Another city is readying itself to be the recipient of an immigration force “deployment”. This time, it’s the Crescent City that’s up to bat. The details on the New Orleans plan aren’t entirely clear yet, but indications are leaking out that the forces that were in Charlotte earlier this year may be coming to Southeast Louisiana in December–snowbirds of the very worst kind.

It does seem interesting that a city with a fabulous overall winter climate would become the new focus during the holidays, even conveniently into Mardi Gras season. It will be an enjoyable diversion for the jackboots to partake in the celebrations that wouldn’t exist without a myriad of cultures mingling in the city. The kinds of cultures they will arrive to eradicate, of course. Deploying after Nov. 30 means they will be able to avoid hurricane season as well, and any concern about being pressed to actually help if one hit. Not that they would offer any assistance. This coming crew is about destruction and displacement, really more in common with the actual hurricanes than not.

It’s with an additional layer of cruelty that it is a city that has much of its immigrant community hailing from Central America. You know, the nations that were made unstable and violent due to American backed mayhem, often at the behest of corporations like United Fruit. New Orleans has a long history of being involved with such things. In 1910 a group of gangster plotters, led by the ridiculously named Lee Christmas, joined together in the New Orleans red-light district of Storyville at the behest of ridiculously nicknamed Sam “The Banana Man” Zemurray (of United Fruit). From Storyville, they planned their assault on a nation not pleasing current corporate interests. Zemurray needed them to get rid of President Miguel Davila’s government in Honduras. That leader wanted to limit foreign ownership of the nation and to make these profiteering groups actually pay taxes. Unacceptable! Unacceptable! You may know Sam’s old house, it’s where the president of Tulane today lives. Sam’s been kinda whitewashed of many misdeeds because he gave away a few things. Like if a thief clears your house of its antiques and gives you back, well…… a banana in return. But anyway, yeah the leader of Honduras was ousted and another nation was made unstable by ridiculous and greedy hands.

Of course, that type of US led destruction in Central America didn’t end there. The Honduran exploits were done by mainly corporate interests who were given a wink-wink nudge-nudge from the US government, but a more overt US government-backed plot was taking place in 1954. Democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz, a proponent of land reform in Guatemala was becoming unacceptable to US interests as well. He wanted the land reform due to foreign plunderers owning and controlling 40% of the nation’s arable land. Poor Arbenz was not only battling the US government, but he also had to contend with Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. This was the PR guy who convinced women that by smoking they were lighting up “torches of freedom”. He was able to convince women that the ability to develop a smoker’s hack, obstructive lung disease and possibly cancer was actually quite liberating. But I digress, we are talking about Guatemala here.

So Bernays made a propaganda film called “Journey to Banana Land” to scare Americans that these banana lands were simply outposts of Soviet power and anything on the table was acceptable to neutralize the threat. Some of the propaganda included showing massacre scenes and blaming them on Arbenz when in fact the scenes were from other conflicts. The term banana republic stems from this era, of course. New Orleans was heavily involved in the infrastructure that made wide-scale banana distribution possible, from jerks like Sam the Banana Man and the “Ice Kings” that enabled some of the transport. Bananas were a very big deal, as odd as it is to consider today. Think of the petro wars over the years; there’s nothing new under the sun and any time a resource becomes valuable enough, horrible deeds will be performed to keep the profits coming in.

Back to Guatemala in the 50’s…… the well-known perfectly sane man Howard Hunt was the CIA point man in that particular coup. He helped others create a massively destabilized region. Cruel and greedy men showed up and disrupted entire countries. They took from the citizens their autonomy and attempted to steal their dignity. It was a sick spectacle and the ramifications continue. It created places with raging civil wars and drug violence. The corporate interests wanted a compliant serf style worker population and would happily leave vacuums of increased instability when it suited their fiscal interests.

Individuals fled these troubled areas and often found backbreaking low paid work in the US. They worked in the places that birthed the instability of their own nations. In today’s narrative making machine that would make Bernays proud; these people are now considered the villains. Paradoxically, if you had Puritan weirdos in your family tree like I did, those who left Europe because people couldn’t stand them—well that’s truly a pedigree we can get behind. It’s a mark of honor, told by families to their children. That of “your ancestors left to build a life in a new world and for that we are so incredibly proud of them” If you fled for honest to God safety reasons from Central America or simply the ability to provide for your family through hard work, but were not white, this makes you the bogeyman du jour. Classic abuser rationale. It’s why they want to erase true history and create nothing but a contrived Bernays style narrative.

Another layer to all of this is that much of the current imperial directive to hate those here from Mexico and Central American nations is most likely just a contrived scapegoat attempt due to the prevalence of tech bros and their infiltration of the MAGA movement. Curtis Yarvin, the latest in a line of “I’m selfish and need a way to justify it” Ayn Rand sewage philosophers has taken another guy’s theory (Rene Gerard) and basically said that society has to have a scapegoat to channel an inherent ugly energy. Lord knows they don’t want it channeled their way, so they find another to blame. It’s a craven and calculated move to keep the masses distracted. Look over here as the magician moves his hand to the right while he shoves a rabbit up your ass from the left. It’s a calculated, cowardly plot. They found a scapegoat to blame, and they hope other Americans will be stupid enough to buy into it while they continue to profiteer in every manner possible.

The cold malice involved in targeting groups who have literally built much of this country is pretty breathtaking. After Katrina, the city of New Orleans relied on those very groups to rebuild after the massive damage. They say tents were pitched in City Park, full of laborers, their campfires lit as they grouped together to rest. They worked the daylight hours, simply to wake up and do it again the next day. The kind of work most of us would fail at miserably if we attempted it. A UC Berkeley study indicated that ½ of reconstruction after Katrina was performed by Latino workers and ¼ were said to be undocumented, primarily coming from Mexico and Honduras. Many in the famously blue city remember this and most citizens definitely aren’t behind any of the upcoming depraved sweeps. This is an outside occupation force planning to arrive.

The forgiveness that individuals from these locations have shown to the very nation that upended their home countries’ stability is noteworthy. Then they experience having that country come in to victimize them again….this is the time when people need to know the true history of what their nation has done and to atone. Not to be in that hole of hatred and greed and to keep digging because sooner or later that behavior will land you and yours in a well-deserved hell.

So here’s to hoping that the city comes together and protects those vulnerable individuals they are targeting. New Orleans needs to fight back with what comes readily to it. Portland used inflatable dinosaurs. New Orleans has eccentricity and some good old-fashioned street hustling at the ready. May every fake monk demanding money who walks the French Quarter put so many bracelets on the interlopers that they are completely weighted down by them. May every street hustler walking Bourbon Street say to ICE members: “I bet you $20 I know where you got your jackboots” and clog their paths, exasperating them to exhaustion until they give them all their money. Every city fights back in its own way, perhaps the New Orleans way forward needs to be expanding our already impressive pothole population. No tanks will pass! Of course, neither will our cars, but we can iron that out later. It can be a multi-pronged approach to bring about sheer capitulation and retreat from this beautiful and flawed city. The city that is beautiful due to the multicultural presence and flawed due to treating so many as “others” over the centuries, enslaving and taking, plotting the harm of our southern neighbors for the almighty dollar.

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Public Service Announcement for readers, but not for immigration guys…….. the correct answer to anyone in the French Quarter who comes up to you saying “I bet you $20 I can tell you where you got your shoes” is 1. “Go away, I live here” or 2. “On my feet.”

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