Photo from 2021 by Stacie Joy
Carlos "Chino" Garcia, a pioneering Lower East Side community organizer whose decades of activism helped shape the neighborhood through housing advocacy, community gardens, environmental initiatives and the arts, died last week.
Garcia, who had been in declining health in recent years, was among the co-founders of CHARAS, the influential cultural and community organization that transformed the former P.S. 64 on Ninth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C into the El Bohio Community Center. (CHARAS came from the initials of its co-founders — Chino Garcia, Humberto Crespo, Angelo Gonzáles, Roy Battiste, Moses Figueroa and Sal Becker.)
From the city-owned building, CHARAS became a hub for neighborhood life, hosting community meetings, children's programs, art exhibitions, concerts, theater, job training and political organizing in the late 1970s before the group was evicted in 2001 after the Giuliani administration sold the property.
In subsequent years, Garcia and other activists continued to fight for the space, which a developer unsuccessfully tried to convert into dorms and other uses before finally selling the property in early January 2024.
Born in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, Garcia moved to New York as a child in 1951 and eventually settled on the Lower East Side in 1958.
In a 2015 oral history with Village Preservation, Garcia reflected on how his activism grew out of his youth.
"We became leaders because we said, 'We're getting screwed by the society, not just a couple of thugs,'" he said, describing how he and others came to see housing, education and jobs as part of the same struggle.
Beyond CHARAS, Garcia played a key role in tenant organizing, sweat-equity housing rehabilitation, the creation of community gardens — including La Plaza Cultural — and efforts to preserve neighborhood institutions.
Despite losing El Bohio, Garcia remained committed to community work.
"We're still around. We're still doing projects," he said.
We'll update this post with memorial service information when it becomes available.
Tributes to Garcia on social media include...
