Carlos “Chino” Garcia, LES Activist and Organizer Remembered

Carlos “Chino” Garcia, a longtime Lower East Side activist and organizer whose interests spanned housing, the arts, economic justice and community gardens, is being remembered by neighbors and fellow activists as a tireless leader whose legacy will continue long after his recent passing. Garcia was born in 1947 in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, moved to New York in 1951 and settled on the Lower East Side in 1958.

Garcia, who transitioned from being a young gang kid to the Real Great Society group of activists (a play on and riposte to President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society) to becoming member of CHARAS died last week after a period of declining health.

“I joined the Assassins when I was around ten years old,” Garcia once told an interviewer. “The original body of the Assassins came out of Chelsea, and it was mainly a Puerto Rican group of people, but there were also some blacks in it because the blacks were having the same problem we were having. So some of them joined the group in Chelsea.”

For decades, Garcia—Chino to his friends and admirers— became one of the Lower East Side’s most recognizable voices, helping organize residents around affordable housing, environmental initiatives, community gardens and cultural programming.

Lincoln Anderson, founder and longtime editor of now suspended digital publication The Village Sun, said Garcia’s influence reached nearly every corner of the neighborhood. ”He was like the Godfather of the East Village,” Anderson recalled, describing Garcia as someone who spent decades standing up for residents and preserving neighborhood institutions.

”Chino was constantly fighting the good fight,” Anderson said. “It was a big loss to the community to hear about his passing given all the good work he’s done.”

While Garcia’s death leaves a void, Anderson said the neighborhood is now home to a new generation of organizers who continue advocating for the issues Garcia championed.

Garcia was among the co-founders of CHARAS, a community organization that transformed the former P.S. 64 building on East Ninth Street into the CHARAS/El Bohio Community Center in the winter of 1978-79. The center became a gathering place for residents, offering arts programming, youth activities, community meetings, job training and neighborhood organizing before the group was forced to leave the building in 2001. That fight, and the subsequent battle over P.S. 64’s future is one of Manhattan’s most convoluted and bitter real estate sagas.

Despite losing the building, Garcia remained committed to the effort to return the property to community use.

Andrew Berman, executive director of Village Preservation, said Garcia inspired generations of New Yorkers through his dedication to the community. ”He was an inspiration,” Berman said. “He spent his whole life trying to get the community back. He was so uplifting.”

Earlier this year, Village Preservation honored Garcia with its Village Award in recognition of his decades of advocacy.

”Given his work intersected with him always ensuring that the neighborhood always had a voice, that was someone we wanted to recognize and honor,” Berman said. “Unfortunately, he was already too ill to accept the award in person.”

Although Garcia’s health had declined, those who knew him said he continued working behind the scenes to advance the causes he cared about, ensuring the movement he helped build would continue.

Garcia often spoke about preserving the former CHARAS building and carrying forward the mission he shared with fellow organizer Armando Perez. According to those close to the organization, Perez once declared, “I will die before I give up this building,” a promise Garcia continued to honor through years of advocacy after Perez’s death.

News of Garcia’s passing prompted tributes from some local electeds. Former City Council Member and current Assemblymember Keith Powers in a post on social media. ”Saddened to hear about the passing of Chino Garcia, a founding member of the CHARAS-El Bohio Cultural Center and an icon of the Lower East Side,” Powers wrote. “His legacy and contributions to our community will live on for generations to come.”

For many residents, Garcia’s legacy is not only the organizations he helped establish, but the generation of community advocates who continue his work.

”He fought for this neighborhood his entire life,” Anderson said. “That legacy isn’t going anywhere.”

Chino & Bucky Down by the Schoolyard

“One time I was talking with some friends, and they were mentioning this guy named Buckminster Fuller. He really was talking about all kinds of ways of doing this with less material. You could talk about renovating a building, but it’s going to cost you a fortune, so how [do] you do it [in a way] that it’s cheaper?” Garcia once recalled of his long relationship with Fuller, the visionary architect and futurist.

“So we contact Bucky, and we wanted him to come and speak to a whole bunch of young leaders, Third World leaders, about all these alternative possibilities. He was really nice because he came to give a speech. He was in the Christodora House when it was a community center. Now it’s a high-class condominium, but it used to be a community center. He came and gave a speech there in the auditorium, and it was really nice. A lot of Black Panthers, a lot of—besides our group—Young Lords and other people came to listen to him. He gave a beautiful speech for almost two hours about the alternatives of doing things with the least material, the least money possible. It was a really good speech.”