HARD TO BELIEVE SELENA DIED 25 YEARS AGO TODAY

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

From: The Waste Land

I. The Burial of the Dead

By Juan Montoya

Selena didn't die in April, true.

But she died 25 years ago on the last day of March in 1995. In fact, she had performed at the SombreroFest that February.

Just a week short of the year after Selena's death, in March 24, 1996,  Mexican songstress and ranchero music diva extraordinaire Lola Beltran died on March 24.

Within a year, two of the most talented performers at either end of the age spectrum had gone, one by an assassin's bullet, the other graceful in old age to the end.

We were here when Selena performed at SombreroFest. A day before, children from a local school had performed her song "Carcacha" in the BISD children's parade. The music was contagious, and all along the route they were a big hit with the crowd who sang along with them as they pranced down Elizabeth Street.

When she appeared as the headline act, she invited then-Cameron County Clerk Joe Rivera to join her onstage. Rivera, apparently, was a good friend of Abraham, her father. He was played by Edward James Olmos in the movie Selena.

While he was onstage with Selena, Joe had photos taken of him and the up-and-coming star.

When she died almost a month after her appearance in Brownville, he was kind enough to let us publish some of them in Crossroads, a weekly tabloid that the late State Rep. Henry Sanchez had started.

As a testament to her enduring musical legacy, people are still plunking their dollars in jukeboxes all across the country to hear her bset-known songs like "Como la Flor," "Bidi Bidi Bamba," "Que Creias," etc.,

Although Selena touched the younger generation, the death of Lola Beltran touched the entire population. She had been a mainstay performer in the Golden Age of Mexican music and film in the era of Javier Solis, Lydia Mendoza, Chelo Silva and others like Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete.

Her rendition of "Paloma Negra" is still considered by many musical fans as one of the best interpretations of the song. Grandfathers cherished her performances, as their grandchildren learned to do after they were introduced to her songs.

The commercialization of Selena's death followed shortly after her death. Unauthorized biographies, magazines, special issues and bootleg copies of her songs flooded the market. Abraham, he father, was kept busy legally defending her franchise.

At the time I was editing Crossroads, I had an associate named Abel Salas, an Austin native who came to Brownsville just shortly before she died. He eventually went on to be the publicist of La Mafia and Los Palominos before heading or Los Angeles to seek his fortunes in film.

But before he left, he wrote a piece on the commercialization of "Selenita," as he called her. It was one of the last issues of the weekly.

Now, looking back, the weekly is gone as is Salas, and Rivera went on to retire after a futile run for county judge.

Only the music of the two divas, Selena and Lola remains.