THE CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL CENTER /  SOLIDARIDAD HUMANA


1984 - Present

The vacant school building housed the Solidaridad Humana since 1984, a revolutionary community-based, theater infused comprehensive bilingual education program for Spanish speaking immigrants.  In 1993 the trio of Puerto Rican poet Ed Vega “El Yunque’, Uruguayan actor/director Nelson Landrieu, and Dominican actor Mateo Gomez banded to acquire the lease from Solidaridad Humana, to continue similar safe-keeping efforts albeit in a more cultural vein. This Latine cultural center was envisioned as a haven for Puerto Rican, Latin American and LES diasporic cultures and named after the Puerto Rican poet / community organizer / artistic mentor to generations of cultural workers, Clemente Soto Vélez, in the year of his death.

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This project is an expansion of the themes from the exhibit Activist Estates: A Radical History of Property in Loisaida (2019) authored and designed by the urban historian and architect Nandini Bagchee in partnership with curator Libertad Guerra.

AELES is an evolving resource that can grow to include supplemental layers of the case studies selected and the ongoing survival and futuring intents of these legacies.