For the month of October, The Outsider’s Gallery presents a collaborative exhibition by a collection of creatives from the Save Latin Village campaign.
Save Latin Village on Resistance: Here to stay. Here to fight.
We are community organisers from the Latin Village in Seven Sisters, Tottenham, also known as “El Pueblito Paisa”, an indoor market that has been a place of pride and solace for Latin Americans in London.
We are grateful to be partnering with VFD for this display as part of ‘Hispanic Heritage Month’, a contentious month that coincides with Christopher Colombus and European colonizers’ conquest and subsequent destruction of the territories today understood as Latin America. As queer folk and as part of a community that includes Black, Brown, Indigenous and migrant people, we are reframing this month to honour the resistance of our ancestors. This month is also Indigenous People’s Day and Black History Month in which we see our fight connected to and inspired by the wider diaspora. We want to show what it has taken us to get here and why we are here to stay.
Latinx people are underrepresented in the UK. Without clear census data, Latin Americans in the UK rely on limited information about our community, mainly available from the only large scale ethnographic studies “No Longer Invisible” (2011) and “Towards Visibility” (2016) produced by Queen Mary University of London. Even with clear evidence of being one of London’s fastest growing non-UK born populations, the shortcomings of official government data and the lack of research on the experiences of Latin American migrants has led to our continuous invisibility. This is particularly the case for us who are Black, Indigenous and/or queer, who face prejudice within our own communities.
The reality is much more inspiring. With migration waves beginning in the 1970s and accelerating through the 2000s, we have carved out our own spaces, to act as our ‘homes away from home’ in areas such as Elephant & Castle and Seven Sisters - which host over half of all of the UK's Latin American population. Our presence has often taken the shape of organisations ‘led for and by’ Latin Americans, which seek to provide the adequate services and spaces necessary for the subsistence of our community. One such space has been the Latin Village. Yet this has not been without its hurdles.
For Save Latin Village and the Wards Corner community of Seven Sisters, all of our years of resistance have led us to important milestones in 2021 and 2022. Since pushing out the developer from the market site in August 2021, we have been working towards implementing a model of democratic ownership through our Wards Corner Community Benefit Society (CBS) and its proposed Community Plan. The Plan - which seeks to change the face of regeneration in London by proposing a bottom-up form of urban development - entails the refurbishment of the celebrated Seven Sisters Indoor Market, alongside the historic building of Wards Corner. The aim is to create a new cultural and social hub for everyone in Tottenham and the wider community; a much needed space following the permanent closure of the Latin Village in March 2020.
When delivered, the Wards Corner Community Plan will set a new precedent in what has already been a titanic fight against gentrification. Not only have we relinquished the power of developers by stopping the demolition of our Seven Sisters Market, but we are demonstrating the potential of community-led development. And we could not do it without our campaigners, allies and a multitude of organisations and campaigns with similar goals, both part of the Latinx identity and other migrant-led efforts - especially around Hackney and Haringey.
At every stage, success has been driven by each and every Black, Brown, Indigenous and migrant person in our community coming together and fueling our efforts with radical joy and love, elements embedded in the spirit of our campaign. This window display is a celebration of what we have achieved together and what is possible. We have shown that we are here to stay, and our resistance is a testament to our collective power.
For more information on Save Latin Village, please follow @savelatinvillage on Instagram, @LatinVillageUK on Twitter, or visit www.savelatinvillage.org.uk. To find out more about our Community Plan visit www.wardscorner.org/the-plan
Text - written by Maria and Jacobo
Photography credits -
Karla Lizethe Hunter is a British Guatemalan photographer based in East London - @karla.lizethephoto
Mariochukwu (‘Mario’) Washington-Ihieme (pronouns she/her) is a self-taught freelance photographer from London. Her interests surround documenting London culture and its intersections with West African and Afro-Caribbean culture.
Mario is also a regular contributor to Shado mag, a multimedia platform driving change at the intersection of arts, activism and academia. Her work has also been featured in The Guardian, Open House London, and a range of other publications, which you can see a list on the features page. - @maz_o
