Under the French, Louisiana, Saint-Domingue, Martinique, and French Canada operated essentially as one colony, with intense trade, commerce and migration between all four locations.
Under the Spaniards, (present-day) Louisiana, Cuba, Mexico, (present-day) Texas, (present-day) California, Central and hispanophone South America and the Caribbean were all part of New Spain.
This was when the cities of New Iberia, Gálveztown, Valenzuela and others were founded by Spaniards and Canary Islanders in Spanish Colonial Louisiana.
During the period between 1764 and 1800, New Orleans, Veracruz, Mexico and Havana, Cuba; all Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico port cities, were the location of high volume migration, trade and commerce.
image source: Christophe Landry
In 1815, Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, issued a royal decree, the Real Cédula de Gracias, which offered free land and tax breaks to those settling in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Between 1815 and 1820, several hundred families of Louisiana Latins, formally citizens of Spain when Louisiana was a Spanish colony (1764-1803), took the offer and settled on both islands. After only 5 years, these foreign nationals were naturalized as Spanish subjects. The decree was in effect until 1898 in Puerto Rico.
The city of Cienfuegos, Cuba, was founded and incorporated by Louisiana Creole Louis Jean Laurent Brognier de Clouet, a native of New Orleans, whose wife, Clara López de la Peña, was a femme de couleur libre/mujer de color libre (free woman of color) from New Orleans. Brognier was a son of the famous Louisiana Chevalier, Alexandre Joseph François de Clouet.
It just so happened that during this period, known as the Antebellum Period, Anglo-Americans began issuing legislation suffocating the local Latin population of rights they formally had under the French and Spanish.
Louisiana Creoles, during this period, such as Louis Moreau Gottchalk, Edmond Dédé, Victor Séjour, Camille Thierry, Eugène Warbourg and entire communities of Louisiana Creoles, from across the state of Louisiana, due to the overwhelming legal restrictions, impediments and social degradations, settled in places like Rome, Italy, Paris and Puerto Rico.