The interviewee is Christopher Cruz Soto. He is the house manager/ security/ technical director/ Fire Guard at The Clemente. He started working in 2013 at Teatro Sea, which is an organization in residence at The Clemente, then transitioned into working under The Clemente. Below is a snippet of an interview in which he describes the growth of The Clemente over time in relation to its definition of Puerto Rican and Latinx culture and the Loisaida community:
Audio Transcription
Me: How would you define The Clemente’s growth, physically, from 2013.
CCS: It has grown in the sense that it was one point very sheltered meaning that there were, shows that wasn’t from the community, much. And you didn’t feel very cultural in here. But I think we changed a lot, like in the past years like 2015 was a big one, we had Veronica she was great. And she brought a lot of table bands and other artists from the community. Nothing. We’re in a steady pace I always say we can do more. I feel like as a cultural center because I’m very community base. You know, this building has so many great opportunities for people to come in; they’re here for art or show their artwork or to just hang out, get to know people and, like, see if they have a connection artistically. But obviously, there’s a lot of politicians- like politics around it that doesn’t let it go, flourish, more, but there’s a lot of room to grow in the game and they are slowly but surely is getting there as is not there for at least in my opinion, but it’s headed to that hopefully, you know,
Me: Is there anything that you would suggest,
CCS: um, suggests is to open program start opening programs for young, young teens and in struggling artists and community. You know since the Lower East Side has a lot of Latinos, blacks, white, Cubans, everyone, Chinese everywhere in the world, the Lower East Side literally has everyone. And right now, like there’s a lot of kids in the streets doing things that they shouldn’t be doing or they’re expressing their art in a different way than obviously they’re breaking the law they get in trouble for, why not open this building up like Danny, one of the people that work here and he’s a maintenance worker has an amazing idea like why not turn the parking lot into a graffiti art center. People can come and we open the parking lot for people and they choose a wall and do their art and we display it as a gallery for that day. Then next week we’ll do another fresh one and start over again for different artists in bringing the community together because then that will prevent kids jumping the fence and tagging, you know, without permission or whatever, but they have the outlet to do it without getting in trouble then it’s way better. I think we have the potential to do that because we have the space to do that. Opening our gate up to the community, if they want to do a fundraiser for to get bookbags or get food to homeless. We should open our doors for that and let those people in and create like a little show for those communities to donate money. And we do that sometimes, we sometimes do that, but we should do more, that’s something that should be happening like every month. Not once a year or twice a year, literally every month this should be happening, and open opens open like little class classes for like teaching art, music, dance that are free for people to come in and learn from that. Right now we do have programs that are different companies like arts, dance, or Arts for Art that are teaching jazz for young kids, or LaTea as a program also for kids but the thing is, private owned is not The Clemente. Yeah, the Clemente has this organization and we support it. But we’re not doing that ourselves. You know, we should because this building, like a lot of people sadly in the community don’t know about this building they think that it’s abandoned or the church. Oh it’s a homeless shelter, we get those all the time, and it’s like how people don’t know we’re here. And then the people that walk in that they’re curious they see as, oh my god like I never been in here like, what is this and they’ve been living here for like 15 years. It’s like oh we never got in because we thought it was a church or like a homeless shelter or something. Now, we’re like, but now we’re getting more recognized by, but I feel like as a Cultural Center in the Lower East Side we should be more recognized. And the way to do that is to open the doors to the community and doing those programs. So that people are like, “Oh, you need to learn about dance? The Clemente. You want to learn Spanish? The Clemente. If you want to learn to dance? The Clemente. You know, oh, you don’t have any money don’t worry about it’s free, it’s paid by the city, you know, but obviously, we don’t have that yet. My vision of the Clement is to open it for the community its like when I was a kid I had lived in the hood and we had like this abandoned house that they turn it into a community center. And every hood kid would go there and they play video games or chess or whatever is easy to get and they can’t afford it at home. They would just go there instead of robbing somebody or trying to like get it somewhere else, they just had it in the community center and it changed the community completely. It united it too because then you see the kids that usually don’t hang out with each other were hanging out with each other. And that’s something I see this building doing is uniting people and getting kids out on the streets, like in all change a lot of the community because then violence will go down and crime and everything. That is my mission for The Clemente. Obviously, I don’t know. That’s the same mission that The Clemente has. They have something similar but it’s more for me at least what I seen is more mainstream: people already in the top, like famous artists and stuff. It’s not about the small artists or the community, at least not right now. Yeah, it’s not the main focus right now, I guess.
Me: Thank you for elaborating on that. You jumped all over my interview guide and I don’t even know what,
CCS: oh I’m sorry
Me: no that was, that was amazing. That was awesome. I love how you were able to distinguish like the factors that are done now, and what you’re able to add on for The Clemente’s future.
How do you feel the adapted to its surroundings over time?
CCS: Um, falls in the same spot when I say that people think that we’re a church you know, we haven’t adapted at all day, because we haven’t changed, like we changed a little bit but not from the outside world, not from the community standpoint, like random, a random person can pass by here and never come in because they will never know what is. You know this is because we, it’s like, I feel like we keep it too close and we only keep it to people that already know us, you know, it’s the same people that we see every, every month, every year. New artists, where are the small artists. You know, now we plan on getting a little bit more outside but still it’s like, how we adapted it’s like, we kept it very close to the chest and that’s how that has been. Now, technically we haven’t adapted we just kept very close. And that’s it, like, because the thing is if we adapt if people know about this building, it will know like every person that passed by would be like “Oh yeah Thats the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural center”. You know, they don’t know that. Like I have people that with the map, because the Lower East Side has a map of different cultural centers. They pass by like a 100 million times, because they cannot believe that this is Clemente Soto Vélez. They still think it’s a church or a homeless shelter. Now how we adapted, I think we’re in the same. Atleast in the outside world we are in the same spot. This is like stuck in time, because the thing is we don’t have that recognition to say, how it adapted or not. In my opinion, we did. And that’s why we need to go back to the community. That’s why I feel like we’re losing opportunities because we open up this building for everybody to come in and to experience art and dance and music or whatever. We got to be recognized and then we started adapting, because then we are part of the history of this as a street of this neighborhood. You know, just a very small pocket of people that know about the history of the building. Like, I’m still learning about the building, like, like in the basement that was raves, back in the 90s. There were mini concerts. Run DMC supposedly played downstairs. You know, nobody knows that, nobody ever said otherwise it wasn’t in the newspapers and nothing. It was very private only certain people know. You know, amazing artists, you know, how *Nelson was an amazing artist and nobody knew about him because they kept it so in the group, they never open it for the public, for the people to come in and experience that. How many people come up and they see Nelson pictured, like “Who the hell is that?” and its like “Really? You don’t know who that is? He did so much for this building, for the community and it’s because it’s kept so close, they don’t promote it that well. I’m saying, there’s like so much potential in this building now, like the question to answer your question, how we adapted, I really don’t know how to give you like a solid answer, because for me it’s like this building is like has a little bubble. It’s like everything changed outside this but inside it stays, pretty much almost the same. The same rotation of same people, they’ve been here coming for years, you know and the new people that come, they do one show, and you don’t see them ever again. Or are there like big productions like photo shoots and HBO, Cinemax and stuff like that. Got to be honest, its great for the building because it generates money, but the same time it’s kind of hurting the building too because then that spot that they taking the whole week or however how long the shoot is, they’re taking it from an artist that probably could’ve shown their work or put on a show for the community or whatever, you know, because the thing is, even though we’re a nonprofit, their mentality for me, is that they try to make the money to, I guess to survive. But It shouldn’t be that way. This is a city-owned building.
*Nelson Landrieu influential Uruguayan actor and director and one of the founders of the Clemente. Unfortunately passed away October of 2019, there is a memorial picture with his birthday hanging behind the front desk of The Clemente [see Media Gallery]
I really admire Chris’ perspective. Just being at The Clemente gives me such hope and optimism that I can do this myself. I can create something so magnificent and engage my community. When people walk into the building, Chris is the first person that they see and ask questions to. The accumulation of those experiences with the community and visitors over the years really qualifies him to be a crucial component in how I analyze the preservation and promotion of Puerto Rican and Latinx culture throughout The Clemente. It made me very interested to see the other perspective of what exactly is keeping The Clemente from showcasing some of the events he described and how does it compare to the events that occurred in the formative years of The Clemente. It was heartbreaking to find out that many people in residence at The Clemente did not know of Nelson. I knew about him through research of The Clemente and Clemente Soto Vélez.
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