Darializa Chevalier will be Congress’ 1st Latina Muslim. Her conversion is a New York story.

In the late 1980s, Spanish Harlem became the center of New York’s Hispanic Muslim community, which coalesced around the Alianza Islámica, once the country’s largest Latino Muslim organization. Now, decades later, New York’s 13th congressional district — spanning Spanish Harlem, the Bronx and Upper Manhattan — is sending Darializa Avila Chevalier, the first Latina Muslim representative in the country’s history, to Congress.