Coming to New Orleans, Part IV

The City of New Orleans reached its peak population of over 600,000 residents in the 1960s thanks in part to these new immigrants and the expansion of and investment in New Orleans’s suburbs and new residential neighborhoods. Immigrants to New Orleans faced challenges at the federal level with the quota system, the commonly used name for a law passed by Congress in 1924 that limited legal immigration based on nation of origin. The rise of anticommunist hysteria following World War II led to increased scrutiny of immigrants. These laws resulted in the lowest immigration United States immigration rates of the twentieth century during the 1950s and '60s. However, the growth and development of the city remained an attractive pull for those in the Americas seeking better opportunities and cultural familiarity in the United States.

The rise of the banana import industry at the dawn of the 20th century facilitated a close connection between Honduras and New Orleans. Migrants first began arriving from Honduras aboard refrigerated steamships carrying bananas operated by the United Fruit Company as early as the 1910s. Some of the reasons for this early migration included continued employment with fruit companies, educational opportunities at New Orleans Catholic schools for employees’ children, and Black West Indians and Afro-Latinos fleeing racial discrimination in Honduras.

New Orleans attracted Hondurans because of its accessibility, environmental similarities, Catholic culture, and the prospect of continued employment in the fruit trade, where bilingual speakers were in high demand. These Hondurans were a racially and ethnically diverse group, including white European descendants, mestizos, Afro-Indigenous groups like the Garifuna people, and Black West Indians. Because of this racial diversity, some Hondurans faced challenges entering the black-white binary of Jim Crow New Orleans. However, some scholars argue that they faced less oppression than Hispanics in the Southwest due to the relative social mobility enjoyed by Spanish speakers.

As immigration from Honduras increased during the 1950s and ’60s, a community of Honduran expatriates, or Catrachos, as they call themselves, began to form in the Lower Garden District, which they called El Barrio Lempira, named after a Honduran national hero killed by the Spanish in the 16th century. Hondurans opened businesses catering to their community, including restaurants, supermarkets, and nightclubs, as well as a Spanish-language radio station, KGLA. By 1962, New Orleans had the largest Honduran population in the United States, a distinction later taken by New York City. Between 1970 and 1980 the Honduran community doubled in size but remained below 10,000. In the 1970s Hondurans began out-migrating to the suburbs, primarily Kenner, Gretna, and Terrytown, following a trend among white residents of the Crescent City. In relative size, Hondurans remained the largest Hispanic group in the New Orleans area until the arrival of Mexican immigrants following Hurricane Katrina.

Cubans had been emigrating to New Orleans since the mid-19th century and continued as the sugar and fruit trades increased at the turn of the 20th century, but it wasn’t until the rise of Fidel Castro in 1959 that Cubans began arriving to the city in large numbers. Thousands of Cubans opposed to the revolutionary government left for the United States, especially to Miami. The Catholic Church sought other cities to alleviate the burden. Hundreds of Cubans came to New Orleans, attracted to the Catholic culture, business connections, and similar climate. In 1962, the Catholic Cuban Center began providing health care and resettlement services to these new immigrants, whose asylum status prevented them from accessing public assistance programs. Language barriers and issues with US employers not honoring foreign certifications also forced many Cuban professionals to take low-paying jobs.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Mayors Chep Morrison and Victor Schiro understood the importance of Latin American trade connections and made efforts to strengthen these ties during their administrations. Morrison worked to preserve and develop New Orleans’s commercial relationship with Cuba with goodwill trips and press junkets throughout his administration, which lasted from 1946 to 1961.

President Kennedy enacted a trade embargo between Cuba and the United States in 1962, which put an end to the commercial relationship Morrison and Schiro had worked so hard to maintain. During his administration in the late 1970s, Mayor “Dutch” Morial appointed the first Cuban American to municipal office, Tony Naranjo, in the newly created Office of Hispanic Affairs. In his second term, Morial created the Latin American Task Force to address the needs of the community. As the New Orleans economy stagnated in the 1980s and ’90s, immigration from Cuba slowed down and the Hispanic population saw little to no growth until after Hurricane Katrina. Though many of the city’s Cuban immigrants eventually moved to Miami, Cubans remain a visible part of New Orleans’s Hispanic community.