Interrupt handling for a UART on PIC32 with C32 v2.00 compiler
Your example code doesn't show any of the initialization for the UART.

Are you enabling the receive interrupt for the UART?  You need to do something like this:

#define BAUDRATE1       (115200)     // the desired BaudRate
#define BRATE1    (FPB/4/BAUDRATE1) 
#define UART1_CONFIG1   UART_EN|UART_BRGH_FOUR      // defaults to 8,N,1
#define UART1_CONFIG2   UART_RX_ENABLE|UART_TX_ENABLE|UART_INT_RX_CHAR              // only RX interrupts

void ConfigureUart1(void)
{
    OpenUART1(UART1_CONFIG1, UART1_CONFIG2, BRATE1); // approx 115200 baud
}


where FPB is defined as your peripheral bus frequency, e.g. 10000000L for 10 MHz.

Then in main or elsewhere:

ConfigureUart1();
INTEnableSystemMultiVectoredInt();         
INTEnableInterrupts();