A state of disaster in the Gulf Coast
The Ruminations on America Project
is an exploration of American values as told by one person in each
of the 50 states, interviewed about their respective lives, states
and state of the union.
The office of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA!) was
scorching last week when I interviewed Victoria and Elvis Cintra about
the way workers are being treated across the state and the Gulf Coast
in the wake of last hurricane season.
The air conditioner was broken, which gave a glimpse of the baking
heat suffered by workers stacked 10 or 20 deep in motel rooms with
no electricity, running water or, in some cases, walls; inhaling mold
and other toxic fumes.
Victoria Cintra is the executive director of MIRA! Her husband is
a volunteer.
"There's a saying," she said, "With two that love each
other, only one has to eat."
"It's not me," laughed Elvis.
Victoria Cintra's life as an activist started tragically at the age
of 12 when she was swimming at Mamaroneck Beach and a Peruvian man
was pulled into the sea. She said the first lifeguard from whom she
sought help ignored her. The man drowned and an $18,000 settlement
resulted. She's never looked back.
So far, MIRA! has secured more than $300,000 in back wages owed workers,
many of whom are lured to the Gulf Coast by contractors looking for
cheap labor. In the wake of Katrina, President George W. Bush suspended
the Davis Bacon Act, which protects wages, and then reinstated it
under intense pressure two months later—but not retroactively.
The result has been mass scale exploitation in the only state without
a department of labor, and the Cintras are quick to point out that
this amounts to institutionalized slavery.
Mississippi's coast is utterly decimated, and nothing on the news
portrays the depth of the damage. Only the casinos appear to be in
the process of a resurrection, and the Cintras say that this is a
terrible double-whammy, because when workers are paid, many of them
spend their wages hoping to hit it big on the slots. It's hard to
fight the temptation to strike it rich by chance when faced with nothing
but squalor.
Concrete slabs line the scenic route where houses once stood, and
anyone who still believes that the wrath of God was responsible for
the hurricanes should see the churches that have been swallowed whole
by wind and water.
After 9/11, grief and shock were funneled into misplaced rage against
innocent Iraqi civilians, but there's no way to be mad at the water
resting now so calmly across the street from miles of wrecked infrastructure—and
lives.
On the wall at MIRA! is a copy of one of my favorite quotes, from
Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Victoria Cintra is a living example for the armchair philosophers
who wish for a better world while remaining firmly entrenched in the
mundane grind of their own lives, hoping that someone else will pick
up the slack and provide relief for those most in need. After traveling
through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, I realized that the fundamental
underpinnings of what many consider to be life in America are completely
false. The Gulf Coast looks like a third world country.
Huge resort hotels are dollhouses with their walls ripped off. Storm
tossed beds and lamps are visible from the road.
Piles of rubble are stacked everywhere, and some have started to build
fences and decks off temporary trailers while others live in tent
encampments. The looting in some areas is as bad as the damage from
the storm.
Cintra said hatred is being drummed up between African American and
Hispanic communities, and that part of her job is to bridge that gap.
"I tell blacks that Mexico was the second country in the world
to abolish slavery," she said. "I tell them that Mexico
had an underground tunnel to help slaves escape from America. They
start to see the common ground."
"In my opinion," said Elvis Cintra, who was born, like his
wife, in Cuba, "rich white people should thank the Latinos because
if not for them, we would still be where we were [after Katrina]."
A tour of the Gulf Coast proves that greed is the biggest obstacle
in the pursuit of human evolution. The same way vultures start to
circle when disaster strikes, true leaders also begin to emerge. It
seems that we're in the midst of another American revolution, and
none of the usual rules will apply.
