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by Fred C. Wilson III
January 7, 2011
My mother and I moved from San Francisco to Chicago when I was a small child. One of the things I fondly remember was when she would occasionally use ‘funny’ words in a ‘strange’ sounding language.
When I would ask her what they meant she would say she didn’t know or would make up a meaning to satisfy my curiosity. I left it at that but often wondered what on earth she was talking about. When I grew up and had Filipino friends I told them some of the words my mother used to say to me. It was then that my mystery was solved. The words that she used were in Tagalog. One word in particular stuck out all these years; the word kaliwa in English meaning left. Though she used a few other ‘strange’ sounding words they have long since faded from my conscious memory.
Both mother and step-father were native New Orleanians. Their bloodlines can be traced as far as Plaquemine and St. Bernard Parishes (counties) in southern Louisiana. Both parishes are about a 30 minute drive from New Orleans depending upon how fast you’re driving. In later years I began to ask myself if there were Filipinos in our family. This article is about the Filipino-Cajun connection. Since my ancestors were and are largely illiterate I don’t have a recorded history of what went on way back then.
The true origin’s of the Louisiana’s Filipinos was a mystery for many decades. With nearby Mexico being the seat of Spanish authority in the New World including the faraway Philippine Islands, the Spanish kept their vast land and oceanic empire united through sheer terror. Slave-like conditions aboard Spanish galleons forced many Philippine sailors to jump ship and swim to the free shores of then Spanish Louisiana. Eventually the ‘Manilamen’ as early Filipinos were first called, formed self-governing settlements. St. Malo was one such town.
Southern Louisiana was the ideal place for escaped ‘Manilamen’ to hide from the hated Spanish. When this writer visited relatives I took a boat through the bayous Louisiana’s swamplands, jungles really, because they aren’t people friendly. Heavily infested with alligators, swarms of angry blood-sucking insects, venomous snakes, and quicksand that even on clear days the swamps look like something out of an old Christopher Lee horror movie: hot, dank, and dangerous. Once the Manilamen were safe in Louisiana there was no way on earth the pampered and well-fed Spanish would ever hunt these guys down.
But GOD is good, the Louisiana marsh lands are teeming with food. All you have to do is hunt, trap, and fish for it. Alligators, giant but edible nutria rats, fist sized shrimp, birds, people size fish, huge turtles, crawfish-though most of them nowadays come from Wisconsin, I was told, and crabs make for some pretty good eating. Over time those early Filipinos established self-governing towns. Though free men, those early Filipinos or Tagalas as the Manilamen were later called, kept their identity super-secret from mainstream Louisiana society. They gradually blended in mainstream southern America. They kept their settlements alive for hundreds of years through intermarriage with the local women. These first Filipinos married women of Native American, African, Cajun, and of other nationalities which may account for why I never saw a single man, woman, or child that I’d normally associate with being Filipino during my New Orleans forays. They’re there but perhaps I was just in the wrong places at the wrong time.
The first time the outside world even knew about the Cajun-Filipinos was when Harper’s Weekly journalist Mr. Lafcadio Hearn published an article in 1883. Hearn was the first person to write about Louisiana’s Filipinos. Many believe that the St. Malo settlement could easily have been the first Asian American town in the United States.
St. Malo the acknowledged first Filipino settlement in the Americas was named in honor of Jean Saint Malo a runaway slave who after his escape took refuge in the marshlands near Lake Borgne in 1784 the same year St. Malo was ‘incorporated’ as a town. A popular revolutionary leader of the same vein as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, he and his band of freedom fighter harassed their Spanish oppressors to no end. They used weapons donated by ex-slaves, those still in bondage, and from anyone else who had it in for colonialist Spain. After giving the Spanish a real good run for their money, Jean Saint Malo was captured in battle. On June 19, 1784 he was hanged in front of St. Louis Cathedral in what is now known as Jackson Square in New Orleans, the site named after President then General Andrew Jackson. Jackson was regarded as the man who murdered the Native Americans by the bus loads during the Trail of Tears when as President, he signed the order that evicted thousands of Cherokees from their homes in the dead (middle) of winter despite an earlier United States Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.
History has a certain way of making heroes. Its’ ironic that on June 19th the very day Jean Saint Malo was dispatched by the Spanish, many African-Americans to this day celebrate the date as Juneteenth when slavery officially ended in several southern states during the American Civil War.
Reader you’re probably thinking ‘why is this guy always bringing up color?’ Why I’ll tell you why: this is the Western Hemisphere where one’s skin tone has always been the issue. Have you been listening to the presidential candidates and hearing what they’re saying? I won’t broach that subject. This column is about the many aspects of travel. Buck up my friend, contrary to some of the nasty things many have said about our country, compared to the rest of the Western Hemisphere-including Canada-the United States is, and I can prove it, still the best bet for persons of color if you’re willing to go the ‘extra mile’ and fight for your slice of the American Dream Pie.
Case in point: when was the last time you ever read about, heard talked about, or even SEEN a dark Latino/Latina running for the presidencies of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, any of the Central American states? What about a dark person running for Prime Minister of Canada-huh-huh? NEVER! All three current American presidential candidates are members of marginalized groups (a Black! a woman! and a senior citizen!) If you travel like I do, thank GOD, you get to see a lot more of what the rest of the world is like and you will be thankful for being an American just like those early Filipinos, who fled Spanish tyranny, were.
In the US you see many persons of all nationalities on a daily basis in the media; but getting back to Louisiana’s Filipinos, perhaps the color issue was a reason that these early Filipinos remained a closed community.
I read in an old issue of EBONY Magazine that Argentina ‘solved’ its race question by actually ‘breeding’ its Black population out of existence so much so that dark complexioned people are as rare a fine as hen’s teeth in that country. Perhaps the early Filipinos literally breed themselves into oblivion. If so was this a planned assimilation policy or an accident; few if any can say.
Reader, if you want more information on this interesting yet virtually unknown aspect of Filipino life I strongly urge you to log in to the list of web sources provided and do a bit of research your-SELF or drop me an email at: vamaxwell@yahoo.com or vamaxwell2@gmail.com and I’ll respond to all of your inquires ASAP (as soon as possible). Till next week when we conclude this segment of Philippine Adventures The Filipino-Cajun Connection-bye-bye.
WEB SOURCES:
www.apa.si.edu (Smithsonian Institution Asian Pacific American Program)
www.filipinohome.com www.ancestry.com www.pinoycook.net www.burntlumpia.typepad.com New Orleans Filipino-American Lions Club
Saint Malo, Louisiana-Wikipedia Manila Village-Wikipedia
In search of the ubiquitous Filipino
Frank’s Place-Museum of Broadcast Communications
www.gutom.org (Portal for the Pinoy Perspective-Fil-Am history)
PBS-“Ancestors in the Americas” Timeline
Asian and Native Intermarriage in the U.S.-Americas-Color Q’s Color Club