Neuva Yorkers

Before this weekend, I had no real idea where "El Barrio" was. I assumed it was somewhere in the Bronx, somewhere I would trek to one day in order to find the perfect tortillas. I got an invitation to go on a walking tour of said neighborhood as part of the kickoff day for National Hispanic Heritage Month (which starts Sept. 15) so I went this weekend, hoping to reduce my ignorance of New York's foremost Latino neighborhood.

The meeting point for the tour was 104th Street and Fifth Avenue, so that ruled out the Bronx. The area of Spanish Harlem known as El Barrio, which directly translates from Spanish to "the neighborhood," actually exists within the same 30 horizontal blocks that, in my mind, make up a Columbia students' familiar territory: 96th to 125th streets. Directly across Central Park and parallel to our campus exists a concentrated East side collection of Hispanic daily life and culture, an area that escapes titles like "Little Mexico" (which it isn't) and needs more definition than "East Harlem." While the Puerto Rican and Dominican influence might be the most evident in the area, various Latin American influences co-exist throughout the neighborhood, from within bakeries-where the sweets don't stick to only one country of origin-to along the streets, where the contemporary artist studios create tributes to several national histories.

I probably wouldn't have experienced much if I had actually taken the whole walking tour, which had already left by the time I got to 104th Street. After taking a cab to meet the tour, getting out because I had only six dollars in cash, and rushing across the park to reach the group, I arrived to the empty southwest corner of 104th Street and Fifth Avenue, where I had the park to my right and some museum on my left. Beyond my immediate surroundings and down the street, I could see an above-ground subway and a park, so I wandered down sans guide.

Moments away from the luscious greens of Central Park and the clean whites of museum fronts, I stepped into a neighborhood. A real, communal kids-play-outside and neighbors-know-each-other neighborhood, the kind we're not used to associating with Park, Madison, and Lexington avenues. Yet, on these particular city blocks, snuggled between the uptight structures of the Upper East Side and the more open and communal Harlem, boys strike each other out on the same asphalt court where others try to make their jump shots, all while their sisters do homework on a nearby bench. Old friends congregate around coolers of lemonade and trays of arroz con pollo in mini-gardens, and local pharmacists sell everything from "holy soap" to Catholic trinkets to herbs that scare away the dead.

From almost any corner, what stands out beyond any single nationality or cultural association is the way in which the various Latino influences have merged with the New York City lots, streets, and sense of modernity to create an atypical sub-section of the city. Unlike Chinatown or Little Italy, El Barrio does not strive on an attachment to its roots, nor has it completely given them up for a commercialized American equivalent. The culmination of its symbiotic influences isn't hard to see-on 105th Street, the music coming from the mini-garden that will host a poetry reading later in the day alternates from the classic salsa songs of Puerto Rico to the ballads of the recent Latin pop-explosion artists like Marc Anthony. On the walls, murals tell the story of the artistic and social movements of Latinos within the United States, and a few blocks uptown, a mural painted in homage to Picasso's Guernica on 110th Street depicts Cubist bulls donning wifebeaters and Yankees hats.

After a while of wandering in and out of hushed convenience stores and booming block parties alone, I actually came across the walking tour group, and latched on. The tour guide told us of the local artists, of the recent African merchant migration, and offered his definition of the area. "This is a community, not a slum," he said. When the tour ended on 116th Street, I was able to get back home effortlessly, charmed at how close this neighborhood was to ours-and by what a neighborhood it really felt like.

This free walking tour is being offered every Saturday, at 3 p.m., starting from the southwest corner of 104th Street and Fifth Avenue until Oct. 15. If you're interested, show up a half-an-hour late and just go towards the local park and the above-ground subway. When you run into the group a while later, you might have missed the guide's introduction, but you'll have given yourself a pretty good one already.

Fernanda Diaz is a Columbia College sophomore. The Sixth Borough runs alternate Tuesdays.