Abraham Quintanilla, the father and manager of late Tejano pop icon Selena Quintanilla, has died. He was 86.
“It is with a heavy heart that I inform you guys that my father passed away today,” Quintanilla’s son, A.B. Quintanilla III, wrote on his Instagram account on Saturday. The cause of death has not been disclosed to the public.
As the head of a famous Mexican-American musical family, Quintanilla played a critical role in developing the career of his daughter Selena. Since her tragic death in 1995, he has dedicated his life to preserving her legacy and overseeing her estate. This included managing the rights to her image, name and likeness – sometimes loose ends.
Quintanilla was born in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1939. He began his musical career in 1956 as a member of the singing group The Dinos, a racially discriminated Chicano rock group. In one case, the club owner paid the band No to come forward recognizing that they are Mexican-American; but the group was also sidelined by their Mexican counterparts for not making music in Spanish.
Quintanilla's irritation was expressed in an actual quote later made famous by actor Edward James Olmos, who played Quintanilla in the 1997 biopic Selena: “We must be more Mexican than Mexicans and more American than Americans, both at the same time. It's tiring!
Quintanilla eventually left the group in the 1960s to start a family with Marcella Zamora, whom he met in Tacoma, Washington, while serving in the United States Air Force. The family grew quickly after the birth of AB, Suzette and Selena. In them he saw the potential to fulfill his dreams of musical stardom.
With AB on bass, Suzette on drums and Selena as the gentle vocalist, the trio often performed at the family restaurant PapaGayo's, which later closed after the 1981 recession. The family was forced to sell their home in Lake Jackson, Texas, and move to Corpus Christi. To make ends meet, Selena y Los Dinos performed on street corners, family parties and other social events. Led by their father, who took over as the band's manager, Los Dinos eventually signed with Freddie Records in 1984.
Selena was met with a lot of skepticism from an early age as a young girl in a male-dominated genre, including from their first label head, Freddy Martinez. However, Los Dinos persisted in the Tejano music scene, moving from one label to another before the group finally released eight albums on Manny Guerra's independent labels, GP Productions and Record Producer Productions. With several albums under her belt, Selena was able to dominate the Tejano Music Awards; she won female vocalist of the year in 1987.
Selena eventually caught the attention of Jose Behar, a former Sony Music Latin executive, who saw her crossover appeal (despite the fact that Selena's primary language was English) and signed her to EMI Latin (Capitol Records) in 1989. This led to the release of her most career-defining hits across five albums, such as “Como la Flor”, “Amor Prohibido”, “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom” and the posthumously released ballad “Dream of You”.
After Selena's murder in 1995 – author Yolanda Saldivarthe former president of her fan club, Quintanilla, became a fierce defender of her image, which often became a public sensation.
Because of the horrific and highly publicized nature of Selena's death, Quintanilla felt the film needed to be made sooner rather than later to do justice to his daughter's legacy, “Selena” director Gregory Nava said. in an interview in 2025 with De Los.
“For me, as a director, I wanted to tell a true story,” Nava said. “I had a conflict, not with my family, but with Abraham. Her father was very protective of her.”
Tensions increased when Nava began to fabricate a story about the singer's elopement with guitarist Chris Perez, whom she married in 1992.
“You can’t show on screen that it’s right for a young girl to disobey her father,” Nava remembers Quintanilla saying.
“Isn’t it more important to emphasize that she’s doing what she thinks is right? [that] is she doing the right thing because she knows she loves Chris and Chris loves her?” Nava answered.
Eventually Quintanilla relented. “I think if I have to look bad to make Selena look good, I'll do it,” Nava remembers him saying. “He has a soft heart. He finally realized he did the right thing, but it took hours of heated discussion.”
Although Suzette said that the 1997 biopic came too early in her eyes – and drew criticism of her father, who was seen by some as money-grubbing and opportunistic – but she ultimately supported his decision, saying there was pressure in the family at the time to control the narrative.
Nava agreed.
“Abraham was very wise to get the job done quickly,” he said. “Selena brought us all together and it cemented her legacy in a positive way. This movie dispelled all the negativity. You see it in the movie and you feel it.”
