WRITING FROM NEW ORLEANS — Four years after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin tried to endear himself to black voters by playing to their fears that they were about to be "overrun by Mexican workers," things have and haven't changed.
Mexican and other Latin American migrants who came to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina didn't overwhelm the city. But, at roughly 15% of the population -- up from 3% pre-Katrina -- they aren't going away either, and New Orleans is grappling with their presence as part of a larger post-disaster demographic shift.
On the street, you hear stories about black criminals robbing Latino day laborers, who are not-so-affectionately referred to as "walking ATMs." There also seems to be plenty of lingering resentment over the widespread use of migrant labor to rebuild the city.
But there are signs of connection as well, evidence of New Orleans' pride in its history as the most flavorful of New World melting pots. Some see in them the possibility of a city going back to the future.
New Orleans has a decidedly Hispanic (and French and Caribbean and African) pre-Louisiana Purchase past, and both black and Latino activists I met suggested that this history is a useful template for this city's increasingly mixed future.
"We didn't just discover Latin America," says Dillard University Professor Mtangulizi Sanyika. "The golden age of New Orleans is a historical resource for this community."
Although the French were the first and clearly the dominant colonial culture here, France, Spain and ultimately the U.S. all forced their peculiar laws and customs on the city. Starting in the 1760s, New Orleans prospered under Spanish rule, trading with Cuba, Santo Domingo, the Yucatan and the Mexican Gulf Coast. Most significantly, however, the Spanish installed a brand of slavery that for all its inherent cruelty allowed for greater liberties than the English and French versions. In Spanish colonies, slaves had the ability to purchase their freedom, which had an enormous impact on the development of black culture and race relations.
In his book, "The World That Made New Orleans," writer Ned Sublette concludes that "Afro-Louisianians had more freedom during the territory's three-plus decades of Spanish rule than they had during the French colonial period, and more than black slaves had or would have anywhere else in the South at any time before emancipation."
