Nueva Orleans A Mexican wedding, a Honduran soup, and a family secret By Gustavo Arellano“New Orleans?!” I scoffed when my cousin Vic told our group of friends where he was going to get married. Why should a Mexican from Orange County, California, have his wedding there?“Calm down, Gus,” said Victor. “You’ve never been, so you don’t know. It’s beautiful—and cheaper than anywhere my wife and I could find in Southern California. And besides, it’s just like Jerez.”New Orleans, a city famous for its civic gumbo of Spanish, West African, French, and Caribbean influences, bore similarities to the isolated mountain birthplace of our parents? I scoffed again.I knew that after Hurricane Katrina, over 100,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants helped to rebuild the New Orleans metro area. Officials welcomed their labor to clean up disaster sites, but cracked down on their attempts to create permanent businesses.In 2007, Jefferson Parish passed regulations that essentially made it illegal fo...
