CHURCH AND STATEHOOD

A new Puerto Rican political party puts faith before status.

- Coral Murphy Marcos

ON A WARM January evening, mayoral candidate Wanda Arzuaga López makes her way through Juncos, Puerto Rico, visiting a neighborhood of 1940s-style casitas and breadfruit trees sitting behind chain-link fences. Joined by her campaign director and four turquoise-shirted volunteers, Arzuaga López, an evangelical lay chaplain, goes door to door, warmly exclaiming, “¡Dios la bendiga! ¡Buenas tardes!” offering God’s blessings to residents.

The neighborhood, nestled within the lush greenery of Puerto Rico’s southeast, is plagued by acrid fumes from a nearby waste-disposal facility. Residents, most of them over 60, peer through their windows before coming outside. Questions like “Who are you?” quickly turn into another kind of dump, as people seize the opportunity to unload about Arzuaga López’s opponent, the government in San Juan, and the abandonment they felt after a succession of devastating natural disasters.

Arzuaga López is part of Proyecto Dignidad (PD), a booming new political party in Puerto Rico that plays up its alliance with both Catholic and evangelical churches, which have earned renewed goodwill by outpacing official emergency services in the wake of the island’s environmental, economic, and political crises. “I’ve always gotten involved with my ecclesiastical church,” she says. “We did it after the hurricanes and after the earthquakes.”