After the brass band packed up its instruments, Sergio Solano and two other food delivery workers walked on a white bicycle to an overpass within sight of the United Nations headquarters.
A workmate, or compañero, as they call each other, meaning “partner,” he had died less than two weeks earlier, that same September, in another bicycle accident on the streets of Manhattan. Food delivery has turned out to be a deadly occupation for many of them. Cycling at all hours, they get hit by cars, run the constant risk of accidents and falling prey to crime.
The spray-painted bicycle paid homage to Félix Patricio Teófilo, a Mexican immigrant who, like them, made a living by pedaling to deliver food. They chained him to the metal railing near the intersection of 47th Street and First Avenue, where he met his end.
With that solemn march in the drizzle, Mr. Solano, 39 years old, was adjourning an evening of mourning, fulfilling what he considered a mission: to illuminate in death lives relegated to the shadows.
“We never thought we would be holding vigils,” Solano said. “That was never our goal.”
Just over three years ago, Mr. Solano and relatives who are also delivery workers started “El Diario de Los Deliveryboys en La Gran Manzana,” which translates to “The Diary of Big Apple Delivery Drivers,” a Facebook page with both practical and informative goals.
The page would serve as an online support network, a space to warn of bicycle thefts, traffic accidents and discriminatory encounters reported by Spanish-speaking immigrants braving the urban frenzy to satisfy a New Yorker’s craving for takeout.
Along the way, he would recount the twists and turns of the job.
Soon after the page was up and running, it became clear to Mr. Solano that the project would tell a bigger story: Comrades regularly die on the job.
More than 40 people have died since the page went live in late 2020, according to Solano’s latest count.
In Mr. Patricio’s case, he hit his head on a sidewalk without a helmet in a solitary accident.
Food delivery workers were briefly celebrated in New York as the Covid-19 pandemic forced living at home and their services became essential.
Delivery apps offered sustainable income to those who had been laid off from their jobs or had their hours reduced, and to those whose immigration status made it difficult to obtain government aid.
As the pandemic progressed, the dangers of the most in-demand job became apparent. Activists formed unions and pushed for better pay and protections, an effort that continued into 2023. Under pressure, the city set a higher minimum wage for app delivery workers, starting at about $18 a day. now in October.
However, the risk for many workers went beyond wages. On the Deliveryboys page, a stream of photos bears the names and faces of the fallen.
Most of them are immigrants from Mexico or Guatemala who are part of an estimated 65,000 food delivery workers in New York City.
The job has become one of the deadliest.
HAS City report released November 2022 said the death rate among food delivery workers who don’t use cars was 36 deaths per 100,000 workers from January 2021 to June 2022. That rate exceeded that of construction workers (seven deaths per 100,000 ), which was historically the highest rate in the deadliest sector.
Funerals, wakes, death anniversaries and requiems were organised, fundraised and digitally inscribed in the community’s memory by the diary of the same name.
Many have died in road accidents while at work. Some of the deaths are not work-related. Others, like Francisco Villalva, were murdered.
In March 2021, an assailant chasing Mr. Villalva’s bicycle shot him in a park near 108th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. Mr. Villalva, from Xalpatlahuac, Guerrero, in southwestern Mexico, was 29 years old.
Two days later, the page live streaming video from the scene of the murder, asking others to support the family. The relatives who appeared in the video spoke both Spanish and Nahuatl, an indigenous language spoken in parts of Mexico. (The video has more than 132,000 views to date.) They also called for justice.
“Unfortunately, another comrade lost his life doing this work,” César Solano, Mr. Solano’s nephew and administrator of the page, said in Spanish, recounting the news with the cadence of a television journalist.
The number of followers of the Deliveryboys page has grown from hundreds to thousands, giving the platform some mobilizing power.
“For almost a month we protested,” Sergio Solano said. “We had vigils after vigils after vigils. People came offering to donate food or provide live music. Every day we did something, tons of people came.
Mr. Villalva’s death had galvanized the community. Companions they suspended delivery apps to attend events. A Catholic priest was brought in to lead the prayers. Family and friends organized the food. Others took the tools.
One group wrote to Mr. Villalva his corridora Mexican folk ballad, chronicling his journey to New York until its unnerving ending.
The killer, identified as Douglas Young, was captured and eventually convicted of murder. In April, Mr. Young, a 41-year-old man from Queens, was sentenced to serve 41 years to life in prison in state prison.
Since Mr. Villalva’s death, the page has helped ensure that each fallen comrade is given a memento — a practice that has become almost ritualistic, marking farewells to police officers killed in the line of duty.
Loved ones bear the brunt of the organization, Sergio Solano said, but the page, which has 51,000 followers, brings people out.
At Mr. Patricio’s wake, César Solano, 22 years old, they live-streamed the band’s clipped sidewalk performance. Police officers who filed a noise complaint gave them 10 minutes to play their tribute.
Under a makeshift canopy, dozens of unhusked pork tamales sipped atole de piña (a pineapple-flavored corn drink) and drank steaming pozole from fragile foam bowls, honoring every aching note: a popular interpretation of Chopin’s “Marche Funèbre” and traditional Mexican funeral songs like “Te vas ángel mío” (“You’re leaving my angel”).
Mr. Patricio’s sister, Jovita Patricio, hid her face in a friend’s chest. A tear rolled down her red cheek. Behind her, candlelight caressed the portrait of her brother, surrounded by flowers. He was her only relative in New York.
The video stream of the band’s performance attracted thousands of views. One of the musicians, Edgar Cano, had at one point worked with Mr. Patricio at a restaurant, and both were from the same area of Guerrero.
“We’ll never know. Another friend may come by today or tomorrow,” Mr. Cano said in Spanish, his sombrero casting a shadow over his eyes.
Some find the page’s exhaustive posts invasive.
But Sergio Solano said the page’s focus and tributes honor fallen delivery workers with “a truly final farewell” and give loved ones a chance to mourn from afar. “If they loved and adored him in his homeland, let’s show that he was loved and adored here too,” he said in Spanish.
In some cases, the page shows live video of the arrival of a comrade’s body in his pueblo. The return of Mr. Villalva, for example, was shown in a live stream.
Last summer, when Eduardo Valencia, 28, was killed in an accident while he was working, his story also became the focus of the Deliveryboys page.
Mr. Valencia had come to the city from Guerrero as a teenager, said his mother, Guadalupe Nepomuceno. His dream was to save enough to carve out a comfortable life in his hometown, she said.
“He wanted to build his house, go back to Mexico and never go back to New York,” Ms. Nepomuceno said in Spanish.
But Mr. Valencia’s homecoming will take place inside a coffin.
Ms. Nepomuceno, who lives in New York City, was unable to attend her son’s burial, giving her final goodbyes from a small digital screen more than 2,000 miles away.
These efforts serve as recognition for people who are often overlooked, Sergio Solano said.
“In the eyes of society, they don’t exist,” he said. “They start to exist when you start giving them visibility.”
As city life resumes its prepandemic pace, Solano added, food delivery workers have taken a backseat.
Planting a “ghost bicycle,” as cyclist memorials are called, in a companion’s place death is a way of telling the contribution of the delivery boys and the final price that some pay.
With Mr. Patricio’s memorial secured, Mr. Solano and two companions he donated helmets, mounted bicycles and crept toward the intersection. They looked in both directions to spot passing cars.
It was seven forty on a Monday evening. It’s time to go to work.
