bus, and singing yourself hoarse are beginning to pay off. In the last three years of her life, Selena falls in love for the first time and defies her family's wishes,begins a solo career and meets the person who would later end her life: Yolanda Saldívar, the president of her fan club and manager of the clothing stores designed by the singer.

To tell the story of the woman who made her way into a male-dominated music genre, Netflix decided to make it a series directed by two women specifically. Mexican-Japanese filmmaker Hiromi Kamata and her partner Katina Medina - both Selena fans - jumped into the project. "There is a lens and there is a different focus in how we try to carry the story by being a female character and I feel that it is impressive to see how this woman so many years ago broke so many barriers and that today it is still difficult", Medina remarks. He acknowledges that there is also a feeling of frustration in directing scenes where Selena must work harder than other men to earn her place. “We continue to have to fight in this way and have to prove so many things. I connected a lot with that story towards Selena,where one more thing was always asked of her in order to achieve what she wanted ”, she admits.

Despite the careful details in the costumes and the involvement of the Quintanilla family in the production to faithfully tell the story, the criticisms of the first installment pointed to the lack of protagonism of Selena. The spectators missed an introspective vision of the artist to know who she was outside the universe of her family so closed, conservative and protective. Medina acknowledges that the Quintanilla family continues to have a large part of the nine remaining chapters of the series, since it was important in the construction of the singer's life and a determining factor in her professional success. “Having so many hours and chapters to tell the story, it was also important to see it. AB [elder brother of the family and bass player] was so involved in his career and that he was really the one who wrote the

hits ”,

assures Medina.

In this adult stage, Selena is determined to fight to be with Chris Pérez, the member of the group that her father fires in a heated argument when they discover their relationship.

"There is a very nice love story," explains Kamata.

They marry in secret, seek the approval of the family and go through marital friction due to the demanding career of the artist.

The other great moment of the season is the introduction of the character who is currently serving a sentence in the United States for murdering Selena when she was 23 years old. Yolanda Saldívar, who closes the last chapter by volunteering to preside over the fan club, becomes fully involved with the Quintanilla family and earns their trust. The directors assure that the main challenge of telling their story was to be faithful to Selena's life, respecting the vision of the family that was involved from the beginning of the project in the writing of the script. “This series is a celebration of his music, his legacy, his history and his person. We wanted to get away from all kinds of morbid and not give space to any unnecessary dark part ”, Kamata points out. "It's not the crime story, it's the story of Selena's life."

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