Today, I want to introduce you to one of our team members, Mauro. He has been working with us for several years. He is a Pilates Instructor, a GYROTONICⓇ Instructor, and also teaches Tango on the side as well.
We will ask him a few questions and have him tell his story. This guy has a great story on what kind of let him to America and what led him to become a trainer.
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Tell us a little bit about your story of what brought you to the States and how you got here.
Everything is credited to the Tango. I was living in Argentina where I came from, and I was already dancing tango for several years since 1998. Most likely, the way that you do your career as a tango dancer is through traveling or directly live in other countries.
Back in 2008, it was the best year of my life. By the end of that year, I was kind of thinking that it’s finally time to leave my country and try somewhere else. Back then, I have a bunch of friends in different parts of the world and I started contacting each one of them to see what are the possibilities of me to go and see what will happen.
It happened that I reached one of my friends from Montreal who i already knew for many years ago through dancing in the past. She accepted the deal and we agreed that I will visit Montreal and we will see what will happen.
It wasn’t very difficult for me to travel there because I have Spanish citizenship and there is an agreement between Spain and Canada or Quebec that they can give you a big tourist visa. That’s how I got there in March 2009.
I fell in love immediately with the city. I actually work there in the past in 2004 and I really like it back then. We started practicing tango with my friend and we started projecting to do a dance parlor product together. We established that through the whole year with the help of my extended visa.
We also traveled to Europe and the United States. We then came back by the end of 2009 and talked to someone who can do my work visa for me to stay for good in Montreal. We were able to find someone and we were supposed to have an agreement to do the work visa but I don’t know what really happened in the middle and something fell apart and didn’t work out even though I did all my part including going to the Immigration Office and paying the fee.
I left for the United States on January 2010 in Portland, Oregon and New York City. I decided to go and checked in New York about my work visa with the Office of the Consulate. I brought my paper, paid the fee, and everything. The person there said to me that there is no case and I said, “How come there is no case? I signed the papers and everything and I sent the recommendation.”
I was young and stupid and I said, “I’m going to travel to Montreal.” I tried and I got there at the border but they wouldn’t let me in. They checked on me and saw that I was coming in and out of Canada several times. Even though I had the right, for them it was kind of “What’s going on? How come you can come back again so quickly?”
So they decided to go ahead and check on Google my name. It happened that they could see that I’m a performer and a teacher. They then decided to deny my entry to Canada. I was rejected and they sent me back to the American border.
The experience there wasn’t much better because although they didn’t treat me well in Canada, it was much worse in the United States. In Canada border, there was only one person talking to me while in the United States border patrol, it happened that everybody was free because it was already around 7 in the evening and so, around 8 officers surrounded me and asked me questions, trying to make me feel nervous and said, “Hey! Are you trying to do the same with us? If we investigate inside your suitcase, are we going to find out that you’re trying to do some illegal work here?”
I said no, and I gave them my two passports: the Argentine passport and the Spanish passport. They were asking me about my nationality during that time. That was like a trick question because I am of both nationality. With the Spanish passport, I know that they can give tourist visa for three months so I said that I’m Spanish.
I didn’t realize that my Argentine passport was expired, that’s why they wanted to find out. I stayed in the United States for a few months until I have to go to work in Europe. I was already in the process of doing my work permit for the United States.
I went to Europe. I was traveling there and came back to the US for a few days in July to attend the Tango Festival. I went back to Europe and in November, I got a call for coming back to the United States for a festival that they had already arranged.
It sounded good to me because it wasn’t really working in Europe that much for me. I was using the money that I earned in the past. That sounded like a good deal since I had no money left and had only around 150 bucks.
I arrived in November 2010 with very little money in my pockets. I was working within that whole month of November until December 10 or the end of the Tango Festival where I was working for. I went back to Argentina by the end of December and beginning of January with six thousand bucks.
Since then, everything actually started working out much better.
I love the story of perseverance to come here with very little money in his pocket and then finding a way to make it work. I wanted to share the story of him coming here to America and the trials and tribulations that he had to go through to get here. We will get back on and continue this because I know I want to ask a few more questions about what got him into the Gyrotonic world and the Pilates world.
This is kind of the start of what got him to America and the story that got him here. We will continue this at some point in the future and get into a few little more questions about the training that he’s been doing now, from Argentina to Montreal, Europe, and America through Tango and is now a Pilates and Gyrotonic Teacher at Core in Austin.
We look forward to seeing you all soon. If you have any questions about anything, give us a call at 512-215-4227. If you are interested to learn more about our Pilates and Gyrotonic Programs, reach out and we have plenty of options to get started with that.
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