Patience for Reopening Latino Cultural Space Is Gone

Past Mona el Naggar
2 spaces inside the Julia De Burgos Cultural Center, a city-endemic building in East Harlem, have been airtight for over 18 months. Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Eugene Rodriguez, who lives in E Harlem, is part of a protest entrada to endeavour to pressure level the city into reopening the spaces. Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

The Julia de Burgos Cultural Center, a city-owned building in Due east Harlem, has long been an of import hub for the neighborhood's Latino population. Named after a renowned Puerto Rican poet, the v-story building served equally a identify for local artists to showcase their piece of work and residents to gather to gloat birthdays, concur funerals, discuss customs affairs and dance salsa.

"Information technology was near all of usa coming together," said Marina Ortiz, founder of East Harlem Preservation, a grouping defended to preserving East Harlem's civilisation and history. Ms. Ortiz said she used to visit the center regularly for well-nigh xx years, before New York Urban center officials closed a big multipurpose space and theater there over a twelvemonth and a one-half ago for renovation and to observe a new operator.

"It was torn out from under us," she said, adding that her efforts to determine why information technology was taking so long to reopen the two rooms had been futile. Other parts of the center remain in use, simply piece of work has not fifty-fifty begun on the renovation.

Having grown frustrated, a coalition of community leaders and artists plan to stage a serial of street performances as a form of protest outside the Julia de Burgos center, starting Wednesday, to pressure the urban center.

"It's non about one show; it's about no show," said Eugene Rodriguez, a playwright and longtime resident of East Harlem who is leading the endeavor. "Latino artists take no access to Latino institutions in the neighborhood. It kills me. It actually kills me."

Mr. Rodriguez, 65, swallowed, looked away and started to cry.

City officials contend the changes will do good the neighborhood and local cultural groups. But many residents and activists say they view the delay as part of the marginalization of East Harlem'southward working-class Latino population and the city's disinterest in preserving the Puerto Rican identity of a neighborhood undergoing a slow merely steady gentrification.

"The Julia de Burgos is symptomatic of the larger event," said Marta Moreno Vega, founder of the Caribbean area Cultural Center and a former managing director of El Museo del Barrio. "The disparity in the way that culture and fine art is understood in the city and the way that resource are distributed and attention is given is what you come across in the Julia de Burgos."

The building, on Lexington Artery between 105th and 106th Streets, that houses the multipurpose room and the theater also contains other exhibition and functioning areas and a public school. The city rents out space to various Latino fine art groups, including Taller Boricua, which had operated the 2,800-square-foot multipurpose space and occasionally used the 160-seat theater.

In September 2010, the city's Economical Evolution Corporation announced plans to renovate and reorganize the administration of the 2 spaces, saying that they were mismanaged and underused.

In November 2011, the city selected the Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit organization, to operate and maintain the two spaces. Merely the metropolis and the Hispanic Federation are still negotiating the terms of the lease, and the rooms remain locked.

Responding to neighborhood complaints, City Councilwoman Melissa Marker-Viverito, who represents the area, has been working with the development corporation, and on Friday she said the city would find a way for cultural groups to rent out the spaces while the charter was beingness negotiated.

The development corporation said in a argument on Tuesday that "local groups will have the opportunity to rent space" on a temporary basis, simply it had yet to work out the fees and other details.

"I hear the frustration but I'yard asking for patience still," Ms. Marking-Viverito said in a phone interview.

Withal, some activists are non satisfied.

"Why should we be patient?" Ms. Ortiz said. "Why should we accept vague assurances? I want precise answers: When, where, who, how."

As to why it has taken so long to hammer out a lease, Jose Calderon, the president of the Hispanic Federation, said renovations promised by the city were notwithstanding to exist completed. "Any tenants moving into a space want certain things done," he said.

Ms. Mark-Viverito said that her office had set bated nearly $ane one thousand thousand for renovations, just that the expenditure was merely recently approved by the metropolis's Office of Management and Upkeep.

Sitting on the stoop of his house on 118th Street, Mr. Rodriguez waited for Ms. Ortiz and a number of other neighbors, artists and friends to arrive for a meeting to discuss Wednesday's protest. He said he planned to deliver a Shakespearean-style speech: "Friends! Latinos! Countrymen! Lend me your ears! I come to praise La Julia non to bury her!"