Netflix's new drama, Siempre Bruja, highlights a black witch

While her friend is comatose in a hospital bed, Carmen Eguiluz orders the young woman to wake up, her voice louder with each order. With her eyes closed and her face tight, Carmen stands up to the ceiling, hovering in the air until her mantra awakens her friend. The other visitors in the room look in stunned silence: they have never witnessed such a scene before. And while the viewers of the new Netflix series Siempre Bruja (Always a witch) have surely seen a lot of cinematic magic, watching a black woman play maybe a new experience for them too.

Witchcraft is a good thing that Hollywood keeps coming back to, whether for movies or TV shows. Last month, the news was announced that Anne Hathaway would play a major role in a remake of the The witches. The fall TV season saw the debut of The CW Charm restart and Netflix The icy adventures of Sabrina. On the FX American horror storySarah Paulson and her coven came back to fight the Antichrist apocalypse. With the exception of CharmHowever, none of these vehicles represent women of color at the front of the line.

With Dago García (Pedro el escamoso, El Paseo) as executive producer, Siempre Bruja stands out to center and humanize a black witch. Inspired by Isidora Chacón 2015 novel Yo, Bruja, the series begins in Cartagena (Colombia) in the seventeenth century, while Carmen (Angely Gaviria), a slave, went to the city at the present time to avoid being burned for practicing magic. The hoverboards, mobile phones and cars of the modern world baffle her, but she does not plan to stay long.

The 19-year-old witch is in 2019 in Cartagena to fulfill a promise made to Aldemar (Luis Fernando Hoyos), the sorcerer who gave him the spell. In exchange for helping her escape in the future, she agreed to hand over an enchanted stone to a witch working as a university professor. Although Carmen has completed her work, the professor disappears before performing the ritual that will return her in 1646. Despite the threat to her life, Carmen is eager to return to save her boyfriend Cristóbal (Lenard Vanderaa), shot by his father for trying to prevent his possible execution. Cristóbal's parents own Carmen and her mother accused the slave woman of bewitching her.

It is a complicated beginning for a fantasy and telenovela equal parts series. But Siempre Bruja is unique in that the black witch does not sow discord or simply does not exist in the margins; she is the main attraction – the most powerful witch of a long line. Actress Angely Gaviria cleverly plays the role of Carmen and is surrounded by a competent cast of supportive characters who, for the most part, are not threatened by her practice of brujeria. Filmed in lush places in Colombia, Siempre Bruja Hollywood executives are often limited, magic is alienating and witchcraft clashes with other religious traditions.

Siempre Bruja's Carmen moves away from representations of black witches in Hollywood

Carmen Eguiluz is one of the most complicated black witches to decorate the screen. She is a young woman who always gets used to her powers, but she is also great. She has a strong sense of integrity but sometimes intervenes in other people's lives in ways that aggravate their problems. In short, Carmen is perhaps a powerful witch, but she remains a human being. Most Hollywood black witches that preceded her, however, have not been so three-dimensional. They are either on the sidelines, helping white witches to fulfill their destiny, or devilish voodoo queens coming directly from the central cast.

Dinah Stevens (Adina Porter), a voodoo priestess on American horror story: Apocalypse is an example of this trope. Naughty and interested, she is ready to obey the Antichrist, despite her mission to destroy the world. Although Prudence Night (Tati Gabrielle) of the Sabrina's icy adventures is much more complex than Dinah, she spends several episodes to be a naughty girl for hell. And neither Prudence nor Dinah are as powerful as the white woman she challenges.

Speaking about the (bad) portrayal of black witches in popular culture in 2017, vulture critics, Angelica Jade Bastién, wrote: "The absence of powerful black witches in movies and on television is the symptom of a larger problem that has existed in America since the beginning: the fear of autonomy and the feats of black women. "

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Siempre Bruja modifies this pattern by making Carmen Eguiluz extraordinary but imperfect. It's exciting to see her exert her power by literally scary the piss of the ex-toxic of her friend or by levitating in a scene reminiscent of 1996. The job. Rochelle, the black witch of this clbadic, needs the levitation of her friends, but Carmen does it alone – just sleeping. In addition to The jobyou will see 1992 indexes Like water for chocolate during a lunch scene and 2006 The lake house like the letters are exchanged in Siempre Bruja.

Witchcraft is different through a non-white and non-American lens

Produced by Colombian TV Caracol and created by Ana María Parra (Cuando Vivas Conmigo, La Nocturna) Siempre Bruja differs from American white productions on witchcraft in that most characters embrace Carmen's magical abilities. They are not put off because she is a witch. The reverse occurs in shows like Sabrina's icy adventures, about a teenage girl of the same name. When Sabrina's friends discover that she is practicing magic, they are disturbed by her ties to occultism and do not know how to behave with her. Her boyfriend, Harvey, has a hard time having a witch girlfriend and the magic finally separates the couple.

Compare Harvey's discomfort with witchcraft to the way Galvin, an Afro-Latino scientist of Charm restarts, reacts when he discovers that his girlfriend Macy is a witch. Because his culture has already exposed him to the brujeria – family members told him about occultism – Galvin learns the news from Macy's. the Siempre Bruja the characters have similar reactions to the discovery of Carmen's powers.

"Carmen, are we going to do a ritual?" Asks a friend as she prepares to do it. When Carmen asks her friends if they are afraid to continue the ceremony, they do not hesitate to do so because they were raised in a culture where the belief in the inexplicable is not foreign to them.

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Although not all characters believe in God – any of them is a declared atheist – they live in a country of Latin America strongly influenced by Roman Catholic beliefs, including belief in miracles. As a result, every character, even unbelievers, kneels before the Virgin of Candelaria at a party in her honor and begs her to help. This Catholicism is mixed with the traditions of Africans reduced to slavery and introduced into the Americas. The Virgin of Candelaria is dark-skinned and her festival takes place in a black neighborhood where dancers perform a traditional West African choreography in tribute to her. It is the neighborhood where Carmen was born and where her ancestors were persecuted for their darkness and their magical abilities.

But Christianity and magic are not opposing forces for Carmen. She carries a picture of the Virgin with her and prays in front of her, as her friends do. This type of syncretism, familiar to many Christians of color, appears far too little in the Hollywood traditions of witchcraft. The magic seems inevitably different when it is shown through a lens that is neither white nor American.

Angely Gaviria and the cast distribution are the highlights of this show

Angely Gaviria is by far the main reason to look Siempre Bruja. Last seen in boxing biopic Pambelé, about the Colombian fighter Antonio Cervantes, Gaviria shines on the screen. Her Carmen is vulnerable, optimistic, stubborn and imperfect. As she enters her new twenty-first century environment, wonder and sometimes fear are palpable to her. But when a spell that goes awry reveals Carmen's pbadive-aggressive nature, Gaviria also plays that aspect of the character.

As Kathia Woods of Remezcla put it, "One of the reasons we place Carmen is because of Angely's performance."

Gaviria is joined by a group with whom she has a real chemistry. Jhony Ki (Dylan Fuentes) with wild eyes appears as the most charismatic character of the group. Fuentes offers comic relief in his role as a friend of Carmen, but it also shows a range of emotions – ranging from anguish to regret to anguish. As a sorcerer Aldemar, Luis Fernando Hoyos is a humorous mix of camp and venom. In contrast, Esteban (Sebastián Eslava), Carmen's teacher, is quieter but, through stealthy looks and unobtrusive worry, reveals that he knows more than he's saying about the young witch.

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The troupe's performance is enhanced by a beautiful setting and a thrilling musical soundtrack (featuring artists such as Shari Short and Profetas) that make Siempre Bruja all the more vivid. Beautifully shot in Bogotá, Cartagena and Honda, Colombia, it is hard not to feel transported into the country as Carmen dives into blue waters, plunges into the green Caribbean and strolls through Spanish colonial architecture. It's a series that appeals to the senses, whether it is for Carmen, who petals the dough, caresses her burnt feet, or mixes and matches the colorful prints of her 2019 wardrobe.

Siempre Bruja's defect is a misguided novel that compromises the power of Carmen

While Siempre Bruja offers a vision of witchcraft, rarely seen in the United States, Carmen's desire to revisit a time when she would be enslaved to scandalized viewers and critics. (But the show has its supporters also.) They argue that a novel between a slave woman and the son of a slave-slave romance a system largely rooted in the badual exploitation of black women. As a property of the Aranoa family, Carmen could have consented to a romance with any of its members. And the idea that she would like to return to the 1600s instead of enjoying her freedom in the 21st century might give the impression that slavery was not quite an insupportable institution.

Probably sensing that Carmen's relations would upset some of their audience, Siempra BrujaThe spectators strive to make Cristóbal a hero. He is ready to risk his life for Carmen and promises to release all the people his father holds in slavery. Cristóbal is not one of the these whitesinsists the series, but just, courageous and socially progressive, although she grew up in a family of slave aristocrats. It is framed in a way that skates dangerously close to the white savior.

Siempre Bruja likely could have avoided repression by completely removing the slave context of this novel. The relations between Carmen and Cristóbal also forget that slaves needed no catalyst other than slavery to fight – and many turned to popular magic to do so. The spiritual traditions of West Africa, called witchcraft by the European colonizers, played a vital role in Denmark. Vesey's 1822 rebellion was foiled in South Carolina, the Haitian Revolution and Cartagena itself. There, in 1620, five Africans enslaved, four women and a man, were accused of practicing "evil witchcraft". Siempre Bruja hinted at this story when Carmen visits a blackout during the Candela Festival and has visions of her persecuted ancestors, but the show does not go much further than that.

Juan Pablo Gutierrez / Netflix

Siempre Bruja also completely avoid the subject of race in the present. Carmen is mostly surrounded by white and half-breed Colombians in the 21st century. She and Daniel (Dubán Andrés Prado), the only black person in her contemporary circle, do not discuss their common racial heritage, and an indigenous man, Cancahuimacu, serves as a spiritual guide and nothing more. While Afro-Colombians have taken to the streets in recent years to fight against racism and demand equal rights in their country, Carmen's dark skin is never the source of tension in her largely white environment. 2019. If the show wins a second season, it should improve its management of the race.

But even if Siempre Bruja – like Carmen herself – is an imperfect show, he remains a game changer. He gave us the most sensational black witch on the screen. As TV shows and movies often marginalize black wizards or exclude them entirely, Siempre Bruja brave the spotlight on the magic of black girls. Hollywood has not yet produced such a convincing black witch, or as dominant as Carmen Eguiluz.