Guest Column
The Latinization of the New New Orleans
By Roberto Lovato
While New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin trumpets the return
of lights, power and tourists to the French Quarter, Ruben Lopez of Fresno,
Calif., and his roommate Myron Moran, a Guatemalan immigrant, rest in the
pitch-black room of an abandoned hotel on Canal Street. They've just
finished another sultry 14-hour day rebuilding the Big Easy.
"The rats here are the size of rabbits," says Moran, whose teeth glow white
in the dark as he describes his temporary home. "We're paying $60 a night to
this guy Eddie for a room with no AC, no lights, no electricity, no water
and a bed that stinks," says Lopez, a California native who drove with his
father to New Orleans after hearing about construction and clean-up work at
a job fair in Fresno.
Lopez and Moran are part of a little-understood army of "aliens" (or, among
the more politically correct, "out-of-state workers") drawn to the new New
Orleans, a city on the verge of a radical Latinization that is transforming
other urban landscapes in the country.
"How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?" Mayor
Nagin asked at a meeting with local business leaders last week. The fact
that Moran, an almond-eyed, Mayan-faced, 4-foot-2-inch undocumented
immigrant from Guatemala, and Lopez, a shaven-headed, tattooed,
6-foot-3-inch U.S. citizen and former Chicano gang member are described as
"Mexicans" reflects a profound lack of understanding in this city about its
new population. U.S.-born and foreign-born workers are coming to the Gulf
Coast from the Southwest, Florida, the Carolinas, Mexico and Latin America,
swelling the numbers of Hispanics in Louisiana beyond the mere 3 percent
recorded in the 2001 U.S. Census.
Malik Rahim, a former city council candidate and head of Common Ground, a
multi-ethnic advocacy group in the Algiers neighborhood, calls the mayor's
remarks "the kind of scapegoating that only worsens an already difficult
situation." Rahim, a former Black Panther, says he and other community
activists are challenged enough by police brutality, Louisiana's historic
racism and natural disaster. City leaders and the news media lack the
resources and cultural knowledge to deal with the latest influx of workers
to New Orleans, which historically has seen several waves of migrant workers
brought in by the French, Spanish and British empires.
Lopez, Moran and thousands of other immigrant and U.S.-born Latinos are
cleaning debris, putting up dry wall and restoring the ornate iron balconies
of historic buildings on Canal Street and other streets in the French
Quarter. Local Hondurans, who comprise the city's largest Latino population,
report being the object of the anger from blacks and whites, who fear losing
their livelihoods to low-wage Latino workers. Zapotec-speaking Oaxacan
Indians walk the streets of New Orleans and elsewhere throughout Louisiana
and Mississippi after being threatened with deportation and kicked off local
military bases, where they worked for local contractors without getting
paid.
Latinos in the Gulf region are being racially profiled by local and federal
authorities, says Victoria Cintra of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights
Alliance, one of the only organizations addressing Latino immigrant concerns
in the region. Cintra believes the Bush administration's suspension of the
Davis Bacon Act, which requires payment of prevailing wages, along with its
temporary removal of documentation requirements on I-9 forms has strained
race relations by lowering wages and fostering competition between groups.
"The Bush administration is inviting Latino workers to New Orleans and the
south without creating conditions to protect them," says Cintra, who
recently provided a tent to more than a dozen unpaid Oaxacan worker in New
Orleans. "These workers are extremely vulnerable."
Walking down Bourbon Street in search of cheap eats, Lopez and Moran feel
the effects of their vulnerable position in the heart of the Big Easy's
tourist economy. "I walked up and asked this white guy if he knew where we
could get some food," Lopez says, "and he said, 'I don't know a place where
you can eat, wetback.' I almost hit him. But I held back because it isn't
going to do anything. There's lots of racism here: white people, black
people, even some Latinos."
Lopez says his current boss, who is black, "treats me really good," adding
that a previous local contractor still owes him $1,200 for house gutting and
debris cleaning work.
Having survived wars, hurricanes, earthquakes and poverty in Guatemala,
Moran keeps his smile and sense of mission. In indigenous-inflected
Guatemalan Spanish, Moran, who works long hours despite a leg injury from a
previous job, has a message for his new neighbors: "I came to work. I came
to make money so I can feed my children," he says. "These people don't know
what I'm made of -- but they will."
PNS and HispanicVista.com contributor Roberto Lovato (robvato63@yahoo.com)
is a New York-based writer.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed by HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com) without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)