LOS INVISIBLES: Latino Immigrants in the Post-Katrina Reconstruction of New Orleans

Year five of the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans is upon us, and the dirtiest little secret of the recovery is that our rapid progress owes a tremendous debt to the Latino immigrants who have labored hard to rebuild the Big Easy. While the BP oil spill disaster is our latest reminder that we are a new millennium epicenter for man made and natural tragedies, the many setbacks that this recovering mini-metropolis has experienced include a nationally high murder rate and a corrupt police department under federal investigation.

Nonetheless, the city and its resilient people continue forward, and most people I speak to recognize that the Latino work force has been vital in transforming New Orleans into a livable city and a functioning tourist destination, still open for business even with the toxic oil that looms in our Mississippi waterways and the Gulf. However, the story of Latino immigrants and the reconstruction remains conspicuously absent when the post-storm narratives are accounted in the local and national press.

It’s as if the immigrants are living in a parallel universe as invisible inhabitants, laboring in the shadows of a science fiction reality. For years, los invisibles have been physically visible everywhere on rooftops and numerous construction sites, but they are ubiquitous and nowhere at the same time. The undocumented status of many has transformed them into a transparent people that are not recognized as fully human. This condition makes their suffering an obscure painful story that most prefer to ignore because foreigners are classified as aliens in this country, extraterrestrials from the Planet Other with a marginalized existence.

I recently interviewed three young day laborers, and each man shared stories of being cheated by ruthless contractors and local businesses. One worker with a wife and three children had put in two weeks at a major hotel in the French Quarter, but when the promised payday arrived, he and the dozen men in his maintenance crew were told to leave the premises by the gringo manager who threatened to call immigration authorities. He was left with no money to pay for his rent or buy food for his family. Crushed and defeated, he turned to Catholic Charities for some food support.

The second gentleman was a victim of wage theft a number of times, and with tears swelling his eyes, he spoke of great despair and loss of dignity as a man when he could not provide for his family. Even more crushing was that a contractor of Latino descent had robbed him as well, mocking the work crew that they should be paid in rice and beans. Abuse of power over the most vulnerable workers should come as no surprise, and while the three men reported that most contractors who had cheated them were Caucasian, legal Latinos have joined the exploitation party. Also, many immigrants here have been crime victims of young black men who know that workers carry cash on them. The word on the street is that immigrants are human ATM machines to violate and withdraw cash from, dehumanizing them further.

The youngest of the group was nineteen when he arrived two weeks after Katrina hit. He worked twelve-hour days while sleeping fourteen to a trailer meant to house one person. Nine months later, a huge metal dumpster fell on his left hand. The white contractor who hired him refused to call an ambulance. Fortunately, his working partner had a cell phone, but by the time he arrived at the hospital, half his hand was practically sliced off. While most doctors recommended severing his entire arm to protect from a major infection, the lone African American surgeon, who had a son the same age, intervened and performed five miraculous surgeries to reattach his hand. During his convalescence, this injured worker had a major epiphany that led him to become an activist.

Living in a shadow society, most immigrants are left to silently absorb many social blows because of their station, but all three of these men have joined the Congress of Day Laborers to fight for the rights of immigrant workers who have contributed their blood and sweat to rebuilding a city that has turned a blind eye to their struggles. The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that 80% of the immigrant labor force that reconstructed New Orleans was basically robbed of their rightful wages. The insidious tactic of employers calling immigration instead of paying rightfully earned salaries is commonplace in the slave labor fiesta still taking place here. Fears of deportation have kept thousands mute, but these men have undergoing a mythic transformation from silent martyrs to vocal activists.

With the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice and other committed immigrant rights’ advocates, they are fighting to have an ordinance passed that will criminalize wage theft. Theirs is an epic battle to humanize immigrants who have been rendered invisible by a city and a people that have benefited greatly from their noble labor. If we dared to count the dollar losses over five-years, we are talking millions, maybe billions, that have been stolen from men and women who have repaired a once very broken city. New Orleans, its citizens, and the new mayor need to bring the immigrants out of the shadows. Give them the visibility they deserve in the Crescent City.

José Torres-Tama

ArteFuturo Productions

2426 Saint Claude Avenue

New Orleans, LA 70117

www.torrestama.com

504.232.2968

"Make art that matters!"

NEW ORLEANS FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR OGDEN MUSEUM ART BOOK available at http://www.torrestama.com/ogdenbook/index.html

Thank the Latino Immigrants Who Reconstructed New Orleans

From New Orleans during Thanksgiving Weekend 2009:

“The city that care forgot” has never officially cared to thank the thousands upon thousands of Latino immigrants who have been invaluable to the ongoing reconstruction since the federal levees failed to hold back the fury of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.  As the calendar turns to a national time of thanks, the legislators and citizenry of New Orleans should offer a sincere declaration of gratitude, unas mil gracias, to the immigrants who have accelerated our progress in year four of this arduous recovery process.  

The greatest dirty little secret our current reconstruction is that it owes much to the Latino immigrants who were responsible for cleaning the human waste and refuse of the Convention Center and Superdome, salvaging the many hotels of the city’s tourist industry before they were condemned as health risks, and putting up roof after house roof that allowed its residents to move back home.  They have worked at an incredible pace, but a recent Southern Law Poverty Center analysis notes that up to 80% of the immigrant workers here have been cheated out of their proper pay by ruthless contractors and other local businesses needing repairs. 

They exploited their cheap labor and used the undocumented status of many to callously and criminallly cheat them out of pay.  The common scam is to threaten to report workers to immigration authorities after the job has been completed.  With deportation fears looming, thousands become silent victims of wage theft.  But there is some light to this dark story, and in a bold effort to acknowledge the social injustices perpetrated on the New Orleans immigrant labor force, City Councilman Arnie Fielkow announced this past summer that he was proposing a bill to criminalize wage theft, offering protection to all workers in the city, legal or illegal.  

In a city not known for progressive labor reform, this was a monumental move forward to protect the most vulnerable workers in town.  In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Center claimed a major  victory in July, and through a class action lawsuit, 39 immigrant plaintiffs won unpaid back wages in the sum of $175,000 from a New Jersey company that had cheated them.  I am an immigrant myself, from Ecuador and legal, and it has broken my heart to witness how most New Orleanians have turned a blind eye to the violation of immigrants’ rights.  From artists and arts leaders in the so-called liberal cultural institutions to a lack of interest in covering labor abuses in the local newspaper and other media outlets, very few have been willing to address the issue.      

For many immigrants, it has been hard living in the big easy after the storm, but their resilience is evident in the new businesses that have been founded.  In the Broadmoor and Mid City neighborhoods that took up to eight feet of water, you can now eat at El Riconcito, Taqueriea Gerrero or the Fiesta Latina Restaurant.  For grocery shopping, you can go to a large supermarket called La Guadalupana, and for quick bites, you can feast on a budget from the many Taco trucks that abound at busy intersections. 

A common positive that locals often spoke about as the Hispanic population grew after Katrina was the greater abundance of Mexican and Latino restaurants, which added more salsa flavor to the gastronomy of a city that loves to eat.  As we enjoy the Latin cuisine, it is important to remember not to demonize the cooks.  

So do the right thing this Thanksgiving weekend, and thank an immigrant for their invaluable contribution to our rebuilding.  Similarly, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are making positive contributions in urban and rural communities across the nation.  Most likely, they are doing the jobs no one else wants to do for extremely low pay and under the worst working conditions.  They all deserve at least a nod of thanks.  These are hard-working human beings.  Así que, por favor, un poquito de gracia y arriba y arriba.

On the Road with the Tulsa New Genre Festival Project

Amigos in cyberspace,

It has been sometime since I have had an opportunity to post a new blog, but I am on the road again with my peripatetic performance migrations.  I have begun the spring 2009 season with performances of "The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans after Katrina" at the New Genre Festival here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Produced by Living Arts of Tulsa, the festival featured more than a hundred artists, and it was possible for me to experience only a handful of events as I prepared for my performance.  The opening night included the engaging installation called "Domestic Arsenal" by Eileen Doktorski, which piled an ominous collection of objects used in home violence in the gallery space housing it, and the seductive concerto by Adam Tendler reprising John Cage's complicated score for a prepared piano called "Sonatas & Interludes".

On Sunday, I was able to briefly catch Cindy Zimmerman's "Axis Mundi Archives" which mines a visual collection of artifacts through photographs, drawings, and multimedia collage to explore the oil and mining industries of her native Oklahoma.  The installation chronicles her early beginnings as a working artist in Okmulgee, OK, and covers a 25 year career from San Diego to her current home base in Salinas, Kansas.

I performed two shows of "The Cone" at the Nightingale theater, and the piece was profiled in the "Tulsa World" newspaper (link below).

http://www.tulsaworld.com/spot/article.aspx?subjectID=272&articleID=20090228_272_D3_JoseTo199352

The local NPR station also conducted an extensive interview covering the development of this piece, which was written while in exile from the devastated city of New Orleans in the months after the storm.  The interview was conducted by the insightful Rich Fisher for the "Studio Tulsa" series.  It can be heard on Pubic Radio Tulsa at the link below:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kwgs/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1475240&sectionID=1

WORKSHOPS OF "HOME & THE AMERICAN DREAM MYTHOLOGY":
Currently, I am engaged in the performance workshop process of my two-week Living Arts residency, developed with support from the National Performance Network, and I have been working with a diverse cast of local Tulsa visual artists, spoken word poets, and performers who are developing a provocative ensemble performance exploring the concept of "home", the physical home, the spiritual home, and the psychic home, in relationship to the "American Dream" mythology.  

The local artists I have been working with have exhibited some strong performance skills, poetic writings, and a willingness to mine the territory of the personal and political, offering some moving pieces that explore domestic abuse, the trauma of the Iraq War, and the reinvention of self when "home" falls apart.  The piece we are developing is a multilayered work with film projections, voiceovers, improvised rituals, conceptual actions, and personal stories.  

"Home & the American Dream Mythology" will debut Saturday, March 7 at the Nightingale Theater @ 8PM.  You can call Living Arts at 918-585-1234 for more information, and visit www.livingarts.org on the web.  Tickets are $10/$7 (students).

Below are some excerpts of the writings from three of the artists involved, September Champagne Boles, Amy Luznicky, and Justin McKean.  The full performance group includes Marjorie Atwood, Tony Brinkley, Chris Jones (Smitty), Bill Zischang, and Steve Liggett with directorial guidance by yours truly. 

If you are in the Tulsa area, hope to see you there!

El JTT
www.torrestama.com

WORKSHOP WRITINGS:

My Jungle—a thick, darkened living jungle. From the jungle grew swirls and curls of crazy vines reaching out of the ground toward the sky. My mother—the only known woman to tame my jungle—referred to it as a “crazy head fulla hair.” Every Sunday night (around eight or nine) my mother gathered her precious tools (one Big comb, one small brush, hair grease and a handful of colorful berets) and summoned me into her bedroom for a ritual hair-combing. Every Sunday evening my mother and her tools delicately opened the two giant cornrows attached to my roots, and within this opening emerged the wilderness of my Black hair.

She tried quickly to comb through my jungle, brush it down to the ground, and lock it tight into the two giant cornrows I’ve known all my life. Being her stubborn daughter, I cried and screamed and jerked my head until my mother gave in and slowed down the combing. So in the end, she combed and brushed her way down every strand of hair—nappy root to curly tip—and all the while mumbling under her warm breath, “I never saw a mo’ tender-headed thing in all my life!”

---excerpt from "My Hair is My Home" by September Champagne Boles


home home
homey home home home
i ain’t got no home no more,
never had one fit for me really
never had no place of my own
that required no sharing
or no bleeding
or no paying with self-inflicted bloodshed or tears sizzling hot
like mom’s bacon
grease frying up the laundry
frying up my emotion for her
frying up all of the everything
of our family our home
 
and my dad in mechanical seat,
he’s now too removed for god to reach
although i see it in his eyes sometimes
that maybe he is god
and that maybe he was always my only ever hope.
 
i trash the seat
i lacerate the seat
i break it in half with the force of my will
i love my father
and he don’t deserve this ill-cast body imposition
he’s been forced in.
his home, my childhood home, it’s all broken and lonely.
the rooms empty of the feelings that once made them homely.

---excerpt from Amy Luznicky's "Home" poem


home
dry twigs snapping
crunchy undergrowth
betrays the presence
of the recon unit
exploring the wood behind the house

home
a bag of cheetos
a comfy chair
a two liter of diet coke
a book with a great story

home
a bible
with my name in it
with my heart in it
with my life in it
with my family in it
its red letters
the life blood of my home

which i called out
for the lie it was

home
i don't think i have that anymore
home
isn't something i believe in
does a gypsy have a home?

---excerpt from Justin McKean's "Home" poem

My New Year's wish for New Orleans: if only we could govern as well as we party!

Mis queridos bloggers of cyberspace,

This is my first post in this new medium, and as we begin a season of mythic change at the U.S. capital under disturbing economical currents, I offer my "New Year's Wish" for the recovering city of New Orleans. This is the text of a commentary that will soon air on the NPR program "Latino USA" (latusa.org), and it will run in the Crescent City on the local public radio station WWNO/89.9 FM later this week as well.

cheers,

El Amigo blogger
www.torrestama.com


King Cakes are emerging from bakery ovens, the purple, green and gold is ubiquitously coloring our recovery landscape, and soon we will bear witness to the uncanny efficiency of local government meeting the daunting challenges in directing the massive performance spectacle called Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Preparations are already visible, and like carnival magic, the observation bleachers for the parade crowds are up on Saint Charles Avenue.

Processions large and small, funky and ostentatious will map out intricate routes, and cars will be towed immediately if they dare block the thoroughfares for the celebration. The millions of tourists we hope to join us will express communal awe at how well the city operates, and like atypical clockwork, small armies of garbage men will clean up the mountainous mess on the Ash Wednesday after Fat Tuesday.

My New Year's wish is to have this same governing body exhibit its best during the rest of the year, responding to other civic duties as well as it orchestrates the biggest free party on earth. In this season of mythic change where the first man of color will soon inhabit the white house, I can be allowed to dream for responsible legislators who can deliver the many community initiatives we still desperately need.

Three and a half years after the storm, and we continue waiting for a supermarket in my downtown area of the Marigny, Bywater, and Treme historic neighborhoods. Thousands of residents would be served, but we wait as our lives in New Orleans perpetually oscillate between comedy and tragedy.

It is now month two of my wait for a garbage can from Metro Disposal, the trash collector I am obligated to use for my Saint Claude Avenue home. One neighbor recently rejoiced at finally getting her plastic container after six months of an epic struggle with this company. Waste management is their business, and they have managed to waste plenty of my cell phone minutes with countless calls I’ve made to no avail.

Neglect is the one constant bad medicine our district can normally expect from City Hall. Their master plan for us must be “Let them eat King Cake”. So let’s fill our many moon crater-like potholes with Mardi Gras beads instead of asphalt. Rebuild our dysfunctional public schools on the parade line to attract more attention, and I’ll costume for the big show pleading, “Throw me something, Mister!” A new mayor would be a fine catch, but we’ll have to wait until the end of the year for such fortune.

Everyone knows New Orleans throws a great party. If only good government was not a contradiction in terms here, we would have even better reasons to celebrate.