In happier times, Yolanda Gonzalez (wearing sunglasses) was joined by a galaxy of Bronx politicians at the dedication of a street in honor of her mother, Nos Quedamos founder, Yolanda Garcia.

New director takes reins of pioneering housing organization

Nos Quedamos, the advocacy organization that has served South Bronx residents for nearly two decades on issues ranging from housing to immigration, is on the verge of a comeback, after nearly a year in limbo.

The agency has maintained a low profile since allegations emerged last winter that former executive director, Yolanda Gonzalez, who is also the daughter of the organization’s founder, Yolanda Garcia, had provided Nos Quedamos funds to family members without authorization from the board.

In response, last February, the board locked Gonzalez out of Nos Quedamos’ Melrose Ave. office and laid off about a dozen staff members. It closed entirely for a brief period, then reopened on a shortened schedule as it sought to continue to serve the public without a chief executive.

The State Attorney General’s office is conducting an investigation of Gonzalez. A spokesman for that office, Fernando Aquino, declined to comment on the investigation.

Nos Quedamos’ board has named former board chair Jessica Clemente the agency’s new volunteer executive director, while announcing that about five new staffers will be hired when the agency returns to a regular schedule in January.

Clemente says the organization is poised to put the recent dark chapter in the past and has nothing to hide. She maintains the group is eager to continue serving the community’s housing, public health and social justice needs, and to resume its long legacy in the neighborhood.

“We want to reestablish that same community morale,” said Clemente in an interview while hanging photos on the wall near the office’s entrance highlighting the agency’s past endeavors and its local folk-hero founder, Yolanda Garcia, who died of a stroke in 2005. “We want to connect to the real essence of what community building means.”

For now, Clemente said, the organization is holding project funds in an escrow account while it evaluates internal accounting practices. She added that the Attorney General’s “investigation is of an individual, not of the organization.”

Clemente is a product of the neighborhood. She was raised in the Millbrook Houses on East 137th Street and St. Ann’s Avenue before receiving her Masters in Urban Planning at NYU, and going on to lead a public health project monitoring air quality and asthma problems for South Bronx residents between 2000 and 2006.

While she helped Clemente arrange photos and award plaques on the office wall, long-time board member Sandy Quilico said she is confident Nos Quedamos can quickly return to the status it previously held as an advocate for needy Bronxites, recalling that “under Yolanda Garcia, we were doing phenomenally well.”

Many Latin American immigrants send the remains of loved ones home after death, part of their strong traditional belief in the afterlife as illustrated by these decorative skulls used to celebrate Mexico's Day of the Dead.

Visiting the dead is a common ritual for Mexicans during El Dia De Los Muertos. But South Bronx Mexicans won’t be spending time at tombstones next week – for the simple fact that most of them don’t bury their loved ones in the United States. Instead, they send the deceased back to rest in their homeland.

“I don’t know one Mexican family that has purchased a burial plot in the area,” said Rev. John Grange of St. Luke’s church on East 138th Street in Mott Haven.

For the past two decades, Mexicans have been an important growing immigrant group of the South Bronx.

According to the  Census Bureau, in 2005, Mexicans composed close to 30 percent of the South Bronx Hispanic population. Today, St. Jerome’s Church on Alexander Avenue has a congregation that is more than 80 percent Mexican. Yet, after having served 33 years as a priest there, Grange has never officiated a single Mexican funeral.

“The first thing my Irish grandparents did when they arrived in Mott Haven was buy a grave. That’s not the case for the Mexicans. Their plan isn’t to stay here permanently,” said Grange.

This particular trend has carved a niche for funeral homes. The R.G. Ortiz funeral home chain has won clients by catering to this clientele: transporting the dead from anywhere in the New York area to final resting places in Mexico.

While it is not uncommon for other immigrant groups to ship bodies back home, Mauro Calderón, manager of R.G. Ortiz on Willis Avenue said Mexicans are the most committed. While about half of Dominicans and Ecuadoreans want bodies shipped back, more than 90 percent of Mexicans follow this ritual.

“It’s tradition. Everyone has to go back to the homeland. Even the dead. The cost is significant, but Mexicans will do whatever it takes to find the money,” Calderón said.

For about $3,000, about a third of the price of a funeral in the New York area, R.G. Ortiz offers a wake and handles the paperwork required to repatriate bodies. While other Consulates like those of Ecuador and the Dominican Republic usually charge a permit fee of about $200, the Mexican Consulate covers the fee, and depending on the situation, may also pay for the entire funeral service.

“Repatriating bodies is such a large expense and it used to be that people extorted their savings. Being buried in Mexico is so important to them that they would rather get in debt than not respect the tradition. So, we have worked out agreements with several funeral homes in the New York area so that we can help,” said Julio Garcia, Press Officer at the Mexican Consulate.

Abroad, Mexicans help one another to find ways to pay for the repatriation of loved-ones. They’ll ask for donation, go door-to-door, or use coperachas or tandas – a weekly collected pot of money that is shared with everyone, as a way to pull money. As a Mexican immigrant living in Mott Haven, Carman Escamilla has contributed to helping others send back bodies to Puebla and Oaxaca.

“We might not know each other but we trust one another. We’re all illegal. At the end of the day, we all hope to go back to Mexico, that’s why we support each other.” said Escamilla.

More than just an expensive ritual, funerals are a week-long process in Mexico and as Mexicans work and fight for their immigration status in America; they simply cannot tend to traditions.

“In Mexico, the wake will last a nine days. They’ll sing, they’ll pray, they’ll eat tamales, pipián and make altars in commemoration of the dead. Over here, it will only last a day,” Grange said.

Over here, Mexicans cannot celebrate their dead in the same way. There’s no room in an apartment where more than one family lives, there’s no time off work and it’s just too expensive.

“We come here to work hard and make money so we can eventually go back to Mexico and live a better life,” said Escamilla.

Claudia Hoyos is a Mexican immigrant who owns a small bakery on 149^th street. As she set out el pan de los muertos – the holiday bread eaten on November 1^st – on the counter display, she sang an old Mexican song.

“Mexico lindo y querido. Ay! De mi si muera, fuera de ti.” (My beautiful and beloved Mexico. I will not die without you).

Mohammed Nabiye, the manager of African Movies Mall in Melrose, standing next to his latest batch of DVDs.

In the African-born community of the South Bronx, names like George Clooney, Woody Allen or “Seinfeld” might pass completely unnoticed.

A visit from actor Funke Akindele or a screening of “Living in Bondage”, on the other hand, might cause a small revolution.

Those are two of the biggest names in Nollywood, the successful $200 million dollar Nigerian movie industry, the third largest in the world. But don’t try to locate their movies in Blockbuster. For many outlets around the county, African Movies Mall, a sprawling storefront and warehouse in Melrose, is the place to go.

It started nearly 10 years ago, in a low-key, 200-square-foot shop on 165^th St, near the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Today, African Movies Mall occupies two locations on 165^th St, and they state proudly that they are the largest seller of African movies in New York City.

“People want to be around what they know,” said the store’s manager, Mohammed Nabiye. “Entering the store is like being back in Africa. The stories are ours, the names are ours.”

Owner Rabiu Mohammed, from Ghana, quickly found his niche in the African population of the Bronx when he opened the store in early 2002. Since then, African Movies Mall has expanded in correlation to its audience. The number of African-born Bronxites shot up more than two thirds, from 36,500 to 61,000, between 2000 and 2010, according to the American Community Survey.

That same year, African Movies Mall acquired a second location two numbers down the street. The once family-operated business slowly expanded its staff to 17 people who currently work there. Mohammed stepped down from managing the shop to focus more on scouting the African movie scene, leaving the day-to-day management in Nabiye’s hands.

Nabiye, who sported his country’s football jersey and flashed a never ending pearly-white smile, said he used to work in the movie industry back in Ghana.

“Working in a movie store just fits me,” said Nabiye, 31, who arrived in New York from Ghana in 2006 and started managing African Movies Mall a year later. “I am comfortable here,” he said. “Movies are what I know.”

Boxes pile up from floor to ceiling in the two locations on 165^th St, ready to ship. Each contains a hundred DVDs, adding up to a total of around 300,000 in inventory. There is a room dedicated to one-on-one sales, where customers flip through the glossy covers with titles like “Passion of the Soul” and “Chasing Hope” printed in bright colors.

Most of the movies come from Ghana, Burkina Faso and, of course, Nigeria, the third most prolific film industry in the world, after the US and India. However, customers arrived from all corners of the continent. Eko, from Mali, has been a regular for years: “I come looking for the stories I understand, the ones that speak to me,” he said.

Mama Queenie, another Ghanaian who owns the African Queen Beauty Supply shop in the north Bronx, buys around $3,000 worth of DVDs per week to sell in her store.

“I sell movies because I love movies,” she said in a telephone interview. “Sometimes I am up until 3 a.m. watching them.”

But lately, African stories are reaching other communities within the South Bronx. Manuel, from Puerto Rico, stumbled upon the store and could not resist the urge to see what was on offer. He finally took home “Beyonce,” a Ghanaian love story that is the best selling movie in the store.

“I have never watched an African movie,” he said in Spanish while pondering over three different DVDs. “I am curious. It looks so different from what I usually watch,”

Nabiye said the business has also expanded the business off-shore, shipping to the Caribbean, Australia or the UK.

“Our titles might be different, but the themes – loss, fear, love – go beyond borders,” he said. “They are universal.”

Photo by Sarah Pizon Daniel "Kuwait" Adjei (left) and Greg M. Akologo

For West African residents in the South Bronx, Kuwait is not just a Middle Eastern country. “Kuwait” is a Ghanaian immigrant whose Morrisania-based business has become the conduit back to their nations of origin.

Kuwait Shipping & Packaging , which specializes in transporting items to West African countries, has made it possible for immigrants to ship raw construction materials along with American consumer goods back to their homelands. As the owner of one of the oldest companies in the area that ships goods to West Africa, “Kuwait” has made a name for himself.

“I’m a popular guy. Everyone knows me around here. If you ask a bus driver to take you to ‘Kuwait,’ he’ll bring you to my shop,” he said.

Kuwait, whose real name is Daniel Adjei, used to be a welder in Ghana. After he returned home following an unsuccessful attempt at finding work in the Middle East in the early 1980s, his friends nicknamed him “Kuwait.”

Adjei moved to the United States twenty-eight years ago and received citizenship under President Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program for undocumented immigrants, then began working for his uncle’s company in the South Bronx, which bought damaged cars at auctions and shipped them to West Africa via a third-party shipping company.

“I realized we could start organizing our own business and shipping the cars ourselves,” he said. Over the years, Adjei has seen his customer base expand because he offered personal business shipping experience, he said. “People know me and feel I’m putting my heart in it.”

“I do business with respect and dignity,” he said. “That’s a guarantee.”

Now, Kuwait ships not only cars but also a wide variety of goods such as marble, metals, refrigerators and toilet paper to West Africa.

West African culture has powerful ties to family. While a majority of African men have moved to America looking for better income, they still seek to build their dream house – a symbol of success – back home, explained Adjei.

“People might live like crap here, but back home, they’re building mansions. With Africa’s cheap labor, it’s easy,” he said.

Other local members of the Ghanaian diaspora echo this sentiment.  “This country has a lot to offer,” said Marc Anthony, owner of an adjacent auto repair shop. “With a positive mindset and hard working, you can get where you have to,” he said.

Over the last 20 years, Adjei’s growing shipping business reflects the remarkable growth of the South Bronx’ West African population, especially among Ghanaians and Nigerians. According to the 2007 Census Bureau American Survey, the Bronx’s sub-Saharan African population has ballooned from 12,063 in 1990 to 36,361 in 2000, to 54,932 in 2007.

Yet, as the population of West African immigrants increased, Adjei saw his profits fall as Nigerians started to open their own shipping companies. The 2008 financial crisis didn’t help either. While Adjei used to ship four 40-foot containers per week, he now only ships one or two.

Adjei still manages to make ends meet and tries to do some good, too. He hired Greg M. Akologo, a deaf man from Ghana who struggled to secure paperwork and a job. He regularly donates money to African humanitarian organizations and ships abandoned goods he finds on the streets– like bikes, computers and mattresses– to Ghana, because he knows that they will be well received.

Although Daniel “Kuwait” Adjei may be thousands of miles away, he hasn’t “forgotten the problems of my country,” he said. “If I can still make a difference, then God is going to bless me.”

Evelina Antonetty raises hell at a Bronx school board meeting in the 1970s.

It was 1974, and a group of South Bronx residents were looking for someone to fill a vacant seat on the state Assembly. The pick from the community was nearly unanimous: It would be Evelina Antonetty, surely.

But public office was of no interest to the forty-something activist. Instead, she told her supporters to get behind a young man named José Serrano.

Serrano, now the representative of New York’s 16^th Congressional District, went on to win that Assembly seat, was later elected to Congress and—influenced by the woman who had helped him years earlier—funneled millions of federal dollars toward rebuilding the South Bronx. He has never forgotten the way Antonetty changed his life.

“When she said it, it was a done deal,” Serrano said. “She was always interested in promoting younger people. She saw something in me.”

An activist, community organizer, and a mother, Evelina Antonetty was, above all, a driving force behind some of the changes that have reshaped the South Bronx.

On July 6^th, almost 30 years after a heart attack cut her life short, the woman everyone called ‘Titi’, or ‘Auntie,’ was honored by the community she fought for, with the renaming of Prospect Avenue and 156^th Street as “Dra. Evelina Antonetty Way.”

“Everybody called her that, because whenever she saw a need for anything, she tried to help,” said her daughter, Anita. “I’ve had people tell me if it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t have gotten their start in this country.”

Antonetty, born Evelina Cruz, grew up in the small city of Salinas in the south of Puerto Rico, in the 1920s. She was the oldest of three children, born to a single mother. She came to the U.S. around the age of 10, alone, on a boat trip that took weeks. She arrived at South Street Seaport, where her aunt Vincenta came to meet her.

“The desperation there must have been, to send your child alone on a boat,” Anita Antonetty said. “This was during the depression.”

Growing up in East Harlem during the Depression, Evelina saw firsthand how the tough economic times affected New Yorkers. She worked for Congressman Vito Marcantonio and labor leader Jesús Colón while in her teens, getting her first taste of community activism.

In the early 1940s, Evelina moved to the South Bronx, where she went to work for District 65 of the United Auto Workers, helping prepare people without jobs for the workforce.

“She was a conduit in that position, helping people to get started in the United States,” Anita Antonetty said.

When she settled down with her second husband Donato Antonetty in 1955 on Jackson Ave, she chose to stay home to raise her three children. But she was still Titi to people from the neighborhood who stopped by regularly for help and advice.

When Anita started school in 1962, Evelina joined PS 5’s parents association, where she began the work that later led her to form United Bronx Parents.

Antonetty fought for school issues big and small for her new organization, from the quality of lunches to decentralization, pushing always for increased community involvement.

Perhaps her biggest impact came from her fight for bilingual education. Dr. Vicky Gholson, a former United Bronx Parents board member, says the scale of Antonetty’s work was massive.

“To just say she was a community organizer in the South Bronx is erroneous,” Gholson said. “She was the spirit and the force behind bilingual education in the United States, to put it simply. It would not have happened in the quick form and fashion that it did if it were not for her energy and her organizing.”

Gholson is also Harlem’s first Ph.D. in Communications, an honor she says is due in no small part to Evelina.

She isn’t the only one Antonetty helped inspire to lofty goals. Federico Perez, the director of special projects and events in Rep. Serrano’s office, met Antonetty when he was 27. He was applying to Bronx Community College, but says he was being denied because of discrimination.

So Antonetty stepped in: She pushed him to persist, and pressured the administration to let him in. He was eventually accepted, went on to earn a Masters Degree in Education, taught for 23 years and became a member of the City Council.

“She was my mentor and teacher,” Perez said.

Toward the end of her life, the struggle continued. In 1984, the year of her death, Ronald Reagan was running for his second term. She organized voter registration, inspired people to vote, and worked on Reverend Jesse Jackson’s campaign.

Twenty-seven years after her death, Antonetty’s legacy lives on, through the United Bronx Parents and other community organizations that use her work as a model.

Now it also lives on on a South Bronx street corner, where children looking up at the street sign can ask their parents who she is, and maybe learn a little about the woman called Titi.

• One-on-One Public Benefits Counseling, M-Th, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. By appointment only. Residents can learn about access to public benefits, tax credits and other government services. English and Spanish. Call 718-665-5250 x262.

• One-on-One Personal Financial Counseling, Wednesdays,11 a.m.-7 p.m. By Appointment. Learn about credit scores, opening a free bank account, repairing damaged credit, creating a budget, and saving money. English and Spanish. Call 718-665-5250 x221.

• Civil Legal Assistance, every other Tuesday, 2-5 p.m. Appointment only. Topics include employment issues and disputes, housing and eviction prevention, consumer debt (suing a creditor or responding to a suit), domestic abuse, and/or divorce, custody, and child support. English and Spanish. Call 718 665-5250 x262.

• Small Business Assistance. Appointment only. Call 718-665-5250 x221.

The mural on East 156th Street.

Residents helped create public art

Last summer, a colorful mural titled “Y yo ya estaba! I was already here!” took shape on the parking lot wall of Iglesia Evangélica Española, the Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church on the block of East 156th Street between Tinton and Union avenues.

Artist Virginia Ayress invited residents and members of the congregation to pick up paint brushes and help create a work she hoped would start conversations about immigrants at a time of heated debate about the nation’s policies toward those who arrive from other countries.

In an interview, Ayress said she wanted to educate the public about the history of immigration, including the violence that accompanied the settling of the nation. “Native Americans were the first ones here, were killed and then other groups came,” she said.

The mural “has a little bit of everyone’s history,” said Judy Williams, a Mott Haven resident who worked on it with her three children.

In the top left corner, four Native Americans look down on a panorama of American history. Below the faces of the Native Americans, an eagle wing and a dream catcher embrace a sailing ship that brought over enslaved Africans. “The eagle wing not only represents all races, but also is protecting people,” explained Juan Kortright, 72, a parishioner in the church.

Ines Contreras, 53, who helps run the church’s social program, offers another interpretation. The wing, she says, “represents the dreams they come with”—dreams that get “trapped here, shown by the dream catcher.” Immigrants, she said, came “here looking for that dream, but exploitation leaves them with nothing in their hand when they go home.”

The mural includes a steamship that carried later generations from Europe to the New World, and a skyline of apartment buildings like those near the church. It shows European immigrants arriving from Ellis Island surrounded by women on a dock where a giant sewing machine symbolizes the work they will do in the city’s garment factories. Men tote heavy loads over large boulders. Gears symbolize the machinery of the modern factory. Railroad tracks, laid by Chinese workers, cross farmland.

African slaves mirror the Native Americans in the top right of the mural. They look down on scenes of struggle—on the broken chains of slavery and on Latino workers demonstrating for immigration reform. The mouths of the slaves and the young workers on the picket line are open, speaking up for their demands.

In the center of the mural, farm workers plant and harvest the bounty of the land. Next to their crop is a beating heart.

Desiree Lugo, 23, who has attended the church all her life, is uneasy about the mural’s political message. She would have preferred something more spiritual, she said, but, nevertheless, she calls the painting “a way to beautify the space” and said the artist tried to give immigrants a voice they haven’t had.

While Lugo wonders whether the mural belongs at the church, 11-year-old Caroline Callo says it shows “how great church and the Lord is.” Caroline was one of a group of young women who said the mural, which was commissioned by the church’s food program, the called “Give Them to Eat Ministries,” offered something meaningful for church-goers to discuss.

The mural was created to show change, agreed Tiana Rodriguez, 13, Katelyn Peralta, 10, Alisa Rodriguez, 11, and Caroline and her 13-year-old sister Annabel. But Tiana, who has been attending services at the church since she was 4, and who was one of the artists who helped paint the wall, took a pessimistic view.

“The only thing that has changed is slavery. Immigration is still the same,” she said.

Still, she and her friends agreed that one of the best things about the mural was that it portrayed so many young people. It shows that “kids have a big voice, speak out, and say what they mean,” declared Katelyn.

A version of this story appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

The receptionist Heidy Rios juggles her duties at the busy Mercy Center

For immigrants and the poor, center offers a welcome and support

Heidy Rios knows what it’s like to be poor. Born and raised in the Bronx, for a time she had so little money that she and her children lived in an apartment that had no stove or refrigerator. She kept food cold by putting it on the windowsill during the winter.

She remembers being fearful and embarrassed when she went to job interviews. She didn’t know how to turn on a computer, let alone use one.

Then, one day when she dropped her children off at St. Pius V School on East 144th Street, Rios found a flyer advertising the services of Mercy Center, which was headquartered at the school at the time.

At Mercy Center, she learned parenting skills, graduated from a computer class and earned her GED. In gratitude, she worked at the center as a volunteer. Her commitment paid off when the center offered her a job.

Fifteen years have passed, and the confidence she gained shows as Rios greets visitors attending classes at Mercy Center, which is now located in its own building on East 145th Street and Willis Avenue. Her five children continue to attend after-school programs and girl talk workshops and perform community service.

Twenty years ago, Sister Mary Ann Dirr, a member of the Sisters of Mercy, arrived in Mott Haven. She found a neighborhood suffering from crack, crime and poverty. City agencies abandoned the South Bronx; the Catholic Church stayed.

Working with two volunteers from the neighborhood, Sister Dirr established a counseling center in a single classroom at St. Pius V.

Now, Mercy Center has grown to employ 20 bilingual staff members and 200 professional volunteers. Last year it served more than 2,000 clients from some 700 families.

Its focus remains women and families. It helps women learn parenting and family life skills, and prepares them to start their own businesses or work in the job market. Other programs include alternatives to violence classes, immigration services, youth services, after-school programs, yoga and spirituality groups and English as a Second Language.

From its beginning, Mercy Center’s programs have been geared toward women. “Women in poor or any community, from rural to urban, hold up the family. They keep it together, and need more help in sustaining family,” explained Blanca Ramirez, the center’s coordinator of direct social services, who has been at Mercy Center for three years.
The center’s English classes have proved to be among its most popular programs.

If people “can’t communicate with people important in their lives, such as teachers or doctors, it’s a problem,” says Ramirez. That’s why Mercy started teaching English as a second language.

America Reyes agrees. She can “socialize with people now,” she said, adding that she “was timid before, but is empowered through English.”

Areida Beltran a 50-year-old immigrant from Central America, has lost her fear of speaking English. Now when she goes to the hospital, she can speak for herself and ask for what she needs.
Margarita Navarro, can now speak English at her children’s school. She said she can read her children’s report cards and understand their needs.

The language classes, Ramirez says, do more than just teach English; they bring people together from all over the world to support one another.

Ramirez, who describes herself as an “old time organizer,” said the “spirit of hospitality is what makes Mercy Center different” from other social service organization that cater to women. Other places make you wait in line or take a number, she says. At Mercy, visitors are directed to a comfortable lounge to wait for help from a staff member.
The person who greets them warmly in either Spanish or English and escorts them to the lounge is Heidy Rios.

A version of this story appeared in the Summer 2010 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

A Mexican dance troupe performed at Brook Park.

Shortly before 6:30 p.m. Sunday a man was shot and killed at 681 Courtlandt Avenue in Melrose, the Daily News reported. Police did not identify the victim, who was in his 20s, and whose bodies was riddle with bullets, they said.

A well-known resident died Wednesday, four days after he was beaten and stomped by thieves who stole his cell phone. Surveillance cameras caught the attack by four men, who beat and kicked Juan Lopez, 54, as he was returning to his home on Cauldwell Avenue. “There wasn’t one person in the neighborhood who didn’t know my father,” his daughter Melissa Lopez told the Daily News. “Nobody can believe that anyone could do such a brutal thing to my father.”

Former waitresses at a Mott Haven strip club have filed suit in federal court, charging that were groped, had to fend off sexual demands from their bosses and had their tips stolen. “They degraded us, they insulted us. They touched us,” Jasmine Felipe, 26, of the Bronx told the Daily News about working at Sin City, the club on Park Avenue and East 138th Street that bills itself as “New York City’s # 1 Strip Club!”

When Congress voted to spend $37 million Tuesday to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rep. Jose Serrano, who represents Mott Haven and Hunts Point, voted No. Serrano called for an end to the Afghanistan war, and said e U.S. forces should leave Pakistan unless Congress gives specific authority for them to be there. “I believe that sending forces to Afghanistan after 9/11 to root out the terrorists, their supporters and their training camps was the correct move. Nine years later, I believe that it is past time to end our involvement in that nation, because it is clear we are stuck in a quagmire and not on the road to peace or victory,” he said after the vote, which won approval for President Barack Obama’s policy 308-114 with many Democrats voting against the expenditure while Republicans voted with the White House. If military involvement in Pakistan were to be put to a vote, Serrano said, he would vote No again.

Every year, police forces across the country hold a one-day summer event called “National Night Out” to bring police officers and community residents together to discuss local issues and concerns outside the tense environment of precincts and meeting rooms. This year’s event in Mott Haven will take place in St. Mary’s Park on St. Ann’s Avenue on Tuesday, August 3rd, where officers from the 40th precinct will be present. Among this year’s featured events, high school students and adult volunteers from the United Playaz organization will stage an event to promote the need for peaceful conflict resolution among young people. The event is scheduled to run between 3 and 8 p.m.

Brook Park in Mott Haven was the scene for the second annual Festival for Immigrants on July 24, as hundreds gathered to hear activists speak out against Arizona’s controversial new law, which many feel discriminates against Latinos. There were musical and dance performances, including the Mexican traditional dance troupe Cetilizli Naucampa, which performs dances based on the Nauhatl traditions. Speakers called on the public to join a planned protest against the Arizona Diamondbacks when they visit Citifield in Queens to play the Mets on Friday, July 30.

The Bronx Culture Trolley will make its next run on Wednesday, Aug. 4, with a number of stops in Hunts Point and Mott Haven, including 52 Park, The Point CDC, Bronxartspace, LDR Studio Gallery and the Bruckner Bar and Grill. The free ride begins at Longwood Art Gallery, Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse at East 149th Street.

Cecil Joseph, who was briefly the interim Bronx Borough President when his boss Stanley Simon was indicted for corruption in the mid 1980s, has opened a new McDonald’s across from Lincoln Hospital. After heading the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, Joseph, who grew up in the Patterson Houses, turned entrepreneur, forming a company to acquire fast food franchises.

Alfredo Diego, owner and chef of Coqui Mexicano.Photo by Carla Candia

A popular lunch spot, Coqui Mexicana is a library, community center, too

A Puerto Rican man in his 60s stormed into Coqui Mexicano, the restaurant on Brook and Third Avenues recently. He was offended by eatery’s name. “That is wrong,” he said. “The Coqui is not from Mexico; it is from Puerto Rico.”

Indeed, the coqui is a little frog commonly found in Puerto Rico, and the visitor’s reaction when he saw the name of the place is not the first of its kind that Diego and Nazario have witnessed. “Puerto Ricans feel offended because the coqui is from Puerto Rico,” said Danisha Nazario, 35, who owns the restaurant along with Alfredo Diego, 39.

Offended national pride aside, however, Melrose residents as well as those who work in the area have adopted the little restaurant, which opened two years ago. And as far as its owners are concerned, the name is a symbol of the fusion of cultures represented on the restaurant’s menu.

In addition to such well-known Mexican and Puerto Rican specials as tacos, plantain-leaf-wrapped tamales, and arroz con habichuelas–the Puerto Rican version of rice and beans—the restaurant serves dishes from far-flung Latin cuisines. For instance, instead of the typical Peruvian ceviche, they serve an Acapulco-style ceviche—made with Mexican jalapeño peppers.

Other specialties include Salvadoran pupusas—corn tortillas filled with chorizo and cheese, among other ingredients—and a salad of Chayota squash. Desserts include Piña Colada pie and guava and cheese muffins.

Like its name and its offerings, the proprietors are the result of cultural fusion: Nazario is Puerto Rican, Diego Mexican, and they serve a neighborhood that has become home to many Puerto Ricans and Mexicans.

The proprietors have lived in the area for nine years. Diego always wanted to own a business where he could serve people. He and Nazario put together $18,000 in savings, borrowed more and began to scout for a place to open a restaurant.

“We looked for places in Brooklyn and East Harlem but they were too expensive,” said Nazario. Then they learned that that the out of business deli not far away from their apartment was available and thought that it would make sense to invest in the neighborhood.

Coqui Mexicano has three tables and three chairs by the bar. Hanging on the turquoise walls are pictures of President Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, along with a picture of Diego posing with Congressman Jose E. Serrano.

Since they couldn’t afford to hire a cook, Diego took over the kitchen, and remains responsible for all the cooking. However, Nazario says his true calling is to interact with patrons. “Diego lives to be surrounded by people,” she said.

“We say this is not a restaurant; it is not a bodega; it is more like a community center,” said Nazario.

The couple wants to provide residents with services that are scarce in the area. Not only does the restaurant sell food made from fresh vegetables, but also crafts made by locals.

And customers can take books home for free.  Finding that there were no bookstores in the neighborhood, the couple decided to collect used titles and placed them on a shelf next to the entrance.

“Reading should not be a luxury,” the owners say on the restaurant website. “Books can be expensive and during these hard times, why should we not learn how to share with each other?”

Coqui’s customers include police officers from the nearby 42nd Precinct, construction workers and teachers from area schools.

“Eighty percent of my employees come here to have lunch,” said Bobby, 46, who works in construction and refused to give his last name because of his company’s policies. The restaurant “sells what we really need.”

Prices are affordable: tacos and tamales sell for $2.50, desserts for $3, and a plate of arroz con habichuelas with a side of meat for $5.

However, Diego and Nazario are struggling to keep Coqui Mexicano in business.  The salary that Nazario makes as a hotel employee is their main capital. “The place doesn’t make enough money to sustain itself,” said Nazario.

In May, when Nazario and Diego fell behind on the rent and received a notice of eviction from their landlord, patrons, including Congressman Serrano, signed petitions to keep Coqui Mexicano open. The restaurant’s owners and their landlord agreed to a six-month payment plan, and visitors have continued enjoying Coqui’s food.

They’ve pinned their hopes on nearby Boricua Village on East 163d Street and Third Avenue. The complex, scheduled to open soon, will include 750 apartments, Boricua College, with an enrollment of 2,400 students and 40,000 square feet of retail space that should bring plenty of foot traffic to the area.

In the meantime, the owners are coping with hard times. “We still owe six thousand dollars of the late rent,” said Diego.