Stand up for Seven Sisters’ Latin Village

JUST outside Seven Sisters Tube station, hidden behind boarded-up shop fronts and an unprepossessing awning, is a little corner of South America in London. It’s known as the Latin Village at Ward’s Corner, and sadly its future is under threat.

Back in the day, you would often find me in the Pueblito Paisa Café on a Sunday morning, making goo-goo eyes at some young caballero over a plate of calentado antioqueño. And as if fond nostalgia for my single days wasn’t reason enough to root for the Latin Village (they should put up a plaque, really) it’s also a treasured and irreplaceable local community asset.

As anyone familiar with regeneration sagas will appreciate, the planning law here is almost as complicated as the local council politics. Can the current administration back out of a development deal made by their predecessors in 2007? Will the developers retain the market’s character? Might stallholders be allowed to manage the lease?

Still, for those who rely on the Latin Village for their livelihoods, supporting the Wards Corner Community

Plan crowd-funding campaign is a way forward. They hope to raise enough money to put together a community-led plan for redevelopment. If the market is to be saved, it will only be with the interests of retailers at its heart. As they say there, se puede! (yes, we can!).