Adam, Papi and Cuca. Kingsbridge Heights, 1979.

These fotos represent some of my earliest – and unseen – images, taken in the Bronx not too far from the Kingsbridge Armory in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Like a lot of us, we didn’t see ourselves as setting out to make a historical document, just taking pictures of the world around us.

Yet a lifetime later, here we are. Decades later, time has a way of sharpening your eye and your heart. Looking back on what are family and neighborhood pictures, I see the reflection of Puerto Rican New York, a community that set the stage for the hundreds of thousands of Latin migrants that have reshaped our city and boro.

My family’s journey to the Bronx reflects the path of so many other Puerto Ricans who started settling in this city in large numbers in the 1950s. The Bronx, like with previous blue-collar strivers, was the destination, even if the fires of the 1970’s would obliterate entire communities.

My parents met in El Barrio, then moved to the South Bronx, where they raised their three children. Both worked: Papi as a handyman, Mami was a lunch lady in a public school cafeteria. We moved north about every four years, staying a few steps ahead of the wave of arson that decimated the boro.

Kingsbridge became our home in 1973, when we were the only Latin family in an all-white building. The remnants of the old neighborhood were visible on Fordham Road or Poe Park where elderly Irish and Italians spend their days, though Spanish would soon enuf become common.

We lived next to my sister, Alice, and cousin Charlie, and we all moved freely among the apartments. My father’s routine was set: go to work in a suit and tie; spend his day working in basements or elevators; on the way home stop and chill at the corner bodega on Jerome and 192. Once home, he’d change into his plaid shorts and a tee shirt, then plop himself onto his easy chair and watch television.

This foto was taken in the summer of 1979. Papi – like so many men of his generation who left Puerto Rico for NY – died at 59. My mother outlived him by 40 years. They’re reunited at St. Ray’s in 2020.