Tag Archive | "puerto rican culture"

Stone Soup of the South Bronx

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.”

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Bronx Puerto Rican Parade Embraces Diversity

A mural in Soundview that showcases the diversity of the Bronx. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is Puerto Rican, was raised in the Soundview area of the borough. The piraguero depicted on her left, who sells Puerto Rican shaved ice, has flags from other countries on his cart.

The annual Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade along the Grand Concourse will be filled with classic bomba dancers and bedazzled floats carrying pageant queens, as tradition has dictated for the last three decades. 

But this year, the Sept. 22 parade is expected to include a stronger than ever showing of the borough’s growing ethnic diversity.  The cultural medley is expected to showcase Falun Dafa Drum Dance Team, a Queens-based Chinese musical group that will be drumming alongside salsa music. Central Americans, led by local Guatemalan TV host Chapín, are expected to walk the route alongside African-American and Taíno Indian groups. 

The parade is the second-largest Puerto Rican parade in the United States, next only to Manhattan’s two million-strong event. 

“Being part of the parade makes me feel closer to Puerto Rico,” said Maribel Mercado, 45, this year’s parade president, who has been involved with parade planning for 12 years. But, she said, the drive to recruit groups like Dominicans, Ecuadoreans, Bangladeshis, Mexicans, African Americans and Chinese to the parade reflects the demographic realities in the Bronx.

Parade planners not only promote a unifying melting pot message, but it also helps boost parade attendance, which has been on the decline. Census data shows that the once-dominant Puerto Rican community has declined by 19%, from 338,000 in 1990 to 274,000 in 2017. Parade attendance has fallen suit. As recently as 2005, the parade drew around 50,000 attendees, according to police. This year, the police estimate 15,000 attendees.

Puerto Ricans have always had a strong presence in the Bronx, which is still the case, despite the declining numbers, said Juan Gonzalez, Puerto Rican journalist and author. “Some have left the city, some have moved upstate, some have retired to Puerto Rico and Florida,” said Gonzalez. 

Many work at key healthcare and educational organizations, such as Hostos Community College and Bronx Lebanon Hospital said Gonzalez. Puerto Ricans also dominate county politics. Three of the last four borough presidents have been Puerto Rican — though that might change as older politicians retire and newer communities mobilize politically. 

In many ways, the focus on multicultural participants is an extension of the founder’s original mission. A South Bronx math teacher from Salinas, Angel Luis Rosario, founded the event in 1987 as the first Puerto Rican parade in New York with the idea that any group—not just Puerto Ricans—should celebrate their identity. 

Mercado said that this year’s parade leadership worked to secure sponsorships from new organizations like  Havana Café, a well-known Cuban restaurant. 

Francisco Gonzalez, a former parade chairman who just retired, planned the event for 26 years and has witnessed the Bronx’s demographic changes firsthand. He is confident that new leadership will continue his work to honor the Puerto Rican community as well as to adapt to the changing Bronx.


“We are very proud to be Puerto Rican,” said Francisco Gonzalez, who spends part of the year in Yauco, his family’s mountain hometown in Puerto Rico. “But we follow the Puerto Rican belief that mi casa es su casa. We open our arms to celebrating differences.”

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