New Orleans footsteps

Professor Jurg K. Siegenthaler. American University

The scattered destinations of Swiss immigrants to North America mean that one encounters their tracks in all kinds of places.

On a recent visit to New Orleans, I learned from a memorial plaque in the lovely garden of the Beauregard-Keyes House that Anaïs Merle, née Philippon, wife of the Swiss consul to that city, had passed away there in 1847.

Her husband, John A. Merle, from a Genevan Huguenot family, had been appointed to his post in 1838 at the request of some 30 Swiss citizens in the Crescent City, most of them emigrants from the cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud. He was also the founder of the Swiss Benevolent Society of New Orleans and brother of the famous Evangelical Revival theologian Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné.

Not that these footsteps would attract much attention in New Orleans today.

The city is a bundle of contrasts. Its French Quarter and Garden District are almost as lively as they were before Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005.

The French Quarter Festival held in April attracted thousands of visitors – many of whom were local families – to three days of exciting music on 16 stages. It is followed in May by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, a premier event that celebrates the city’s unique contribution to American culture.

Scenes of devastation

But head out toward the lake and downriver, and you see utter devastation. In formerly wealthier areas, here and there houses are being fixed up, but other stretches present street after street of empty shells, closed schools and shuttered stores.

Valiant voluntary efforts by church and civic groups from all over the country have created nuclei of new houses in some poorer sections, but it is clear that few former residents, even if they managed to secure a job, could return and find a place to live there at this time. Less visible, but painfully real, is the destruction of two-thirds of the city’s hospital and medical provision system.

The memory of Katrina includes the human failures that turn an onslaught of nature into a disaster. The hurricane flooded 80 per cent of New Orleans because the federal system of levees (dikes), floodwalls, and gates broke in more than a dozen different places.

The rescue efforts took almost four days to get into gear. Money allocated for rebuilding got diverted or is slow to trickle down to victims. Even some international aid offers have yet to be accepted, while funds provided are still waiting to be used. Leadership at all levels has been questioned.

Different approaches

My recollections of late summer 2005 also include August 21-23, when the largest flood Switzerland had experienced since 1987 inundated towns and villages in the whole region north of the alps from Vaud to Graubünden, all just a little more than a week before Katrina.

Although the damage was considerable at over $2 billion, a large loss of life could be avoided by a preventive “Linked System of Civilian Protection.” Leading agencies were quickly able to coordinate police, firefighters, civil rescue, and subsidiary military equipment – and help.

True, differences in scale defy an easy comparison, but in prevention, rescue, and repair, one qualitative contrast in dealing with overwhelming forces of nature stands out.

Switzerland still strongly endorses the ultimate responsibility of the state, while for over 25 years now the United States has seen a defamation of the state and glorification of the market. No wonder that neither the Army Corps of Engineers nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were up to their tasks.

International support

What is still needed now is that the friends of New Orleans and Louisiana worldwide support their residents with specific resources and imagination at the community level. Volunteer and financial help aimed at the grassroots have flowed into the disaster areas at impressive rates.

Swiss donors gave generously in 2005 to both their own and Louisiana flood victims. Today, visiting music events in New Orleans is enjoyable and will help support jazz musicians, some of whom have lost everything. So come in large numbers!

Sometimes imagination, or a gesture, would help as well. France has funded many stipends for musicians to spend time in Paris to recharge their batteries, and it has contributed impressively to art exhibits in New Orleans, which attract visitors.

The powerful reinsurance company Swiss Re lost $1.2 billion in Katrina, just about what its profit comes to in a single year. It gave a donation to those affected by the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, and probably found it unnecessary to do the same for a rich country like the US.

But at this late date it would still help a great deal if it provided, for example, a loan guarantee for one of the struggling housing rebuilding programs in a poor section of New Orleans.

Jurg Siegenthaler

The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of swissinfo.

Biography

Every month retired professor, Jurg Siegenthaler, compares and contrasts aspects of life in Switzerland with that of his adopted homeland, the United States.

He emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in 1967, and is now a retired university professor living close to Washington, DC. He is a graduate of Bern University (Dr.rer.pol., 1966).

His fields of teaching and research encompassed economic history, social theory and social policy analysis. Throughout his career, he has maintained close comparative research interests in the US and Switzerland.

He is associated with the Institute for Socio-Financial Studies, a research non-profit that has done a lot of work improving financial literacy at the community level.

Since his retirement, Jurg Siegenthaler has broadened his involvement in community organizations and in the arts. He is married and lives with his wife Linda in Silver Spring, Maryland.