Puerto Rico | Interactive Fundamentals Thursday 5:00-8:50 (Thomas Lin)

On 105th Street and Third Avenue is a mural that was first painted by a collective of Hispanic activist-artists in 1998. It is of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara and Pedro Albizu Campos, a Puerto Rican nationalist and activist for independence. After 13 years the artists who originally painted got together with Luisa’s Liberation Artists Making Action (LLAMA) to restore the mural and remove the graffiti and tagging that had collected over the last decade.

One of the artists, Vagabond, feels that mural represents a number of things to the large Hispanic population located in East Harlem. He says that often, even in Puerto Rico itself, Hispanic children get taught a large amount of Western or American history in school. With the restoration of the mural, he hopes to reignite a dialogue between residents about their own history and culture.

On Lexington Avenue, between 104th and 105th Streets, is a little green oasis behind a gate with painted letters that read, “Modesto Flores Garden.” A little Puerto Rican flag is tucked behind the word, “garden.”

The Modesto “Tin” Flores community garden in East Harlem was born in 1981, according to Yvonne Pacheco, 56. She has been volunteering to run it for the last 10 years for Hope Community, an organization that owns around 75 affordable housing buildings and around eight community gardens including the Modesto garden.

Roger Cabán is 75 and sits on Hope’s Community’s board of directors. He says that the 50-feet wide, 100-feet deep garden was started by the Puerto Rican superintendent of the building adjoining the garden. Cabán says his name was Modesto Flores, and he was known by his nickname, “Tin”. When he passed away, the garden was named after him.

A few decades ago, East Harlem’s community gardens were buzzing with activity. Puerto Ricans would build a caseta in each one, Spanish for “little house.” According to Jordan Dyniewski who works with New York Restoration Project, helping to restore some of these gardens, these were once extremely prevalent in the community.

These days, most of them are falling into disrepair, according to many older Puerto Ricans who’ve lived in the community for a while. As it is a block away from the Hope Community offices, “in the heart of East Harlem,” according to Cabán, the Modesto garden is like “the old guard” of community gardens, he says.