Isleños in Louisiana
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Louisiana (mainly Saint Bernard Parish, Valenzuela and around Galvez) | |
| Languages | |
| American English • Spanish and also French | |
| Religion | |
| predominantly Roman Catholic. | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Spanish Americans, Canarians (Canarian Americans), Hispanos (Californios, Tejanos, Nuevomexicanos) Louisiana Creole people |
The Isleños of Louisiana are an ethnic group living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting in people of primarily Canarian Spanish descent. Most of its members are descendants of settlers from the Canary Islands who settled in Spanish Louisiana during the 18th century, between 1778 and 1783. The term can also informally be applied to anyone of Canarian descent or to a Canarian immigrant living in Louisiana. This term is to be distinguished from the term "Isleños", which refers to people of Canarian descent now living in any country of the Americas.
The Isleños in Louisiana make up four communities that speak dialects of Spanish, these include the Isleños of Saint Bernard Parish who have managed to preserve their culture as well as their dialect of Canarian Spanish, although none of the younger generation speak more than a few words; the Brulis, who live in scattered households in southern Louisiana and speak a dialect with French loan words; and the Adaeseños in the and Sabine parishes who speak a very similar dialect with loan words from the Nahuatl language of Mexico. The Isleño communities of Saint Bernard parish have also preserved the Spanish Canarian dialect spoken from the 18th century to present times, although it is in danger of dying out with the last speakers among the elderly segment of the population.
The success of the Isleños in Louisiana and Texas in preserving their culture has led some historians and anthropologists, such as Jose Manuel Balbuena Castellano, to consider the Isleño American community a national heritage of both of the United States and the Canary Islands.
By the late 16th century vineyards covered much of Tenerife, and by the mid-1650s the export of its wines to England had become crucial to the economy of the Canary Islands. With the crisis occasioned by the collapse of the trade in the Canarian malvasia wine (called "malmsey" in England) in the 18th century, there was an increase in poverty. Beginning in the late 1700s, prickly pear cactuses were grown in the Canary Islands to serve as hosts plants for cochineal insects from which the dye carmine was made. It became a major export of the islands in its own right, but this trade collapsed in its turn after the dye began to be produced synthetically in Europe. Most of the affected people were farmers and laborers who had lost their jobs and whose only sustenance was in marginal activities like selling coal, mining, begging, etc. The lack of employment opportunities and a policy of inadequate land distribution led to popular uprisings. The mobilization of the army for service in Europe and America impinged negatively on the islands as well. The Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Gálvez, desiring to populate the newly acquired territory, sought recruits from the Canary Islands (preferably married with children) to join the Spanish Army and be sent to Louisiana, offering them an opportunity to escape the subsistence economy and improve their situation. A few thousand chose to do so.
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Wikipedia