 .. |
 Tuesday, February 09, 2010
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Rincón Criollo: More Than just a little house in the South Bronx |
|
|
|
|
Culture & Education -
NY Region
|
|
CARLOS "TATO" TORRES
|
 Tego Calderon hung out at La Casita back in the summer of 2003. He expressed his concern and disappointment at the real estate attack on our community places. Photo: grupoHuracán
|
 UCH MORE THAN A LITTLE HOUSE
The Rincón Criollo Cultural Center has been an oasis of Puerto Rican history and traditions in the South Bronx for over 25 years. Founded in 1987, this incredible community garden also serves as an important cultural center, which is internationally recognized as a school and performance space featuring bomba and plena, the traditional music of Puerto Rico’s working class. Rincón Criollo is regularly visited by community leaders, foreign dignitaries and students of Puerto Rican and Latino culture.
In addition to training youth in music and conducting regular performances featuring local and international artists, the members of Rincón Criollo celebrate most major holidays with cookouts, typically attended by hundreds of people. Today, Rincón Criollo is one of the oldest community centers, gardens and casitas in the South Bronx, serving close to 300 members and the community at large. Its community significance has been recognized far beyond its immediate neighborhood. Rincón Criollo has been featured in exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo del Barrio. It is the subject of numerous cultural studies, citywide festivals of Puerto Rican musical traditions and documentary films, such as the award winning “Americanos” directed by Edward James Olmos and aired on HBO, and Banco Popular’s special, “Raices.”
ON ROUGH TERRAIN
During the mid-'70s, the South Bronx averaged 12,000 fires a year. The area lost some 40 percent of its housing stock, and 300,000 people fled. In the burned-out zone that remained, police fought a losing battle against junkies and gangs. The New York Times commented that the South Bronx was "as crucial to an understanding of American urban life as Auschwitz is crucial to an understanding of Nazism." The city was in the throes of a fiscal crisis, and the Feds were tired of watching money lost in failed urban policies. In 1977, Jimmy Carter visited the Bronx and promised to revitalize the area. Nothing came of his high-sounding words. When Ronald Reagan visited later, he compared the South Bronx to a bombed-out London after the Battle of Britain! By 1981, the Los Angeles Times could declare that the South Bronx was "both a place and a scare-word."
FRONTIERSMEN OF THE BOOGIE DOWN
While the South Bronx was burning in the 1970s and the area consumed by abandonment and destruction, the founders of Rincón Criollo, under the leadership and initiative of Don José “Chema” Soto, decided to take action. Before Rincón Criollo was created, the site where it is located was a lot filled with abandoned cars and garbage, another victim of the widespread disinvestment and rampant arson in the South Bronx in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, Chema and some friends cleared enough space for some folding chairs. While sitting by a bonfire there, Chema looked around and saw his homeland, Puerto Rico.
Chema and his crew cleared the lot, planted a small garden, and built a casita, or "little house" reminiscent of the wooden houses scattered through the Puerto Rican countryside. The neighborhood flocked to the site. They transformed a once abandoned and rubble-strewn lot into the image and likeness of their ancestral home, carried within their hearts to New York City. La Casita de Chema (Chema’s little house), as it is known internationally, is the reflection of a community’s resistance and desire to survive. Since then, neighbors have used this corner to gather, garden, hold community events, and pass down musical and cultural traditions.
For Puerto Ricans, whose immigrant experience has been one of displacement rather than assimilation, the creation of casitas (literally: ‘little houses’) like the one at Rincón Criollo, has enabled us to take control of our immediate environment and, in the process, to rediscover and reconnect with our cultural heritage. The casita at Rincón Criollo was recreated in the Smithsonian Institution as part of an exhibit on Puerto Rican traditional culture. The cultural and architectural roots of the casitas and the clean-swept bateyes (from the indigenous word for ‘courtyard’) or open spaces that surround them are found in the community structures of the original Taino/Carib inhabitants, the Spanish conquistadors and the African slaves. Casitas are “little houses” built on empty lots in New York City neighborhoods that recall the look and feel of the Puerto Rican countryside.
THE HERE AND NOW
These casitas, like Rincón Criollo have helped stabilize and revitalize our neighborhoods. But, like most powerful landscapes, casitas environments are fragile ecologies, susceptible to disruption. The casitas are community endeavors that transform vacant lots into valuable community spaces. Because Rincón Criollo functions as a social and cultural center for the entire neighborhood, it is a protected restful place where children can safely play, community members garden, converse and play dominoes away from the sounds and bustle of the city, just outside its margins. It is a haven for senior citizens and a effective deterrent to street crime (cars belonging to the local police precinct are regularly parked next door, with the tacit understanding that they will be monitored by the nearly always-crowded casita).
Folklorist and New York University professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has noted, "Now that you can put a card in a slot and do your banking without ever meeting a teller, now that you eat fast food without ever meeting a waitress, now more than ever we need to protect the shoemaker, the barbershop, the casita, places that hold together the fabric of community." Urban dwellers, she notes, "live in a city, which they did not build, and over which they have little control." At a time of diminishing government and philanthropic support, the city needs to support communities’ efforts to take control of their own environment and provide for their own cultural expressions. Environments like Rincón Criollo deserve a serious assessment of their social, cultural, aesthetic, and environmental value, and the need for their preservation.
Rincón Criollo Cultural Center is a non-profit institution, garden and community spot where people come to breath culture that is not for sale. It is located at 499 E. 158th Street, Bronx, NY 10045.
|
|
|
|
Events Calendar |
 |
February 2010 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
New York Latino Journal, NYLatinoJournal.com and the red box with 'ny' device followed by the 'LATINO JOURNAL' text are service marks of grupoHuracan. All content is copyright 2005-2008 grupoHuracan or respective authors.
The New York Latino Journal is not responsible for content from external sites. The comments and opinions throughout this publication belong to their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the New York Latino Journal publication, grupoHuracan or any of their affiliates and/or partners. GrupoHuracan provides technical and marketing support to the New York Latino Journal and is not involved in its editorial process.
The New York Latino Journal is a non-profit venture. Please contact: info(at)nylatinojournal.com for any questions, comments, sponsor inquiries, or story submissions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
