[CPEO-BIF] Latino workers in New Orleans

[lsiegel@cpeo.org]

Rebuilding the Big Easy
Latinos confront strained resources and tense race relations as they
help clean up New Orleans and other hurricane-ravaged cities. 

By Roberto Lovato
Salon.Com
October 19, 2005

While Mayor Ray Nagin trumpets the return of lights, power and tourists
to the French Quarter, Ruben Lopez of Fresno, Calif., and his roommate
Myron Moran, a Guatemalan immigrant, rest in the pitch-black room of an
abandoned hotel on Canal Street. They've just finished another sultry
14-hour day rebuilding the Big Easy. 

"The rats here are the size of rabbits," says Moran, whose teeth glow
white in the dark as he describes his temporary home. "We're paying $60
a night to this guy Eddie for a room with no AC, no lights, no
electricity, no water and a bed that stinks," says Lopez, a California
native who drove with his father to New Orleans after hearing about
construction and cleanup work at a job fair in Fresno. 

Lopez and Moran are part of a little-understood army of "aliens" (or,
among the more politically correct, "out-of-state workers") drawn to the
new New Orleans, a city on the verge of a radical Latinization that is
also transforming other urban landscapes in the country. 

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/19/latino_new_orleans/

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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