Three years later, Manuel scours the Internet for new choreography, downloads songs to his iPod and dances socially at Mr. Mambo’s, a salsa club near his family’s apartment in Silver Spring.
Of all the students, Manuel is the most vocal about changing attitudes about Latinos through dance. Having lived in Langley Park, a working-class town in Prince George’s County that has struggled with gang violence, he’s painfully aware of negative associations that persist.
“We’re not in gangs,” he says. “We want to be professional. We want to be something else.”
In his hometown of Sonsonate, near El Salvador’s western coast, Manuel’s father, a police officer, would take him to crime scenes, showing him corpses to illustrate the reality of bad choices. His father remains in Sonsonate, while Dominguez, 42 and now divorced, focuses on building a new life here with Manuel and Susy, 14.
Dancing, she says, has positively shaped Manuel’s character. “I’m proud,” she says. “When we came here, our point was to become a better family.”
A caregiver for an elderly woman, Dominguez wants Manuel to attend college. He admits that school is not his strong suit; he was disqualified from Titanes for two quarters one year because he didn’t make the minimum 2.0 quarterly grade point average set by Peró. He promises to try harder, then adjures: “No, I’m not going to try to do better. I am going to do better.”
At a Sunday brunch prepared by Miguel Peró for the dancers and their families a few weeks before competition, Sonia Rodriguez’s siblings are talking about how much they’ve missed her since she joined Titanes Salseros. Franky, 11, and 7-year-old twins Kathy and Fernando remember when Sonia, 16, had time to play. Now she’s either studying or at practice. She even skipped trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Sonia almost didn’t join Titanes Salseros the previous year because her friends dismissed the group as “chanchi”—a slur similar to “wetback.” But once she tasted victory at a Dominion High School dance competition in Sterling, Va., Sonia was hooked. She has since “let go of those friends.”
When her family moved from San Salvador to Maryland in 2002, Sonia spoke no English and cried constantly during the first two weeks of kindergarten. Now, like her bicultural peers, she replies in English to her Spanish-speaking mom and has adopted a typical American after-school schedule, previously packed with karate, swimming and cheerleading, now with field hockey and dance.
Her parents support her extracurriculars as long as she keeps getting A’s and B’s. “I always tell her, ‘Darlo major,’ ” says her mother, Margarita Batres, 38. Give it your best.
Sonia’s father, Francisco Rodriguez, 39, has worked as a mechanic for 12 years and still puts in 11-hour days, six days a week, to make all this possible for his family. He and Batres were attending college in El Salvador when Sonia was born, but had to drop out—a choice they’re determined Sonia won’t face.
“I want her to have a future,” Rodriguez says.
For similar reasons, William’s parents, Ana Mercado and Daniel Martinez, risked their lives crossing Central America and Mexico for the U.S., leaving Ilobasco, a town in El Salvador known more for its meticulously crafted clay figurines than for its economic opportunities.
Martinez came first, and Mercado followed, leaving William behind with her mother for four years while she and her husband established themselves in Wheaton. When William joined his parents at 9, he entered the U.S. without documents. But he was recently accepted into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects him from deportation and allows him to apply for a Social Security number, driver’s license and work permit.
“The idea was for William to have more opportunities,” says Martinez, a 40-year-old construction superintendent.
Their son’s long hours with Titanes have caused friction within the family. But Mercado, 35, and Martinez concede that dance has given their shy son confidence. An aspiring architect/engineer, William always excelled in school, but acknowledges he “had such a hard time talking to people.”
Titanes has changed that. He got a girlfriend—his dance partner, Abrianna Rivera, 15—though they recently broke up. “You gain this skill, and it’s something I can have for the rest of my life,” he says.
