Selena Singer

She has been dead for four years. No one in her family who says this seems to believe it. Yet there's her bronze statue, by the ocean, a life-sized Selena Quintanilla Perez gazing out at the water. One thousand, four hundred and sixty-eight days. And nights. The sea comes, the sea goes again, lapping at the life left on this shore. Father, mother, brother, sister. The breeze comes hot here. Even in winter it is thick and moist.

She has been dead for four years. No one in her family who says this seems to believe it. Yet there's her bronze statue, by the ocean, a life-sized Selena Quintanilla Perez gazing out at the water. One thousand, four hundred and sixty-eight days. And nights. The sea comes, the sea goes again, lapping at the life left on this shore. Father, mother, brother, sister. The breeze comes hot here. Even in winter it is thick and moist.

The makeshift shrine of roses, snapshots and handwritten notes to slain singing idol Selena were taken down long ago from the windows of the boutique bearing her name. On this sunny Sunday afternoon in October, as young Latinos from throughout south Texas stroll around nearby Brackenridge Park, the grief inside the boutique has been replaced by a bustling commerce.

The makeshift shrine of roses, snapshots and handwritten notes to slain singing idol Selena were taken down long ago from the windows of the boutique bearing her name. On this sunny Sunday afternoon in October, as young Latinos from throughout south Texas stroll around nearby Brackenridge Park, the grief inside the boutique has been replaced by a bustling commerce.

"This is the concert," says filmmaker Gregory Nava, "that Selena never lived to give." The performance, intended as a poignant fantasy of a promise unfulfilled, is being presented on the stage of the beautifully restored Majestic Theater in downtown San Antonio. Hundreds of volunteer extras--many of them fans of the tejano music superstar--are filling the auditorium.