Latino Migration to New Orleans After Katrina

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Latino Migration to New Orleans after Katrina New Orleans has seen a definite increase in the Hispanic population since Katrina. Compared to other cities the actual population of Hispanics is not that large, but they have made a lasting impact on the city and the people they share it with. Some will say that the impact is negative and some will say it is positive. My job is to give both sides of the story and to reveal the Latino communities challenges and successes in the New Orleans community. Many of the Latinos that came to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina came to rebuild the city. They saw a great opportunity for work and of course they were right. New Orleans needed to be rebuilt and the Latinos were just the people for the job. After the storm many lower income families could not afford to move back to New Orleans and therefore were not able to rebuild the city themselves. The Lower Ninth Ward (a mostly black neighborhood before Katrina) only has a fourth of its former residents. An article from the Washington Post says that one of the only signs of life in the neighborhood is the taco truck that sits in a parking lot of a vacated store. The taco truck business is a perfect example of how Latinos are taking up residence in the once black dominated neighborhoods. Before getting into the complexities of the relationships between the Latinos and blacks and the Latinos and the population in general, one must first learn about the Latinos themselves. First, it is not surprising that so many Latinos moved in after Katrina. The same thing happens whenever there is a hurricane anywhere along the gulf coast. The Latinos know there will be work after a hurricane so they move to those places. Katrina left New Orleans devastated and it took many years to rebuild much of the damaged parts of the city. Because of how long it took to rebuild, many Latinos

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