Why New Orleans houses the largest group of Hondurans outside of Honduras
The largest group of Hondurans living in diaspora in the world can be found in the United States and the largest group of them live in the Greater New Orleans area.
To avoid domestic strife a large number of Honduran citizens left their country in the 1950’s and immigrated to the United States in search and finding better economic and political stability. Many have not returned and today New Orleans houses around 103,049 people of Honduran origin.
Gustavo Castillo, a local of New Orleans born in the late 1951 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, recounting his experiences in his home country said, “Listen man, when I was young there was always fighting, there were always guns and people shooting. I Lived in the worst part of the country. I loved my country but it was dangerous so when I met Pauline (his wife) I knew I had to get out of there. We moved to La Ceiba (Honduras) and it was better but there was still so much fighting and we now had kids to worry about. It wasn’t just us now. I wanted a better life for my children, where they didn’t have to worry about another war and they could get good jobs and not have to worry about being poor. I saved up enough money to send them to New Orleans with my cousin who was heading there too and when I could get more money I would see them again.”
With a large amount of wars taking place from the 1930’s to the 1980’s many people had felt tired of the countless wars and wanted a place where they could live in peace. Some families got separated for a long time due to money mostly controlled by the government and travel being restricted to those in power so where many families could only send over a few family members at a time.
Valda Bondict, a woman who was brought to New Orleans by her parents when she was young said, “ I remember the trip coming over, I was scared and I only knew a little English. I didn’t know how the kids in America were going to act. When I got here kids made fun of my accent and would call me names and that hurt but I would hear what the other adults would call my parents and that hurt a lot more because they didn’t even understand what the adults were calling them. I didn’t think they deserved that just for trying to help us. I eventually lost my accent and the kids didn’t notice I wasn’t born here so they treated me nice but I think back a lot to what my parents had to go through just to give us a better life.”
The children who were brought by their parents to the United States were chastised and suffered prejudice through their lives having unequal opportunities in many social situations. Many of them came to America right after the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. Their parents, not being able to speak english many of the times, were not given equal opportunities for jobs or education.
Raven foster, a second generation immigrant said that “My father was brought here (from Honduras) by his family when he was a child and he used to tell me stories about when he was young he only spoke spanish and would get bullied often and at a certain point he would grow to hate his culture and what made him stand out to the point where he forgot most of his spanish and would only talk in english. Eventually he would end up realizing that his culture is something that he should be proud of, but at that point it was a bit too late and most of his family that remembered had died and he felt he had to hold on to the few things he still remembered, which was cooking with his mom. Now to this day every time I visit him he’s making things he remembers making with his mom.”
The divide that hispanics that have moved to the United States feel with the rest of America have since become walls that keep people of their shared culture together, whether it be fear of rejection from the norm of American society or the love that they have for their families that keep them close together have brought many people of Honduran ancestry together in New Orleans.
