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From Fish Sauce to Salsa -- New Orleans Vietnamese Adapt to Influx
of Latinos
After Hurricane Katrina, the Latino population in New Orleans grew
as other ethnic populations shrank in size. Remaining members of a
close-knit Vietnamese community are learning to navigate cultural and
linguistic differences with their new Latino neighbors.
By Sara Catania, New America Media
NEW ORLEANS - Oct 16, 2006 - Taqueria Mexico used to be a thriving
Vietnamese restaurant called Bien Tinh, or Ocean Love. Now under new
ownership, its waitresses serve salsa in the floral faux-china bowls
that once held fish sauce.
"A lot is different now," says Hai Pham, who sold Bien Tinh to a
Mexican-American family from Houston. Pham's was one of dozens of
Vietnamese restaurants that after Hurricane Katrina were struggling to
survive with far fewer customers. Now, whenever Pham stops by Taqueria
Mexico, the place is bustling, the customers nearly all Latino. "They
are the first restaurant around here to serve Mexican food and they do a
good business," Pham says. "I am happy for them."
Vietnamese-Americans recovering from Katrina are grappling with a double
challenge: the absence of friends and family who moved away after the
storm and the appearance of a record number of Latinos in their
previously autonomous community.
A state survey released this month counts nearly 7,000 Asians in New
Orleans post-Katrina, compared with close to 12,000 in 2004. Latinos are
the only ethnic group in the city whose numbers have grown, from about
14,000 to more than 16,000, according to the survey, conducted in
February by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and the
Louisiana Recovery Authority. "We have seen Hispanics in areas of the
city where we have never seen them before," says Martin O. Gutierrez,
director of immigration and refugee services for Catholic Charities in
the city. "This is a very new phenomenon in New Orleans."
The change is particularly noticeable in the neighborhood that Taqueria
Mexico now calls home. Though most locals call the area Village de L'est,
for its location in the eastern part of the city, some still refer to it
as Versailles, after the government-subsidized housing complex that was
home to many Vietnamese refugees when they first arrived in New Orleans
in the 1970s and '80s. Back then, the refugees were the newcomers in the
largely African-American community. In subsequent decades the
Vietnamese-American population in the Gulf Coast area grew to between
25,000 and 40,000 residents.
Those who remained in Village de L'est created what is widely regarded
as the region's Vietnamese-American hub, opening more than 50 businesses
and building Mary Queen of Vietnam, the first Catholic Church in the
nation to offer mass in Vietnamese.
After Katrina, the Vietnamese-American residents of Village de L'est
were among the first return to New Orleans and begin gutting and
rebuilding their homes. Construction workers from across the United
States and Latin America descended upon the community, and the local
businesses lining Chef Menteur Highway and Alcee Fortier Boulevard
quickly began to adapt their products and services.
At the Mi-Viet market, rice papers now share shelf space with tortillas,
tall bottles of Fresca line the cold case next to bubble tea, and
plastic-wrapped pork chops are identified both as "bo-chuk tender" and "chuleta
de cerdo." A separate counter handles wire remittances to Latin America.
Across the street at the Tien Pharmacy, owner John Nguyen recently added
a payment service for cell phone bills. "It brings in new customers,"
Nguyen says.
Martin Osorio saw opportunity as well. His family owns Taco Texas, a
catering company in Houston that operates several loncheras, or lunch
trucks. The trucks soon became a fixture in Village de L'est. Then one
afternoon, as Osorio's father was having lunch at Bien Tinh, Pham
approached him and offered to sell him the restaurant.
"We thought he was kidding," Martin Osorio recalled. But Pham was dead
serious. Since the hurricane his wife had been running the restaurant
alone while he'd been focusing on their downtown convenience store. "I
felt it was not safe for her to be there by herself for so many hours,"
Pham says. "We couldn't find anybody to work there with her."
The Osorios imported the taqueria's nine-member Spanish-speaking work
force from Houston. Even with a sizeable staff, Osorio works nonstop,
rising at 4 a.m. and closing the doors at 8 p.m. Every two weeks he
takes a quick trip back to Houston to see his wife, 3-year-old daughter
and 2-month-old son.
Osorio says for the most part he has feels welcome in Village de L'est.
In two months he's had only one difficult encounter, when he sat down at
a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for lunch and waited nearly an hour
without being acknowledged. Finally he got up to leave and asked the
proprietor for the key to the restroom. She refused, telling him the
bathroom was out of order. He bristled. "I'd seen people going in and
out of there the whole time," he says. "I told her I have a right to use
the bathroom and if you refuse to let me, I can sue you." The woman
relented and gave him the key.
May Thi Nguyen, business development director for the community
development corporation created after the hurricane, is hoping to
transform the commercial stretches of Village de L'est into an
ethno-centric tourist destination. She has spent hours talking with the
small business owners, many of them older Vietnamese- Americans who are
struggling to adjust to their new neighbors. "It's a huge shock here,"
Nguyen says. "Everyone's kind of taken aback. A lot of
Vietnamese-Americans in this community have never left the area. It is
very much a Vietnamese-American community."
Nguyen, who has lived and worked in Argentina and Vietnam and is fluent
in Vietnamese, English and Spanish, says she is unsure how Latinos would
fit into the commercial development goals for the area. "We're talking
about a marketing scheme where we're going to set up three flags out in
the median: an American flag, a flag of the old Republic of Vietnam and
a Louisiana flag," Nguyen says. "I don't know where the Mexican flag
fits into that."
Martin Gutierrez of Catholic Charities says increased diversity will
only enrich the area. "It's going to create great opportunities. There
will be some friction, but at the same time we all believe diversity is
a strength."
Nguyen acknowledged that Latinos have invigorated Village de L'est, both
economically and culturally. She has witnessed this dynamic in a market
owned by her aunt. "My aunt is learning Spanish," Nguyen says. "She's
learning how to say hello, how to tell customers how much something
costs. It's wild. I love it. It's exciting."
After talking with some of the Latino workers, Nguyen is taking a
wait-and-see approach. "A lot of these changes are happening in response
to the construction workers," she says. "Some will leave. Will enough
stay to make these changes permanent? Who knows?"
A study released in June by U.C. Berkeley and Tulane University found
that about half the Latinos who moved to the region for work plan to
stay, and there are indicators in Village de L'est that some are
beginning to settle in. Word has spread quickly about Nguyen's tri-lingualism,
and the neighborhood's new Spanish-speaking residents have begun seeking
her out for advice. "They've been asking me where to send their kids to
school and things like that," she says. "They've pretty much ID'd me as
that Asian girl in the community who can talk to them."
At Mary Queen of Vietnam, Spanish-speaking workers have begun showing up
for Sunday mass, even though services are conducted entirely in
Vietnamese. "They know exactly what is going on," says Fr. Vien The
Nguyen, pastor of the church. "It was the same for us when we came here
from Vietnam. Mass was in English, but it was still a Catholic mass and
we understood. That's the nature of a parish church. It's always open.
Anyone can come in."
On a recent weekday afternoon at Taqueria Mexico, six small video
monitors and one large-screen television competed with the stereo
mariachis for the attention of diners in paint-splattered boots and
baseball caps. Daniel Jeronimo, who arrived in New Orleans from Veracruz
by way of Chicago six months ago, had just finished his first morning's
work in Village de L'est and was looking forward to lunch. "I saw this
place and I came right over," he said. "I can look at the menu here and
everything is familiar to me."
That is exactly what Martin Osorio likes to hear. The Taqueria has been
so successful he's considering expanding. "Right now we're thinking
about desserts and candies," he says. Eventually he'd like to open a
pool hall nearby.
If he does, he may find his customer base exceeding his target audience.
"I would get so bored if all I did was hang out at the Vietnamese bars,"
May Thi Nguyen says. "Hanging out at the Taqueria is a lot more
exciting."
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