Filipinos in Louisiana

NEWS of the evacuation of at least 200 Filipinos from New Orleans to Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has generated renewed interest in the colorful history of Filipinos in Louisiana. In the cover story of the current issue of Filipinas magazine ("Filipino Roots in New Orleans," October 2005), noted historian Carlos Quirino writes about St. Malo, "the oldest Filipino community in the western hemisphere."

According to Quirino, St. Malo ("Sin Malo with the accent on the O"), was a Filipino fishing settlement located 30 miles northeast of New Orleans near Lake Pontchartrain, now well-known for the broken levees wrought by Hurricane Katrina which flooded New Orleans. St. Malo no longer exists today because it was wiped out by a hurricane in 1914.

While there is no doubt that St. Malo was once a Filipino village in Louisiana, there is controversy not about when it disappeared but when it was first established.

In his Filipinas article, Quirino contends that "the community was founded some time after the end of the British-American War of 1812 by Filipino soldiers who had served under the French buccaneer Jean Baptiste Lafitte."

Lafitte and his ragtag band of pirates from Barataria Bay had been the decisive force in the defense of New Orleans from the invading British forces. To show his gratitude, US President Andrew Jackson extended an amnesty to Lafitte and his men, which included Filipinos. Quirino notes that "the Filipinos had chosen to remain in Louisiana rather than
follow their legendary leader who went on to further piratical raids in the Caribbean."

Quirino's account, however, is based on Lafcadio Hearn's essay on the "mahogany-colored Manilamen of Louisiana" which appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1883. Hearn noted that there were Visayans, Tagalogs, Ilocanos and Pampangos among the men of St. Malo. ("Their features are irregular without being actually repulsive; some have cheekbones very
prominent; and the eyes of several are set slightly slant.")

But Hearn did not believe that the residents were former pirates. He wrote that the majority of the Filipinos in St. Malo came from Spanish vessels by way of Cape Horn or by the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope. The "elderly ones," Quirino surmised, came from galleon ships that plied the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade route from 1565 to 1832.

Contrary to Quirino's contention that the settlements were established sometime after 1812, Hearn believes that St. Malo and other Filipino settlements were established about 50 years before he wrote his article in 1883. This was what the oldtimers at St. Malo told him when he interviewed them in 1883.

Quintin De La Cruz, one of the founders of a later Filipino village (Manila Village), was still alive in 1931 when Quirino interviewed him about the origins of his village. De La Cruz told Quirino that he "believed that Filipinos first came as far back as George Washington's time, and that a couple enlisted in the navy in the American War of Independence and in 1812." De La Cruz also told Quirino that Filipinos formed a company of soldiers "commanded by Domingo Bantayano, during the US Civil War, guarding one of the bayous against the Yankees."

Quirino contends that De La Cruz's account is plausible "because American clippers visited Manila in the late 1700s and 1800s. They must have brought to their homeport of Salem, Massachusetts, scores of these sailors from Cavite."

"Many of these Filipino sailors stayed either in Acapulco or in San Blas, further up the eastern Mexican coast where their descendants have been assimilated into the Mexican bloodstream," Quirino wrote. "But others crossed the country to Vera Cruz, the eastern seaport on the Gulf of Mexico, and eventually found their way to Louisiana."

Indeed, Graciano Lopez Jaena, the editor of La Solidaridad and a Filipino national hero, wrote about Filipino seamen in the February 25, 1889 issue of his paper: "In a town near Barcelona live quite a number of Filipino sailors. I also know that in almost all the ports of England, France, and America, particularly in New York and Philadelphia, there are many Filipino sailors."

In fact, as early as 1765, Spanish explorer Francisco Leandro de Viana described Filipino sailors in glowing terms. "There is not an indio in those islands," Viana wrote in a letter to the Spanish king, "who has not a remarkable inclination for the sea, nor is there at present in all the world a people more agile in maneuvers on shipboard or who
learn so quickly nautical terms and whatever a good mariner ought to know? They can teach many a Spanish seaman who sail in those seas."

In her book, Filipinos in Louisiana, Filipino-American historian Marina Espina contends that the Filipino settlements in Louisiana first appeared in 1765 and were founded by Filipinos who had originally settled in Acapulco after traveling to Acapulco on galleon ships from Manila. Espina, a librarian at the University of New Orleans, had spent a sabbatical in Mexico in 1977 poring over old documents about the Galleon Trade. She claims to have discovered records establishing the existence of a colony of Filipinos in Acapulco, who had served on galleon ships from Manila, who had then trekked to Vera Cruz where they then crossed the Gulf of Mexico to the Louisiana bayous to set up fishing villages of houses on stilts similar to the ones commonly found in the Philippines.

But Espina's account is disputed by Malcolm Churchill, a retired US diplomat, who claimed in an article which appeared in a Philippine historical quarterly that Marina's "romantic version of the origin of Manila Village can be traced to the imagined musings of UPI correspondent Harry W. Frantz" who described the scenario of Filipino
settlers in 1765 to Philippine Commonwealth government officials touring Filipino communities in the US in 1937.

But simply pointing out that Espina's account is similar to that presented by Frantz in 1937 does not mean the version is false. If, indeed, as Espina contends, there is historical evidence to establish this fact, then dismissing it as "imagined musings" will not be enough to discredit it.

Clearly, more research is needed.

(Regardless of the final historical record on this issue, let us all hope and pray that Marina Espina and her family are all right. Let us hope and pray that all the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita can be properly helped. Those wishing to personally help the Filipino evacuees from New Orleans now in Houston may contact NaFFAA Southwest Region chairperson Arlene Machetta at arlene@machettalaw.com.)

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