The Bronx Ink

Sancochazo stew simmered over an open fire in Brook Park, South Bronx. Credit: Ciara Long.

Salsa rhythms pulsed from a hidden spot on the afternoon of Saturday September 28, floating over the trees shielding Brook Park from view along with wafts of cilantro, garlic and cassava. At the park’s entrance, a hand-painted yellow sign offered an explanation in capital letters for the 200-person crowd gathering inside: BIG BRONX SANCOCHAZO.

Now in its sixth year, the Big Bronx Sancochazo is an early fall staple organized by South Bronx’s Green Workers Cooperative. Centered around sancocho, a traditional cassava-based meat stew popular in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, participants are invited to bring something to the table: ingredients, entertainment or even just an extra pair of hands to help with the cooking.

Children paint slabs of wood and rocks, making balloon animals and playing in front of a community garden, while adults hug neighbors and community members like long-lost friends.

Laticosina worker makes maize tortillas to accompany the Sancochazo. Credit: Ciara Long

The idea behind the event originated from the children’s story of the Stone Soup, where a group of people work together to make and eat soup together as an illustration of community and cooperation. “So, we created the South Bronx version of the Stone Soup,” said Omar Freilla, Green Worker Cooperative’s director and founder.

Making the sancocho itself is a laborious, hours-long process that requires collaboration. Ysanet Batista, creator of plant-based Dominican catering service Woke Foods, oversaw the stew’s preparation. Over a sizzling hot plate, the women’s catering collective Laticosina made maize tortillas and pupusas, a typical Guatemalan snack made by stuffing corn flatbreads with vegetables, beans and cheese. Freilla, meanwhile, poked at the fire underneath thigh-high stew pots, sending scents of oregano and sweet potato flying through the air and cutting across people’s conversations.

“It’s a labor of love. It’s very Caribbean,” said Sheena Sheena Sepulvedam, a 28-year-old chef attending the Big Bronx Sancochazo for the first time. “It tastes really good, but it’s even better being surrounded by other people eating it as well, with that idea of communal cooking and communal energy along with the blessings.”

Ityopia Rootz, a catering co-op working with hydroponic vegetables, at El Gran Sancochazo del Bronx. Credit: Ciara Long

As they wait for the sancocho, a purple-haired DJ spins vinyl records from Latin America, the Caribbean and West Africa, accompanied by a white-clad conga drummer. Riaan Tavares took the stage to teach salsa in 2, a faster incarnation of the traditional Latin American dance that originated in the Bronx.

Shortly before the food was served, indigenous Mexican Veronica Raya and her family performed traditional dances and invited participants to form a “friendship chain”, which they led in a meandering circuit across the yard. When the stew was finally ready, Raya and her family blessed the food with a chant as hungry Bronxites formed a patient line.

For Khadiedra Williams, the 31-year-old head of hairstyling cooperative Hair for Purpose, the mix of cultures and communities is what makes the Sancochazo special. “You have everything right here in a melting pot,” she said. “There’s nothing that specifically you or me, everything is for everybody.”

Four months ago, Bronx resident Maria Rosenda was robbed while visiting the Dominican Republic. The assailants followed her from the airport to her mother’s house in Bajos de Haina, jumping her as soon as she reached the front door.

Rosenda, who moved to the U.S. in 1988, said the mugging was typical of today’s Dominican Republic, a place so dangerous that “you can’t even walk safely in the streets.”

For Rosenda, the electoral coordinator for the Dominican Revolutionary Party in the Bronx, the way to change that is through politics. She is one of dozens of volunteers working to get Dominicans registered to vote in next year’s Dominican national elections. In the past few months, they have helped nearly 8,000 Bronx residents sign up.

While Dominicans abroad have been able to vote for the Dominican president since 2000, this time they will also vote for legislators stationed overseas. The Bronx, home to New York’s largest Dominican population, will have a big say in who wins.

About 150,000 Dominican-born residents, along with their children, live in the Bronx. Rosenda, who returns home several times a year to participate in local politics, is working to make sure each and every one is ready to vote next May.

The special education teacher has been going nonstop for months. When school let out last June, she took just four days off from work and spent the rest of the summer working at the campaign office from 9 a.m. until past midnight seven days a week.

Sitting in the campaign office in Mount Hope, Rosenda and other volunteers spend their evenings entering voter information into a database. The long hours bring them close together, said Elida Martinez, another volunteer.

“It’s like a big family here,” Martinez said.

The Bronx campaign office is unusual in that almost all of the volunteers are women. Martinez said they are all driven by concern for those back home.

“We have family over there, you know,” the 46-year-old homemaker said. “Before, we would send $100 over and that did something. Now, $100 is nothing.”

The overseas legislators will give Dominicans abroad a bigger voice back home. The legislators will represent three areas outside of Dominican borders: the northern United States and Canada, the southern United States down to the Caribbean and Europe.

Twenty-three people are running for the three available U.S. and Canada spots.

Seven of the 23 live in the Bronx. Arsenio Devares, a teacher of 20 years, is one them.

Devares’s brothers and sisters have all moved to the U.S., but the Morris Heights resident still has one foot back home.

“That’s one of the most important things for Dominican people,” said Devares, who teaches at PS 17X in Morrisania. “They always think about going back.”

Devares said the typical Dominican ideal is to retire back in the Caribbean. “We work hard over here to buy houses back there.”
Mount Eden resident Julian Melendez is one of Devares’ competitors. Melendez, a businessman and lawyer who has lived in New York for 14 years, worked at the Dominican consulate in New York for four years and saw the problems Dominicans face.

“I went to jail many times to visit Dominicans awaiting deportation.”

It will be several weeks before the party nominates its legislative candidates. In the meantime, everyone is still working to register voters, and there are many long nights ahead.

“We drink a lot of coffee here,” Martinez said as another volunteer arrived with the evening’s supply.