My father had etched in his memory some of the hurricanes that came to visit South Texas during his youth. There was one where they had to break all of the windows in the house to let the wind through and not take all of the house. There was another one when he had to tie his sisters to a heavy farm implement so that the wind could not take them. He came to know that hurricanes were acts of God that should be accepted with the greatest humility.
Cleanup was a matter of expertise and hard work. That is what Latino immigrants brought to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. They came because the need for clean up was high and the pay was good. It helped that the immigration rules were relaxed so that working Latinos, documented and undocumented, could concentrate on just doing the work of cleaning up a city.
But as the city was transformed from a littered dump to a livable place, the voices of self interest became louder. First, contractors saw easy money in not paying for the work and pocketing the full amount of the funds assigned to their projects. Stories surfaced about the exploitation of Latino workers by residents and contractors that saw New Orleans as belonging to them and not to these outsiders. The Spanish speaking community has a saying for this: “Uno no sabe por quien trabaja,” meaning that there are those that take benefit of a person’s hard work.
Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans capped that feeling in his January 16, 2006 Martin Luther King Jr. Day “Chocolate City” speech guaranteeing a racist agenda for the city’s black demographics. He also joined in the exploitation for which he was convicted in 2014 for 21 charges of wire fraud, bribery and money laundering related to bribes from city contractors before and after Katrina and was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.
The clean up abuses after Hurricane Katrina are a blueprint for what is beginning to happen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Florida. The Florida 50 plus billion dol- lar damage done by the hurricane has stimulated panic calls for Latino immigrants among others to come to the rescue again.
The irony is that just days ago, Florida Governor DeSantis in trying to outdo Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, pinched planeloads of immigrants in Texas and transported them to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts fraudulently using COVID-allocated money to his state. Now he and his people are scrambling to find workers from the same community to do the cleanup work.
What do you suppose will happen after they complete the epic work of bringing a large portion of the state back to normal. Will they be paid fairly?
Will anyone say “thank you?” Will the Governor go back to his stunts of using Latino immigrants and migrant workers as pawns in his political schemes?
The blueprint says that the Latino workers in particular will be exploited, taken advantage of by contractors and politicians. Ultimately many will be pushed out unless another catastrophic storm hits the state.
Fortunately, a few Latinos endured, stayed in New Orleans and are now building a vibrant community. Because of Latino relentless work ethic and the cultural richness they bring to every community, immigration and its demographic reality is triumphing in every corner of the country.
The Florida cleanup is on. So will the abuse by same type of actors unless we stay on alert.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of la Voz bilingüe. Comments and responses may be directed to news@lavozcolorado.com.
