NYC’s new City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito is a boricua born and bred, and we have to admit it’s nice to have a Latina in one of the most powerful municipal positions there is.
She’s also being sued for witchcraft.
Gwen Goodwin, “who spectacularly lost the Democratic primary to Mark-Viverito in September,” happens to live in the very apartment building featured in the image uptop, which has been beautifully painted as part of the Los Muros Hablan program (which full disclosure, we’re in love with). The program was a pet project of Mark-Viverito, the first Puerto Rican woman on her Council, to bridge the gap between Puerto Rico and Spanish Harlem. Goodwin believes this was a “Caribbean curse.” According to NY Post:
“According to neighbors of Puerto Rican and other backgrounds, in the Caribbean culture, this constituted a curse and a death threat, as a swastika or a noose would symbolize typically to many Jews or African-Americans,” Goodwin alleges in a Manhattan Supreme Court suit she filed Friday.
[…]
“This intimated me and caused me fear. I’m a Christian. I don’t believe outside my religion, but strange things were happening,” Goodwin claimed.
Let it never be said that New York City politics aren’t a place for reasonable discourse.
The article also gives us this charming description of santería:
Many New York Puerto Ricans practice a hybrid religion called Santeria, which is based on Catholicism but includes voodoo-like ceremonies and animal sacrifices. East Harlem even boasts a specialty shop dedicated to the religion called Justo Botanica, at East 104th Street and Lexington Avenue.
I hate to break it to the Post, but there’s a botanica like, every ten blocks.
A Latina won an election and provided a beautiful art project to her community, which means she must do Puerto Rican Black Magic. A good start to the year.