Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century by Andrew Sluyter Et Al. (Review)

Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century by Andrew Sluyter et al. (review) Patrick D. Hagge Historical Geography, Volume 45, 2017, pp. 280-281 (Review) Published by University of Nebraska Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/716054 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] 280 Book Reviews Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century. ANDREW SLUYTER, CASE WATKINS, JAMES P. CHANEY, and ANNIE M. GIBSON. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 194, index. $32.50, paperback. ISBN 978-0807160879. Population growth of Hispanic and Latino communities has been one of the major demographic stories of the United States during the twenty-first century, but the larger truth is that historic Hispanic and Latino influences on portions of the national landscape are centuries old. While historic Spanish designs of St. Augustine or Santa Fe are well-known, the multi-century influence of Hispanic peoples upon New Orleans and South Louisiana is often ignored. Even as various Latin American and Iberian peoples were instrumental in the past and present of several Gulf of Mexico coastal cities, no single work has yet explored Hispanic life in New Orleans. Andrew Sluyter, Case Watkins, James P. Chaney, and Annie M. Gibson have filled this scholarship void as joint authors of the recent publication Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century. The book is divided into six chapters, each focusing on a major Hispanic or Latino community that played a critical role in the history of New Orleans: Isleños (Spanish residents originally from the Canary Islands), Cubans, Hondurans, Mexicans, Brazilians, and other Hispanic communities. With a mix of historical narrative, interviews, ethnography, demographic data, and even GIS analysis, this book weaves different approaches together to emphasize the overarching idea that Hispanics and Latinos had – and since Katrina, continue to have – major influences on the geography and development of New Orleans. The great irony is that these influences are often overlooked by the larger New Orleans populace, even as historical Latino linkages in South Louisiana have been manifested at one time or another, especially during 40 years of direct Spanish control in the eighteenth century. Several sections within this book deserve extra praise. One strength of the four authors is their intellectual diversity. Sluyter’s research of Louisiana in the eighteenth century aided sections dealing with Spanish New Orleans; Gibson’s previous work on (and studies in) Havana illuminated the chapter on Cuban residents. Additionally, division of the book into chapters focusing on each community group rather than division of chapters by time period allows for the relevant histories of each ethnic/identity community to clearly be told. A chronological narrative would necessarily jump back and forth between Brazilians and Mexicans and Isleños within a particular period. The result is a work of historical geography, not merely a history. This work also contains excellent analysis of the role played by Hurricane Katrina among New Orleans’ Latino communities. The 2005 Hurricane was largely responsible for an overall population drop of the New Orleans Metropolitan Statistical Area between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, yet the population of Hispanic or Latino groups in the MSA grew rapidly after the storm, with growth concentrated among Mexican and Honduran residents (p. 18). This increase in foreign-born Hispanic residents into a “rebuilt” New Orleans is succinctly said by Humberto, an interviewee whose words grace the introduction, “If you speak Spanish, you are Latino and probably came after Katrina” (p. 1). Over 30 valuable maps accompany the text. Census ethnicity maps in particular show the complex spatio-residential patterns among various Latino groups: Cubans and Hondurans are more concentrated just west of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish while Isleños are overrepresented in St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans. The authors should be commended for displaying their arguments in a variety of methods. Book Reviews 281 Hispanic and Latino New Orleans is important to a wide variety of researchers dealing with various academic studies involving Hispanic or Latino communities, particularly those communities in urban areas in the wider US South. This study of intertwined ethnic identities, histories, and places will have broad readership in the years to come: the book won AAG’s John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize in 2015, and deservedly so. This text takes its place within the field of historical scholarship about New Orleans as the first of its kind: a study of the influences and impacts that various Hispanic or Latino groups have had upon South Louisiana over the past 250 years. While unique in its study, this work is well-situated within existing bodies of scholarship, including histories of New Orleans such as Ned Sublette’s 2009 volume, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books). Studies of other Gulf Coast cities include Thomas Kreneck’s Del Pueblo: A History of Houston’s Hispanic Community (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012), and works focused on Hispanics and Latinos in the broader South include Angela Stuesse’s Scratching Out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016) or Julie Weise’s Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015). A typical historical geography work would necessarily have a particular area of interest, and the wider New Orleans region is the obvious focus of Hispanic and Latino New Orleans. A potential critique might suggest for more comparative arguments between the historical geography of Hispanics in New Orleans and similar situations in other Gulf urban areas such as Houston or Tampa, although too much emphasis on such contrasts might risk diluting the New Orleans focus. Similarly, a bit more on the cultural landscapes of the home country situations of post-Katrina Hispanic immigrants might be of interest. But these are minor comments. Hispanic and Latino New Orleans successfully tells the story of a diverse set of peoples instrumental in the making of modern New Orleans; or, as the authors note in Chapter 1, “…books such as this one explicate how real people living in actual communities participate in the creation of specific places over the long term” (p. 9). The authors open the book with a striking phrase, noting that “New Orleans… has long hidden much of its Hispanic and Latino sides in plain sight” (p. 2). Because of the impressive scholarship seen in Andrew Sluyter, Case Watkins, James Chaney, and Annie Gibson’s Hispanic and Latino New Orleans, a better spatial history of these oft-forgotten communities now exists. Professional academics and students alike will find use from this excellent addition to the field of historical geography. Patrick D. Hagge Arkansas Tech University Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands. ANDREW STUHL. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. vii+232, maps, photographs, index. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 978-0-226-41664-9. In this era of concern over the politicization of science and its embattled role in public policy, Andrew Stuhl’s Unfreezing the Arctic offers a timely historical reflection on the important social role of science and scientists. It is far from an uncritical intervention, however; rather, in his exploration of a century of scientific exploration and investigation of the Western Arctic, Stuhl raises deep questions about the entanglements of scientific knowledge and practice with .

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