The far-left Democrat nominee for New York’s 13th congressional district is the co-founder of an organization that claims to fight for the “total eradication of Western civilization.”
Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old socialist backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) in Tuesday night’s Democrat primary.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, celebrates with Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier during an election night watch party Tuesday, June 23, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Avila Chevalier is a 2016 graduate of Columbia University, where she co-founded the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a group that led the charge in the tent encampment protests on the school’s campus in 2024.
While Meta removed CUAD’s Instagram account in April 2025, screenshots captured before the page was taken down show extremist leftist language:
“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South,” the group stated. “Our Intifada is an internationalist one — we are fighting for nothing less than the liberation of all people. We reject every genocidal, eugenicist regime that seeks to undermine the personhood of the colonized.”
The CUAD statement continued on to say that they are awaiting “instruction from militants in the Global South” in order to fight against “the imperialist world order.”
Other messages championed by Avila Chevalier include “all deportations are wrong,” with her telling Vox Media’s Astead Herndon during a podcast interview that it would be “discriminatory” to deport even illegal migrants who are convicted of the most violent crimes.
She has also called the United States an “effing disgrace.”
Espaillat’s district is an area that covers Upper Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx — and hasn’t elected a Republican since 2010. It will likely be represented by Avila Chevalier in the 120th Congress.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.