In the chapter “Making Loisaida: Placing in Lower Manhattan” in Liz Ševčenko’s book Mambo Montage, the crisis, movement, and neighborhood ambition that fostered Loisaida and ultimately The Clemente is explained. The neighborhood that birthed The Clemente was described as a “vast wasteland” (293) by real estate developers in 1976. Nationwide deindustrialization coupled with city and private investor imposed poverty left Puerto Rican residents in a moment of crisis. Landlords were burning homes in the Lower East Side, and the city’s planned shrinkage policy left the area without spending for public operations such as fire stations and education. In the midst of speculative development and ripeness for gentrification, Puerto Rican activists saw opportunity in the crisis to make a claim to their home. Community organizers started the Loisaida movement, and successively asserted their right to the city by giving their neighborhood meaning. Loisaida became “an afro-puerto rican struggle to defend the values of working-class autonomy and self-help” (300).
Ševčenko describes the Puerto Rican resident’s claim to space as “born from its political relationship to urban space” (293). The intention was for Spanish speaking multi-ethnic residents to empower each other in order to claim territory and resources they deserved. The movement organized a space where a multicultural coalition could find agency in demanding their rights to the neighborhood. Ševčenko suggests that the most powerful tool in asserting control of the neighborhood was for its residents to name it themselves. Through mobilizations and reuniones del pueblo, the name Loisaida took hold. Originally coined by Bimbo Rivas in 1974 while on a writing retreat with Chino Garcia, the name served as a “simple effective organizing tool” (298). Loisaida latinized the previously named Lower East Side, and provided an easy, roll-off-the-tongue identity for the neighborhood.
Shaped by the artists, musicians, and poets, Loisaida worked to preserve Nuyorican culture through creative work. Puerto Rican organizations and key organizers in the movement constructed a multicultural Puertorriqueñidad Loisaida amongst all Latinx residents in the neighborhood. The working class spirit and ethnic pride that exuded from Loisaida was crucial for the collectivization that led the residents to preserve their culture.
Born out of the Loisaida movement, The Clemente is a Puerto Rican/Latinx institution working to cultivate, present, and preserve their culture. Its roots begin in 1982, when Teatro LATEO was founded by Nelson Tamayo, Nelson Landrieu, and Mateo Gomez to represent underrepresented Latinx culture in North American Theater. LATEO became the cultural hub at Solidaridad Humana, a bilingual education program. When Solidaridad Humana came to an end, Gomez, Landrieu, and Tamayo continued running the LATEO before its transformation into The Clemente. The Clemente includes 46 subsidized visual arts studio spaces and 12 studio/offices used for performance and education. Funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the organization is able to hold space for artists of all types in a collaborative and multidisciplinary environment. The Loisaida movement was led by the voices and activism of many Latinx artists, and The Clemente has preserved a space in the Lower East Side for continued artistic agency to be found.
Rebecca Amato says
Great! This is really important background to understand when you work at The Clemente this summer. It’s part of a long effort not only to lay claim to Latinx (mostly Puerto Rican) culture and life on the Lower East Side, but also to preserve that culture when it is under threat. That threat has burdened Latinx Lower East Siders since their arrival in the area mostly in the post-WWII when public housing was being built. Then it was followed by disinvestment and then by gentrification. The further east you go, the more Puerto Rican the neighborhood is. The Clemente is itself one of the last outposts of the Puerto Rican Lower East Side below Houston. It will be really interesting to map Puerto Rican cultural heritage in the neighborhood and think about The Clemente’s role in celebrating it.