“Learning to dance tango changed my life”: Willington Marín

By: Juan Carlos Monzón. Journalist, Communications Advisory Office

“Only by passing through the night can one reach the morning,” said J.R.R. Tolkien, and this famous quote from the British writer certainly applies to his life. This man, who identifies and proclaims himself “zambo”—a mix of Indigenous and Black ancestry—is the son of a drug-addicted mother and a father from the coast who was largely absent. As a result, he did not have an easy childhood or youth; on the contrary, it was always marked by hardship, as the “vicious cycle of poverty” that economists speak of nearly closed, leaving him in what people call: destitution.

Today, from the comfort of her home in Winnipeg, Canada, where she studies English, she took my call. We had a frank conversation, full of anecdotes, in which the University of Cundinamarca came up as the institution that helped her overcome poverty and get to where she is today. “Now it gets dark earlier. The days are getting shorter and the nights longer,” she told me with a touch of melancholy.

So I begin this conversation by talking about his mother and his memories of her. Immediately, the compassionate man who, despite having lived in what psychologists call a troubled home, loves her, reveals his deep affection. “She was addicted almost her entire life. As a child, I remember her struggling to put food on the table for us. She had a terrible temper. That's why I left Villavicencio to live in San José del Guaviare with a sister. I stayed with her for two years until I pushed her to the limit, and she couldn't stand me anymore because my behavior was so difficult. Perhaps it was a result of everything I went through,” he tells me.

But his desire to stay in that city at any cost led him to rent a place and work in what's popularly known as "the Russian" construction site. He started as an assistant, where his only job was to patiently mix cement and sand. Later, he was promoted to foreman. "I learned to plaster and level floors for two years, and I supported myself with that and then by selling advertising space.".

But one morning, a hunch woke him up agitated. He felt his mother was going to die soon from crack cocaine use. “You know what?” he said to me in a distasteful tone: ”There’s a really ugly expression in Colombia for ‘disposable,’ and she lived that way. With no other options, I grabbed my suitcase and went to Villavicencio to look for her.”.

And yes, he found her there after an eight-hour journey on a dirt road and proposed that she come live with him in San José del Guaviare, and she accepted. With his work mainly in construction, he bought a plot of land and built a three-bedroom house with wooden walls, a zinc roof, and a bathroom—"and a dirt floor!" he emphasizes, as if to remind me and help me better picture the scene in my mind.

She finished high school, but her math and physics skills weren't enough to get her into engineering, her dream. Nevertheless, she applied to UIS, Universidad del Llano, and Universidad de Antioquia, but wasn't accepted. Persistence was in her DNA. She tried again. “And I enrolled at UCundinamarca the following semester to study electronic engineering, and I got in. I arrived in Fusagasugá with a scholarship loan from the Mayor's Office of San José del Guaviare.”.

There, he remembered that he had to put his dance skills from a high school academy to use. There, in the middle of the jungle, he taught tango, cha-cha-cha, and Spanish rumba. “As soon as I arrived, I realized there wasn't a tango group. I organized one myself, and we started rehearsing at the university. Then one day, María Helena from the student services department approached me and said, ”Dance groups must be registered. Come by my office tomorrow, and we'll talk.’ I thought she was going to scold me, but she didn't. She lent me the mirror room and a tape recorder, and we were officially registered as part of the cultural groups.”.

His success was such that he was invited to start giving presentations at various events representing the university at the local and national levels. “The following semester, the director of student welfare, Máximo, asked me about my financial situation. I told him it was bad. I explained that I supported my mother and younger sister and that I received 800,000 pesos in aid from the mayor's office for the entire semester, which wasn't enough. He told me he would do everything possible to get me a tuition waiver, and that's exactly what happened.”.

Thus, amidst his engineering studies, tango, and milonga, he graduated and founded Domotic, a company dedicated to setting up community radio stations. It was successful, but then he was offered the position of director of a station in San José del Guaviare, which he closed. However, his desire for self-improvement led him to seek a loan from ICETEX and earn an MBA in business administration from Externado University. He founded a solar energy consulting company, got married, and had a son, as he tells me.

But what about your mother? I ask, intrigued. “She overcame her addiction on her own. One of my sisters had tried many times and relapsed again and again, but she never used again with me, and now she lives in an apartment I bought for her in San José del Guaviare. I once asked her how she did it, and she replied, ”Seeing how hard you worked and studied motivated me to quit that vice.’”.

Not content with what he had achieved in 2017, he tells me that he "got a craving" to pursue a doctorate in engineering and applied to Colciencias for a scholarship, which he won. He will be studying at Javeriana University, which also requires a C1 level of English—almost native-level—hence his all-expenses-paid stay in Canada. "My thesis consists of creating algorithms to identify the maturity stage of the moriche and açaí palms and their fruit using drone images," he says.

Finally, after a forty-five-minute conversation, I quickly ended the call, but not before asking him what message he had for the students of UCundinamarca. “That life is a triangle of skills, desires, and future goals. Learning to dance tango changed my life because it allowed me to take a different path, and it also led to me becoming an instructor at the university, which enabled me to study. Follow that inner spark that each of you has, and with discipline, you will go far.”.

At the University of Cundinamarca, we continue to strengthen our relationship with our graduates. If you would like to share your entrepreneurial or professional growth story and inspire others, please write to us at the following email address: [email protected]

More news at the News Agency