NEW ORLEANS
— Five years after Hurricane Katrina, the ongoing 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 within weeks of a storm that decimated homes and upended lives in one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
The number of black residents dropped as many left for Baton Rouge, La., Houston and other places.
Although the overall numbers of Latinos aren’t huge, they continue to grow and have had an outsized impact on the culture of this proudly eccentric city and on how people here view their hometown.
More than three-quarters of the 1.1 million residents in the New Orleans area were born in the state. Many locals still point to long-defunct businesses as landmarks. Recipes at some beloved restaurants haven’t changed in 40 years.
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 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.
Fitting in versus forcing out
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.
“When I arrived to this city, the city was destroyed. We rebuilt it,” said Dennis Soriano, a construction worker and organizer with the Congress of Day Laborers, a local advocacy group founded after Katrina hit the city Aug. 29, 2005. “Do you want us to go back?”
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.
On a recent afternoon, John Williams, 50, sat on an upside-down bucket inside the garage of the neighborhood auto-repair shop where he has worked for more than two decades. Business has been so slow after the storm that the shop scaled back to just fixing tires. Fifteen dollars for a patch, $10 for a plug, and a dollar for air. Some days, he can count the number of customers on one hand.
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 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 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 SUV. 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.
“Even to this day, a lot of people do not understand the idea of Hispanics,” Topete said. “They have to get used to the idea that we are here to stay.”
Latinos bypassed Big Easy before storm
Before Katrina, the growth of Latinos in the nation’s major cities had largely bypassed New Orleans. The area never saw the dramatic housing and construction bubble that attracted immigrants to other cities, said Steve Striffler, a professor of Latin American studies at the University of New Orleans.
Anecdotally, some are leaving as reconstruction of the city has slowed and the economic downturn has taken its toll. But other immigrants say they have put down roots and discovered the delights of overstuffed po’ boys, Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street.
On radio station WBOK, program director Gerod Stevens fields calls daily from black listeners angry because they think 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.
There have been some attempts to bridge the divide. Latino advocacy groups have been guests on Stevens’ 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.
