On the northern edge of Brooklyn lies Bushwick, the largest Latino community in the borough. Comprised primarily of Americans of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, the neighborhood has produced leaders like Nydia Velázquez, the first Latina elected to the United States Congress and actress and activist Rosie Perez.
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By the early 1970s, it became devastated under the federal policy of “benign neglect,” as well as the Nixon White House’s drug war, which flooded the neighborhood with heroin. By the late 1970s, arson had taken its toll, leaving Bushwick looking like a third world country. Yet, despite it all, the community persevered.
