Ethnic Media Share Survival Stories One Year After Katrina

Upon the one year anniversary of hurricane Katrina ethnic media shared their survival stories.

After a two-day evacuation, the dee jays returned to their offices in New Orleans to provide critical survival information in Spanish and help Latino residents connect with loved ones.

As business owners cancelled ads, severely cutting the station’s revenue, radio host Azucena Viaz said people from the community came to their rescue. They donated gasoline for their generator, some even bringing it from Houston. Viaz said the station played a crucial role for the Spanish-language community.

“We established a beachhead of good will,” she said.

One day, Viaz and her editor, Ernesto Schweikert, received a call that 300 people, including children, were living in a warehouse with two bathrooms and no kitchen.

When they reached the site that housed laborers, security guards were angry with them. Schweikert and Viaz argued that the laborers were promised $10 and were paid $7 and were living in these filthy
conditions. Rather than risk further exposure, the security guards then told the people in the warehouse that immigration was coming, a de facto firing of all 300 workers.

As the workers rushed out of the warehouse, Viaz was in tears. “What can you do now,” she asked some of them. But her station helped call attention to the situation of unequal pay. One of the workers told her, “Don’t worry. We are just happy you came and demonstrated that Spanish people are not alone.”

Viaz said the station is now doing great financially. She said the Hispanic community had grown substantially with new restaurants, discos, and stores opening.

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