A CENTER FOR BRAZILIAN SCHOLARSHIP BY ANNIE McNEILL GIBSON (PhD ’10) ADMINISTRATIVE ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DIRECTOR OF STUDY ABROAD
3 4 | TUL A NE SCHOO L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZIN E
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ew Orleans is often referred to as the northernmost city of the Caribbean. As such, researching and teaching at Tulane offers many moments to draw connections between our city and Latin America. We often think about these connections first in relationship to Spanish-speaking Latin America given that Spain had sovereign control over New Orleans in the 18th century. Tourists visiting the French Quarter see the Cabildo, the municipal hall that dates to this period of Spanish colonial rule and various plaques and monuments throughout the city commemorate more recent relationships with Latin America, most notably the statues of Simon Bolívar, Benito Juárez, and Francisco Morazán Quesada along Basin Street. Other landscape elements such as the Spanish-language signage along Williams Boulevard in North Kenner, an area just a few miles beyond New Orleans, manifest the dynamic Latino communities that are a part of the city’s more contemporary history and character. The 2010 census revealed that the Latino population as a whole has more than doubled in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, an important and often overlooked enclave within this Latino community in New Orleans is the Brazilians. By the nineteenth century, the networks that linked New Orleans to ports around the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean also extended south of the equator to Brazil. From this point until Hurricane Katrina, a special commercial connection led to the establishment of a small Brazilian community. Brazil was a major supplier to the New Orleans coffee industry, with Louisiana Coffee and Spice Mills marketing the guarantee on its packaging that its Lunch Bell brand contained “pure Rio,” referenc-
