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Her mother, Virginia Sanchez, who features prominently in the book and the play, is a renowned santera, who instilled love and respect for their Taína-Lukumí-Boricua legacy, as well as a fascination with words.

But Haddon also brought out a number of less familiar artifacts and canvases, among them “The Family of the Gypsy Bullfighter,” a festive 1903 scene by the Basque painter Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, and the Catalan painter Ramón Casas i Carbó’s 1915-1916 “La Santera,” a near life-size study of a religious mendicant with a haunting gaze.

“Within the last two weeks, people are noticing all the violence from police and they are connecting the dots to Chrystul,” said Santera Matthews, a Chrystul Kizer Defense Committee organizer.

And even though I’m not supposed to wear them because a santera or santero hasn’t blessed them and I haven’t made ocha, her colorful elekes hang long around my neck.

She remembers something a santera told her nearly forty years ago, when she had decided to die: “Miss Celia, there’s a wet landscape in your palm.”