Posted on August 25, 2010

Five Years After Katrina, New Orleans Sees Higher Percentage of Hispanics

Ylan Q. Mui, Washington Post, August 21, 2010

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the rebuilding of the Big Easy has created a new community of Latino immigrants in this famously insular city, redrawing racial lines in a town long defined by black and white.

The change began just weeks after one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, which decimated homes, upended lives and drove a chunk of New Orleans’s black population to Baton Rouge, Houston and other places.

Although the overall number of Latinos isn’t huge, the population continues to grow and has had an outsize impact on the culture of this proudly eccentric city and on how people here view their home town. {snip}

The emergence of Latinos in the emotionally and politically charged aftermath of the storm sparked outcries from displaced residents who felt their jobs and their status in the city were being challenged. In one infamous news conference, Mayor C. Ray Nagin pledged to return New Orleans to a “chocolate city” after previously asking what he could do to keep the city from being “overrun by Mexican workers.” A documentary released last week by Latino performance artist Jose Torres-Tama titled “From Chocolate City to Enchilada Village” is reigniting the controversy on local talk radio.

Political and physical confrontations in the past couple of years have added to the distrust. One parish attempted to limit multi-family homes, a move that critics said targeted the Latino community. Another banned roving taco trucks, and state legislators considered requiring police to check immigration status after arrests. New Orleans police have reported repeated assaults on Latino workers, often targeted because they tend to carry cash, and have appointed one bilingual outreach officer to help combat the crimes.

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In the Lower Ninth

Nowhere is the shift more apparent than in the Lower Ninth Ward, a low-income neighborhood that suffered some of the worst flooding in the city. Of the roughly 5,000 residents who used to live here–almost all of whom were black–only a quarter have returned, according to an analysis by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

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From his makeshift seat, Williams surveyed the remains of the Lower Ninth. The once bustling convenience store across the street that became famous for its cheeky slogan–“You Can’t Beat Wagner’s Meat!”–is abandoned and dark. The house next door has been torn down, an empty lot of overgrown weeds in its place. The public bus doesn’t stop here anymore.

One of the few signs of life is a taco truck in his parking lot. Latino workers in paint-spattered jeans and work boots line up at the tiny window every day for fresh gorditas, tacos and burritos.

In what has become a near-daily ritual, Marco Topete, 28, pulled up to the taco truck in his black sport-utility vehicle. Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, he drove from Houston to New Orleans with about 30 other construction workers. There were no houses or hotels to stay in, so he slept under an interstate overpass with other Latino workers in what became known as Bridge City. Now he is laying concrete for the avant garde homes being built in the Lower Ninth by a nonprofit funded by Brad Pitt. So far, 50 of the planned 150 have been completed, and a spokeswoman said another 25 are expected before the end of the year. Meanwhile, Topete has settled in the more affluent neighborhood of Lakeview and three months ago brought his 18-year-old brother, Rogelio, to the city to work and go to school.

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According to census data analyzed by the New Orleans data center, the percentage of Hispanics in the New Orleans area jumped from 4.4 percent in 2000 to 6.6 percent last year. Advocacy groups put the figure at closer to 10 percent or more as many workers, fearful of interacting with the government, avoid being counted. The percentage of blacks fell from 37.1 percent to 34.5 percent, with the decline more pronounced in the city, where African Americans have long been the majority.

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On radio station WBOK, program director Gerod Stevens fields calls daily from black listeners angry because they feel Latinos have depressed their wages and snatched up their jobs. They are frustrated that the Lower Ninth Ward has yet to be rebuilt like neighborhoods populated by wealthier white residents.

The racial divide

There have been some attempts to bridge the divide. Latino advocacy groups have been guests on Stevens’s show. Soriano said blacks and Latinos share many of the same concerns post-Katrina, including employers who refuse to pay them after the work has been done.

“Here in the South, no matter if you are Latino or African American. You are a person of color,” he said. “There are a lot of people who don’t think you have rights.”

But Stevens said many blacks have rejected the idea, feeling that Latinos want to piggyback on the gains blacks have made after hundreds of years of discrimination.

“Who has fought all of the civil rights, human rights battles since Day One? It’s been us,” said one angry caller, Edward Parker, 66.

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