L
By Latin, we mean the culture practiced by Roman Catholic speakers of Latin-based languages native to Louisiana. While a French colony, Louisiana fell under the jurisdiction of Québec City, and during the Spanish period, was in the jurisdiction of Havana, Cuba. Louisiana’s culture, architecture, legal system, genealogies all would in turn come to share most in common with the larger Latin Americas (including Francophone Canada) than with the Anglo Americas.
Staunchly Roman Catholic and deliberately endogamous, Latin Louisiana consciously chose to remain separate from Anglophones–especially Baptists–after 1812. This Latin-Anglo separatedness is most well-known in New Orleans, where Canal Street served as the dividing line between the American and Creole districts of the city, each with their own Anglophone or Creole municipal leaders, customs, traditions, languages.
In various degrees, we find these same inclinations throughout Louisiana. In Natchitoches Parish, for instance, Creoles tended to huddle in Creole settlements at Campti, Cloutierville, and elsewhere on the Cane River. In Iberia Parish, Anglophones congregated in downtown New Iberia, Jeanerette proper, Peebles Plantation, Weeks Island and Avery Island while Francophones and Creolophones inhabited most of the rest of the parish.
Such separation persisted in Louisiana until well into the 20th century. The Catholic Church helped sustain and validate local Creole identity, too. In all church-parishes over which Francophone priests presided, the parishioners were known as Creoles, including parishes more recently known as the Cajun heartland. Additionally, until World War II, the Catholic Church highly discouraged exogamy, notably with Baptists. The couple had to obtain a dispensation for marriage and the non-Catholic party obliged himself/herself to rear their offspring in the Roman Catholic faith. This helped to create a highly cohesive Latin community, centered around Francophone Roman Catholicism and Creole identity, in direct opposition to Americanness.
One may be inclined to romanticize Latin Louisiana at this point. It is unwise to do so. For Latin Louisiana has always had its own internal issues, sometimes unique to them, other times exacerbated by Americans. Classism has plagued the community since day one. And those issues did not fade after 1812. When Creoles came to speak English, they also adopted a version of the American worldview. Race, which had not been a central identity for Creoles while speaking their own languages, came to play a central and enduring role in Latin Louisiana after World War II for this reason. It gave rise, at least in part, to the later Cajun identity movement of the 1970s.
Women were relegated to homes for life, or sometimes working in the fields. Although same-sex relationships and encounters occurred, as did relationships between priests and nuns with outsiders, locals quickly hushed the episodes and made conscious attempts to erase all evidence. Yet, fragments of these relationships still remain. From this, we can reconstruct the lives of people who lived 50 years ago, or 300 years ago.
These very real episodes in our history as well as our historical, cultural, and genealogical connectedness, are not always welcome today. Not publicly, anyways and many outright deny they exist. Such is the cost of assimilation. Many of our people find themselves without viable platforms to share their experiences and evidentiary research with larger audiences. Academic programs often reject our voices as do many members of our community.
For this reason, LHCV has teamed with 28 researchers, all dedicated individuals with great integrity. It is our honor, pleasure, and privilege to provide a platform where they can engage the larger public – a community platform by the community for the community. Our writers are here because they want the masses to benefit and grow from their research and voice.
Their areas of interest and expertise include, but are not limited to:
- Art
- Art collection
- Community
- Cuisine
- Folklore
- Genealogy
- Graphic design
- Identity
- Jim Crow
- Kouri-Vini
- Linguistics
- Literature
- Louisiana French language
- Memory
- Migration and diaspora
- Music
- Politics
- Roman Catholicism
- Slavery
- Voodoo
Join our mailing list to the right to read what they have to say. It’s worth 10 minutes of your time.