2026 Village Award Winner: Carlos “Chino” Garcia
Village Preservation is proud to honor Carlos “Chino” Garcia as a 2026 Village Awardee! Join us in Celebrating Garcia and five other remarkable awardees at Village Preservation’s Annual Meeting and Village Awards on Wednesday, June 10th, with emcee Penny Arcade, at the historic Great Hall at Cooper Union. Registration is free and open to all. Click here to register.
Carlos “Chino” Garcia is legendary Lower East Side based community organizer, known for co-founding CHARAS/ El Bohio community center. CHARAS occupied for the former P.S. 64 at 605 East 9th Street (east of Avenue B) for many years, and addressed issues as wide-ranging as housing, environmentalism, education, job training, and the arts. In 2015 Village Preservation was honored to sit down with Garcia for an oral history, and we are excited to be presenting him with a village award this year.
Garcia was born in 1947 in Puerto Rico. Garcia and his family moved to New York City, first living in East Harlem before moving to the Lower East Side when he was 11 or 12 years old. Facing difficulty as an English language learner and systematic racism he and his family dealt with, his childhood was somewhat fraught. After getting into legal trouble as a teen, Chino temporarily moved to Puerto Rico where he was exposed to socialist politics and Puerto Rican nationalism. Upon returning to New York, Chino was inspired to bring these principles with him to help combat the discrimination being faced by Puerto Ricans in New York City.
In 1964, Garcia helped form the “Real Great Society” a community group with a focus on education. According to Garcia, the group would eventually claim a membership of a thousand young people throughout New York City and northern New Jersey. In the early 1970s, Garcia would co-found CHARAS, the name of which comes from the initials of its co-founders — Chino Garcia, Humberto Crespo, Angelo Gonzáles, Roy Battiste, Moses Figueroa, and Sal Becker. Formed as a division of the Real Great Society, CHARAS addressed issues that were beyond the larger organization’s primary focus. These included housing, the arts, and environmentalism, among others.
Initially located at the the Christodora House, in 1979 CHARAS moved to P.S. 64. Located at 605 East 9th Street, P.S. 64 was a dilapidated building originally designed by school architect C.B.J. Snyder. Here they founded the “El Bohio” Community Center, which served as an invaluable community center, serving thousands of people a year at its peak.
Here they hosted a wide array of activities: community meetings, children’s programming, art exhibits, music concerts, film screenings, plays, dance recitals, bicycle recycling, construction training, a substance abuse treatment, and political organizing.
A few years into their tenure, the city approved the local community board’s recommendation that CHARAS be granted a lease for the building. However, during the Giuliani Administration, the City set out to dispose of numerous city properties, and the P.S. 64 building was among them. CHARAS’ efforts to purchase the property were rebuffed by Giuliani’s Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, and the City listed the building for auction in 1998. Despite community protest, the property was sold to Gregg Singer, a contributor to Guiliani’s campaign. Singer served the group with an eviction order, enforced in 2001. The building was landmarked in 2006 but still remains empty. Singer tried numerous times to destroy the historic structure, but he finally lost ownership via foreclosure in 2023. Learn more about this by checking out Village Preservation’s CHARAS/ El Bohio campaign webpage.
Learn more about Carlos “Chino” Garcia by checking out his oral history, and Join us in celebrating Carlos “Chino” Garcia, alongside five other amazing awardees, at the Village Awards on Wednesday, June 10, at 6 PM at Cooper Union’s historic Great Hall. Register and learn more about all the awardees here!