Doc Watch: Selena y Los Dinos (2025)

Watched:  11/24/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Isabel Castro

Living in Texas in the early 90's, if you had your head up at all, you heard about Selena.  While I didn't listen to Tejano or Cumbia, she'd become so big that a dumb Anglo kid like myself heard Bidi Bidi Bom Bom somewhere along the way, and I admit that I probably paid more attention to Selena because she was very pretty with a Colgate smile.

Candidly, in the 1990's and now, the names of most Tejano acts were just not known by Anglos and English speakers.  But Selena was rapidly breaking down that particular divide through sheer force of scale - she was selling out the Astrodome, something reserved for the biggest acts on the planet - and wildly popular local acts like ZZ Top.  

As a Texan whose first language was English, it seemed like Selena was about to cross-over to a larger audience the second she put out a record in English (see: Shakira).

But then, in 1995, at the age of 23, Selena was killed.  

As popular as she was when that occurred, it's very hard to quantify the scope and duration of the public mourning that spilled out.

Today, Selena is as popular as ever.  My local MLS club incorporates part of El Chico del Apartamento 512 in its chants and has put up a Selena-themed tifo.  When our state-wide grocery chain, HEB, put out Selena *grocery bags*, they sold out immediately.  Thanks to the J-Lo movie and her enduring fanbase, I expect she'll still get listens for the next several decades.

Anyway, I've never seen the movie they made about Selena, because I could never get over the casting of a Brooklyn kid to play a Texas kid, which is me being weird, but here we are (and I like Jennifer Lopez on screen).   But I was more than willing to watch a documentary, and Netflix recently released Selena y los Dinos (2025), a brief history of Selena Quintanilla's life and how the family act that is/ was Los Dinos rose to fame.  It's a glimpse of what it looked like at the top and a horizon in front of Selena where everything was about to get even bigger.  But at some point, those years creeping toward 1995 start becoming a countdown.

It's a story about a tight-knit family that leans all the way into the family-band idea as they have two secret weapons, Selena's star power and her brother's talent as a producer.  It details how the band grew, worked with additional artists who joined Los Dinos, and just kept spiralling upward.  Eventually, the girl from Corpus Christi was on stage accepting a Grammy.  She was selling out venues in Texas and Mexico.  And she was about to break into the English language market.

That said, I could tell you pretty much exactly when I figured out who Selena was from the cover of her album Entre A Mi Mundo.  The cover art was everywhere.  

The doc makes obvious what Selena meant to the Latino community, for kids and adults alike.  It was kind of odd before she died how so much was being put on her at such a young age, and it's not like she was giving political speeches.  She just managed to hit just right.  

The doc skips the circumstances of her murder, at least in the way of a true-crime doc.  It jumps over that, drops some bare details about the crime, and lands with the family at the hospital and goes into the funeral.

There are details I would like to know more about.  What did the band say to each other - where did they wind up?  What have the family members done for the past three decades?  Did they fall out with Selena's husband?  

But it does show the impact and legacy of Selena, still very popular and, like so many artists who die before their time, enshrined with the tragedy of their passing.  

I don't spend a tremendous about of time thinking about Selena, but the evidence of her posthumously released album Dreaming of You, she was about to move into a completely different echelon (and her track with David Byrne, God's Child (Baila Conmigo),  is an absolute banger, imho.)

The death of Kurt Cobain was a tragedy, but the murder of Selena Quintanilla Perez is as maddening as it is sad.  And I think this doc shows why.

But it also shows a bright, lovely life and provides a history to the face and story to go with the voice and told by those who knew her best.