One of the first things dictators and repressive regimes do to insure their power over people is to shut down the press, silence the radio and blindfold television. Eliminating the free flow of information cuts down on independent thinking and therefore people can be easily controlled on how they think, what they do, when they do it, how they do it, with whom they do it and even why they do it.
Intimidation, physical attacks and the dissemination of rumors and baseless accusations are among the methods also used to silence those who dare to express a dissenting point of view. An irate 40 year old child who didn’t like to be scolded in print for his disrespectful behavior at a pre-Stanford milonga acted his immaturity in a publicly chest poking scene outside Robles Hall in Palo Alto.
On the other hand, there are positive moments, like being thanked by mature women whose lives saw a dramatic change the day we stopped them from leaving tango with their eyes full of tears. At the time (it seems this happened so long ago) nobody dared to point a finger at the dance floor coaches and abusers.
The motives for publishing El Firulete, hosting the best teachers to share their knowledge, or offering the best possible environment for dancing tango once a month are fueled by the love the tango because it is fun, it is entertaining, it is enjoyable, it is an activity that can absorb all our time. This way we want to share our own experience and yours. We too are in a permanent state of learning. Occasionally we touch a nerve or squeeze too tight and some people scream or cry, but you and many others laugh and reward us with your readership, whether you agree or not.
The same sense of commitment to you goes in motion once a month when we convert a huge and bare ballroom into the best decorated and dressed tango venue in North America. We take extreme care to play the best tango music for dancing. We take special pleasure to tease your eyes and your senses with a setting that inspires the most enjoyable dancing bar none. There is some selfishness involved here. For all the money, time and effort we put into tango, we love to have places to go and people to see where our love for tango can be expressed. We believe that you too deserve a place you can call yours, that is why our planet is your planet.
Alfredo Lepera wrote that twenty years are nothing, so for us two years are even less, if we keep looking forward to many tangos ahead. For all those and many other factors we fully appreciate the subscription checks, the advertisements, the written contributions, the readers at large and everybody else who have made our first two years as facilitators of tango an exhilarating ride.
