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 Tuesday, February 09, 2010
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Luis R. Cancel: A New Hope For Loisaida's CSV Center? |
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MIGUEL GUZMÁN
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  he history of the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center (CSV) in the Lower East Side of Manhattan is spotted with moments of chaos and disbanding, as well as true community and artistic achievement. This grassroots house of Puerto Rican, Latino and World culture has flirted with the New York City auction block and internal management problems many times in the past ten years, preventing the mixed residency of this 100+ year-old building from reaching its full potential in what should be the artistic mecca of the world. City government has played coy in assisting the Center with its problems, perhaps wishing it could simply sell the approximate 33,000 square-foot lot to the highest bidder. And with real estate in Manhattan being what it is, the CSV Center property would secure a nice chunk of change to go toward a sport stadium, or to help a developer plop another luxury condo in our underserved neighborhoods.
Not if Luis R. Cancel has anything to say about it. In a statement released by the Board of Directors of the CSV Center on Wednesday, June 22, Mr. Cancel, former Cultural Affairs Commissioner of New York City, was named that institution’s new Executive Director. Genuflecting to the City or the internal issues of the Center is not on his agenda.
“I step into this position with full knowledge of the enormous challenges facing New York City’s Latino institutions. These organizations have been working to preserve and enrich their respective communities: the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem and Hells Kitchen for many years. They have toiled in those communities when they were at their worst, helped to improve their respective neighborhoods and now that property values are on the rise, the City must ensure that these three valuable cultural assets will be around for the long-term. They all need a long-term lease,” said Mr. Cancel, referring to not only the CSV Center, but to the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and Spanish Harlem’s Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, institutions which face a "tenuous future with the City due to the administration’s month-to-month lease policy."
A Harvard University graduate, Luis Cancel became the first Latino to serve as New York City Commissioner to the Department of Cultural Affairs (1991-94) in the Dinkins administration.
The statement added that Mr. Cancel has "a distinguished 25-year career as a public servant, heading various not-for-profit and public agencies, including the Bronx Museum of Arts, where he spent 14 years.”
Nelson Landrieu, the Chairman of CSV said, “The CSV Board was unanimous in its appeal for Luis to step into the role of Executive Director to provide the high-caliber administrative and leadership skills he has demonstrated throughout his career. He built the Bronx Museum and oversaw its renovation, he helped the Department of Cultural Affairs grow its funding during the fiscal crisis that plagued the City at that time and he has been a staunch supporter of Puerto Rican and Latin American culture.”
 Carmen Pietri, a CSV Board member and Executive Director of the Nuyorican Poet’s Café added, “CSV has been struggling to get its message heard in this administration and we believe that this Mayor should clarify his cultural and community development policy – let all New Yorkers and the Latino community know if he will support our cultural organizations.”
Mr. Cancel added that he intends to join with other Latino leaders who share their concern for safeguarding CSV’s future as a premier cultural institution.
“We also support the leadership of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and Julia de Burgos Cultural Center and will work together to seek the Mayor’s review of the policy that limits the long-term stability of our facilities. While I recognize that the Bloomberg administration inherited this problem from Giuliani, nevertheless three years into his administration it is safe to ask him to clarify his position.”
Mr. Cancel will be requesting a meeting with Mayor Bloomberg asking him to address issues faced by CSV and other City-owned Latino cultural institutions. Other institutions and Latino leaders will join him, including several elected officials.
The CSV Center is located on 107 Suffolk Street between Rivington and Delnacey, near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. The Center's Web site is located at www.csvcenter.com
The Center is the current home of the New York Latino Journal's design and support group.
In 1896, the New York City Board of Education acquired the site on the southwest corner of Suffolk and Rivington Streets at a cost of $197,738.01. This was to be the new Public School 160. A coal yard, a chair factory and several residential structures once occupied the site. Construction of P.S.160 began in 1887 and was completed and occupied by 1899. The school was built as a handsome example of Dutch Renaissance design, a style that served aesthetically as well as an educational purpose.
By the mid seventies the building ceased to serve as a public school. In 1978 the City of New York tried to sell the school for $7,000 but had no takers (This is why we need additional funding for time machine research!).
During the early eighties it became Solidaridad Humana, a community-based comprehensive bilingual education program that carried out a visionary "Literacy in Spanish" teaching effort. However, management and financial troubles would ultimately plague this effort.
In 1993, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, Nelson Landrieu and Mateo Gómez, all of who are actively involved in the Latino arts community of New York City, founded the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. Soto Vélez was a Puerto Rican Nationalist, poet, journalist and activist who was an inspirational figure in the Puerto Rican/Latino arts. Mr. Vega Yunqué, author of "The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow Into The Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle," "No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again," and other novels with shorter titles, believed that Soto Vélez was the kind of figure that would serve as a beacon of inspiration for the community, within the neighborhood and abroad.
The CSV Center went on to serve as a venue for emerging and professional artists on a local and international level, attracting the local masses as well as celebrities like Barbara Walters, Robert DeNiro, Benjamin Bratt, George Peppard, Rosie Perez, Gerard Depardieu and the real life Seinfeld.
However, management and financial troubles continued to haunt 107 Suffolk Street. Mr. Vega Yunqué, as the Center's President, found himself overwhelmed with the task of managing the huge building (the footprint of the City-owned property is half of an entire city block, including its parking space. The building has five floors, each measuring about 14 feet in height), the lack of support from the City, and the growing demands of its residents, many of which he invited in. In his creative management efforts, Mr. Vega Yunqué fell out of grace with the Board, and was forced to leave.
Since then, around 2000, Orlando Plaza Delagado, of Camaradas El Barrio, Paul Nagel, Arts and Culture Liaison to Council Member Alan Gerson, Leticia Rodríguez of LEFT Theater, and Drew Figueroa, of Moxie Films, have wrestled with the building's troubles, including coup d'état attempts by Shelly McGuinness, Paul Clay and others associated with the Artists Alliance organization.
The majority of the challenges and confrontations within the building have stemmed from a lack of resources and support, which many of the individual artists and organizations, as well as the building as a whole have experienced for many years.
Many potential funding sources have declined support for the building because of the City's month-to-month lease arrangement. According to some of the residents of the CSV Center, the City has neglected to support the institution due to real estate interests and the building's internal managerial conflicts, specifically between the CSV Board and members and the Artists Alliance.
Throughout all this, the CSV Center has maintained itself as a unique multidisciplinary, multicultural arts center that houses a diverse group of visual artists, theater organizations and educational institutions initiatives, and is the annual host to numerous international theater, dance and film festivals attracting thousands of tourists and residents of the Latino and non-Latino communities.
RAFAEL MERINO CORTÉS contributed to this article.
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