Five years after Katrina, New Orleans sees higher percentage of Hispanics

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 21, 2010


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Hispanic workers hang out in the Ninth Ward. While the overall numbers of Hispanics in the city aren't huge, they continue to grow and have had an outsize impact on the culture of this proudly eccentric city. For more photos, go to washingtonpost.com/nation. (Photos By Linda Davidson/the Washington Post)

John Williams works at a tire store in the Lower Ninth Ward, where business has slowed to a crawl since Katrina. A taco truck now operates out of the store's parking lot. (Photos By Linda Davidson/the Washington Post)

With Latino workers helping rebuild New Orleans since the storm, the Hispanic population has grown. Meanwhile, the city's black population has decreased. (Linda Davidson - Twp)

Gloria Suazo, 47, watches her nephew at an apartment she shares with a co-worker in Metairie, La. They run a taco stand in the Lower Ninth Ward. Suazo came to the city about a year before Katrina. (Linda Davidson - Twp)



Katrina: Five Years Later

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.

Before Katrina, the growth of Hispanics 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 now 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 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.

At the tire repair shop, Williams said he understands the animosity. But he doesn't blame Latinos for going after jobs when others sat back and waited to see what would happen, he said.

"They even work holidays. When you know an American wanna work on Christmas?" Williams said. "I ain't gonna work on Christmas."

Williams doesn't talk much to the two Honduran women who work the taco truck. They don't speak much English, and he speaks zero Spanish. He doesn't know that Gloria Suazo, 47, arrived in New Orleans about a year before Katrina. Or that Pati Flores, 22, spent a month walking and a riding a bus to get from Honduras to New Orleans two years ago. Flores met her husband working at the taco truck and now is three months pregnant.

They don't know that Williams is still trying to get back on his feet after the storm, recently moving with his wife into an apartment nearly an hour away by bus. He doesn't have a car. His work boots are full of holes.

"I've tightened my belt so much it's falling apart," Williams is fond of saying.

Yet there is symbiosis. The taco truck pays Williams's business $130 per week for the covered space, electricity, water and use of his bathroom. When he orders a quesadilla for lunch, they give it to him for free.

And when a car pulls into the parking lot, all three look to see whose customer it might be.

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