Flowers for the Elders is a celebration of the people who’ve dedicated their lives to the South Bronx — our activists, advocates, artists, healers, and mentors.
Nieves Ayress. Nieves is a treasure to our community and the world. She is a community organizer committed to liberation and to building unified communities that are rooted in justice and liberation. Nieves, who was born and raised in Chile, was brutally tortured for resisting the Pinochet dictatorship. She, her father, her brother, and her husband Victor Toro were all political prisoners under the Pinochet regime and the torture Nieves experienced is so horrific that most people cannot even begin to imagine how someone could survive. Nieves, however, has triumphantly continued to wage freedom and love by organizing to support social justice and community building across borders. Nieves and her husband created “Vamos a La Peña Del Bronx” in 1984, a center which organized to support people living with HIV/AIDS, women who were experiencing domestic violence, and support people in need. La Peña hosted community events, political gatherings, and fed and clothed about five thousand people a year. Local residents, often led by women, organized from La Peña to protest against rent hikes, waste incinerators, and the repressions of the largely immigrant population that inhabits the neighborhood.
Virginia (Vicky) Ayress. Virginia is an interdisciplinary visual artist and social justice activist. She uses her art to unite international struggles for freedom, honoring land liberation, women’s rights, immigrants’ rights, and the interconnectedness of cultures and life. She was born in Santiago de Chile and left when her family was captured and tortured by the Pinochet Regime. She studied art in Chile, Italy and Cuba, before coming to the South Bronx and working as an artist and arts educator. Virginia has taught in schools, senior centers, and community centers. Her art has supported many organizations that work for social justice. She has created many beautiful murals across the Bronx that fortify messages of beauty and empowerment, resilience, and hope for all who are blessed to see them. She is the founder of “Taller Experimental de Arte” an organization that unites our community and creates events, gatherings, and experiences for people to come together and make beauty, healing through art and connection.
She is also the sister of Nieves Ayress and has collaborated with “Vamos a La Peña Del Bronx” all these years, making the artwork for the different manifestations that the organization was organizing, as she has also collaborated with so many other organizations in the city throughout the years
Walter Bosque del Rio. Walter was a member of the acupuncture collective at the Lincoln Hospital Detox program that developed the now widely practiced National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) protocol. This important community work was prominently featured in the 2018 “People’s Detox” and 2020 documentary film ‘Dope is Death.’ He was one of the first American students to graduate from the Quebec Institute of Acupuncture in 1977, and the first Puerto Rican to be licensed to practice acupuncture in the state of California in 1979. This year marks 45 years that Walter has been bringing acupuncture and Tai Chi Chuan to underserved populations in New York City. Now retired, he continues to volunteer and participate in free community clinics and programs throughout Puerto Rico and New York City with SAPP collective (Salud y Acupuntura Para el Pueblo), New York Harm Reduction Educators (NYHRE), Friends of Brook Park, and Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB). In 2021, he became the Treasurer of the reinvigorated Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA), an organization that originated in 1979 to continue the more revolutionary work begun at Lincoln Detox after the radical origins were suppressed.
Daniel (Danny) Chervoni. Danny was one of the founders of Friends of Brook Park, and became the main land steward of this sacred place. He born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1956 and moved to Mott Haven in the mid-1960s, where he grew up playing in the rivers, backyards, and playgrounds of Mott Haven.
His mother worked at Harlem Hospital and owned a grocery store on 141st Street and his father was a super and worked at a hotel in Manhattan. His parents were both from Puerto Rico, and he had ten brothers and sisters.
When Danny was growing up, the South Bronx was burning and was the poorest congressional district in the whole country. He dropped out of school in 11th grade, served in the Marines for three years, and became involved with the drug trade when he came back to Mott Haven, as did so many young people in this community as jobs were scarce and survival was rough. He was imprisoned several times and struggled with heroin addiction until he got sober in 1993. After getting sober, Danny’s life and legacy became one of service and love for the Mott Haven community.
His love for the Earth Mother (Atabey) led him to work tirelessly in Brook Park every day to ensure the community had a safe, beautiful, abundant land space to unite in. He was a DJ and his love for music was felt as he would often play tunes on loudspeakers, creating a joyful and festive vibe for the community to enjoy. Danny had 3 children, four grandchildren and lived with his wife Mary since 1990 just a few buildings away from the garden. For many years, he was the heart and soul of Brook Park, a community garden known for its educational and alternative to incarceration programs, urban farming, and indigenous ceremonies. Brook Park is also a beloved play space for the newest generation of Mott Haven children, who loved Danny’s stories about the old days. Danny was at Brook Park just about every day for nearly two decades – watering the plants, picking up trash, taking care of the cats, chickens and bees, guiding groups of volunteers or school children, or just sitting on the sidewalk chatting with his friends. He kept the garden safe for everybody who visited. In the years before he died, he saw Brook Park through a major construction project that included a new fence, water access, and – this was the most important thing for him – accessible paved paths so that more people could come into the garden. Danny was so beloved and special to our community and although he is no longer with us in the flesh we honor his spirit and legacy every single day, remembering all of his teachings and work and giving great gratitude for his life and friendship. Danny worked to feed the people and gave his life to making the community a safer, more loving place for all people to heal and feel welcome, to know that they are a divine and sacred part of creation and that all who have love in their heart are welcome beings of the earth and worthy of blessings and love.
Esperanza Martell. Esperanza Martell is a social justice activist, educator, organizer, and artist. Her work focuses on liberation and ending systemic oppression and capitalism, centering Mother Earth and indigenous healing practices to support community building and wellness. She is the co-founder of Casa Atabex Aché, a social justice non-profit that focused on the healing of women of color and was on the same block as Brook Park for many years, serving as the only healing organization led and organized by women of color for women of color here in the South Bronx in its time. Since the early ’70’s she has worked on various Social Justice issues (peace, political prisoners, education, housing, health, policing, environment, etc.,) with a focus on ending violence in the lives of women of color from a class, race, and gender perspective. She is a graduate of the Hunter College School of Social Work, where she also worked as an educator and advisor for many years before retiring. Esperanza is also a visual artist and makes beautiful ceramics honoring the African and Taíno-Arawak ancestors of her ancestral land, Boriken.
Victor Toro. Victor Toro is a beloved member of our community and has been an organizer and activist for most of his life. Originally from Chile, he was persecuted and tortured by the Pinochet regime for resisting their dictatorship. In Chile, he was a labor leader who helped found the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria) and later became a leading housing activist during the government in Popular Unity. Victor left Chile in 1977 and arrived in the South Bronx in 1984, when he and Nieves Ayress founded “Vamos a La Peña Del Bronx.”
