(LA Times) Every year, 14-year-old Victor Rios would watch the Rose Parade on a television set in his home in the city of Chitre, Panama, marveling at the floats and bands.
He never imagined he would attend the parade in person.
Then one day in October 2012, Irving Rodriguez Bernal, the band director at Rios’ school, called his students in for a meeting.
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He had a defeated look on his face and the students grew nervous. They had been waiting for months to hear whether they’d been accepted as participants in the parade.
“You know, you should be proud just to have been considered for this parade,” Rodriguez Bernal began.
Suddenly, his demeanor changed. He flashed a smile and told them they’d been chosen to participate in the parade, beating out 105 other bands for the coveted spot.
“I was stunned. I had no words to describe it. I just turned around and hugged the person next to me,” said Rios, who is a trumpet player in the Banda Heriberto Lopez del Colegio Jose Daniel Crespo in Chitre.
The selection was a dream come true for Rios and for many of the students in the band as well as for their families and millions of Panamanians –- the band will be the first representative from the Central American nation in the parade’s history, Rodriguez Bernal said.
The band will play traditional Panamanian songs throughout the length of the parade, including folk songs that will be performed by the school’s dance troupe.
“We’re extremely proud of them because not only are they from Panama, they are from our city, and they’re there to represent not only Panama but all of Latin America,” said Yadira L. Castillo, a Panamanian who grew up in Chitre but now lives in Corona.
Castillo, 52, who attended the school where the band comes from, said she was so moved by its participation in the parade that she started to cry when she saw a news report on the band on a local TV news station.
It brings back memories of the city where she spent her childhood, Castillo said.
She remembers the four years she spent at the school and how the band used to parade through the streets of the city playing their tunes for the town’s citizens.
She lived two blocks away from the school and still visits her family in the area. In December 2012 she attended her niece’s graduation from the school.
On Tuesday, as she watched the band’s last practice before the Rose Parade, she ran into several familiar faces including one of the drummers who is the son of a family friend.
Margarita Moreno, 46, thought the event was important enough to travel all the way from Orlando, Fla., to witness it.
“For us it’s an immensely huge honor that Panama and Latin America are being represented by this school,” said Moreno, who graduated from the school in 1984.
She moved to the United States eight years ago, she said, but her love for her country remains strong and she never forgets her alma mater.
But the band may not have gotten here without some good luck and a lot of help from the Panamanian government, which provided a majority of the $450,000 required for the band’s trip