Hispanic and Latino communities have been making invaluable contributions to the development of the Crescent City since the late 1790s when the Spanish rebuilt the French Quarter. That tradition continues in the present day, with the arrival of Central American and Mexican workers in 2005 to help with reconstruction efforts post-Katrina, but they are nonetheless often left out of the narrative on New Orleans history. Andrew Sluyter and co-editors join scholars like Julie Weise and Rebecca Scott to fill this gap by exploring the cultural, political, and economic connections between New Orleans and Latin America. This book offers a comprehensive survey, linking four centuries of transnational processes that extend beyond Latin America and the Caribbean, to demonstrate how New Orleans came to be celebrated as “the Gateway to Latin America.”
Methodologically, Sluyter and his co-editors and authors use census data, in-depth interviews, detailed maps, and archival research to unpack the heterogeneity of these Hispanic and Latino communities. Framed as a historical geography, the mapping provides a powerful examination of settlement patterns, with attention given to neighborhoods and nationality in proportion to the total Hispanic/Latino population. Structurally, the book is organized in chapters based on country of origin, featuring Isleño, Cuban, Honduran, Mexican, and Brazilian communities. Yet, even as they examine these groups as separate chapters, the scholars effectively draw parallels and point to tensions between them, weaving together experiences with trade, migration, religion, work, and food. More attention to Haitian communities, perhaps as a stand-alone chapter, could provide an even more compelling hemispheric framework, building on the role of New Orleans for exiles who fled during the Haitian Revolution, mentioned briefly here in Chapter 2.
The most compelling parts of the book link Latin America and New Orleans through commerce, particularly the banana trade in Honduras, the coffee industry in Brazil, and sugar in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, underscoring longstanding economic ties and the salience of the port of New Orleans. Likewise, the analysis of the Garínagu, a transnational Afro-Caribbean community based out of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Belize, offers a fascinating juxtaposition of black communities in New Orleans and Central America in regard to race and their experiences integrating within the rigid black/white binary of the United States.
On contemporary immigration in the US South, including the rise in Central American and Mexican migrants during the 1990s, the scholars explain how these migration patterns initially circumvented New Orleans, despite drastic population increases in places like Alabama and Georgia. Sluyter and co-editors outline the rise in anti-Latino legislation in these southern states in the 2010s. These pinpointed policies illustrate how state mechanisms—beyond just census data—are used to interpret and legitimize immigrant groups. Yet, the scholars also elude to “lax immigration enforcement” and “less frequent exploitation” (112) in New Orleans, thus failing to consider exclusionary legislation (and the mobilization against these policies) that surfaced in postdiluvial New Orleans. Among these, targeting the Latino communities, are an ICE raid pilot deportation program (2013), a taco truck ban (2007), detainer holds, Louisiana's three immigration detention centers, and countless cases of workplace abuse.
While New Orleans's connections with Latin America are often easy to romanticize, the scholars succeed in maintaining a balance; for example, they call to mind stories of exiled Latin American leaders living in the French Quarter, while also detailing nineteenth-century Isleño land deeds and recounting the white flight of the Honduran community from Barrio Lempira (Irish Channel) to the Jefferson Parish suburbs in the 1970s. Sluyter and co-editors and authors contribute an important account to literature on the growing Latino south. The scholars prove that New Orleans has a long history that ties the region to Latin America, going well beyond a post-Katrina context. While some subjects are left out, the omissions can instead be framed as topics for further study, making the work of Sluyter, his co-editors, and the selected authors a foundational source for future research.
