Amantina Durán
María Amantina Durán immigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960s. She and her husband Natalio Durán planted roots in Williamsburg (“Los Sures”), Brooklyn, where they began attending Transfiguration Parish. She went on to become a community activist and a leader in the Fraternidad Jesús de Nazaret, a chapter of the international Lay Fraternity of Charles de Foucauld, which helps parishioners meet regularly outside of Mass and strengthen their faith in God and connection with the community. With two daughters in college, she studied English at Solidaridad Humana, a school on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Durán volunteered at the Nuestros Niños Day Care Center in Williamsburg for 20 years and became officially employed as an Educational Aide for 13 years. Her testimonios are documented in various archival resources, including a 1989 oral history recording by the Brooklyn Historical Society as part of its Hispanic Communities Documentation Project. In the early 90s, she organized the first event to feature Dominican folk music, food, and knitting at the central Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. She has also shared her experience on the New Yorkers for Parks Lots to Grow podcast and in Bargaining for Brooklyn: Community Organizations in the Entrepreneurial City (University of Chicago Press, 2007) by Nicole P. Marwell. Durán is a member of La Casita Verde community garden in Williamsburg and a founding member of Fundación Hijos de Loma Prieta, a Facebook page dedicated to the Loma Prieta community in Santiago, Dominican Republic. A proud wife and mother of five children and three grandchildren, Durán continues attending Mass at Transfiguration Parish and is involved in several charitable works in New York City and in her native country, for which she has received several City Council citations, proclamations, and awards.
