History
In November 2009, Linda Garwood hosted North America’s first Encuentro Milonguero in San Diego, California. It was an invitational mini-festival for experienced dancers of the Milonguero Style of Argentine Tango. Susana Miller taught small, personalized master classes in the afternoons. In the evenings, participants attended milongas that were open to the entire community.
During that encuentro, Susana Miller, Linda Garwood, and other teachers and organizers discussed organizing encuentros across the US, and creating an organization to help promote those encuentros.
On May 31st 2010, at the 10th Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival, several attendees of Linda’s encuentro, and additional close-embrace tango organizers and instructors met in an unused room at the festival. They discussed organizing encuentros in North America, and creating a central web site and mailing list to promote them. Not everyone in the room was onboard with the concept. Those who were, later formed a group to continue the work, meeting by Skype calls. A week later, encuentromilonguero.org web site was launched, as well as an email newsletter service for the purpose of promoting all encuentros in North America. A group of organizers shared the mailing list sign-up page with experienced milonguero-style dancers to help build the list.
In November of 2010, the group changed the name to “Siempre Milonguero.” The contents of encuentromilonguero.org were transferred to a this web site, siempremilonguero.org.
Siempre Milonguero’s New Mexico board members held their first encuentro in Albuquerque, New Mexico on March 2011. The New Mexico organizers then created a separate organization called “Encuentro Milonguero Abq” to separate the functions of organizing encuentros in Albuquerque from Siempre Milonguero’s mission of promoting all encuentros in North America. Since then, encuentros in North America have continued to grow in number and attendance.