Hands across the water

There was a time when you wouldn’t see a whole lot of this, the shrimp boat captains who don’t speak English so well mingling with those who do, some of them sharing information with each other about how best to make a living in tough times.

Even when things were good the Vietnamese-American shrimpers and the local Caucasian ones – most locally of Cajun descent – didn’t have a whole lot to do with each other for a very long time.

Things never got quite as bad here as they did in Texas, where resentment over Vietnamese newcomers from more traditional local fishermen boiled over into violence.

Boats were burned, there were reports of shots fired, and there were many complaints of injustice toward the newcomers, which, the record still reflects, went unaddressed.

The friction had its roots in the numbers of refugees following the fall of Saigon, in 1975, who braved storms, pirates and other deadly unpleasantness. Agreements were made between the U.S. and other nations to resettle over 700,000 people at risk.

Resulting policies, historians say, of scattering the U.S. arrivals into communities ill-prepared for the influx is cited as one of the problems.

In the Gulf South, where fishing seemed a natural calling for the arrivals, resentments ran high. What critics say is a clumsy handling of the problem can be viewed in a 1985 movie called “Alamo Bay.”

The town was fictitious; the incidents it depicted were not.

In Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, as well as Mississippi, Vietnamese fishermen were discouraged from buying boats after pooling their money because they were charged premiums.

Programs to help them finance vessels at reasonable rates were developed, but that only led to more resentment from white shrimpers who felt the Vietnamese were getting breaks they couldn’t get.

The long voyages and hard work of the Vietnamese shrimpers, their willingness to scrimp by eating by-catch that the Anglos and Cajuns thought demeaning only added to the tensions.

On the water, the inability to communicate by radio created more difficulties.

Here in Terrebonne Parish, as in other places, tolerance developed over time.

So Friday, at the David Chauvin dock in Dulac, more than half of the people who showed up to learn new freezing techniques were Vietnamese-Americans.

They huddled in groups with fishermen bearing names like Trosclair and Boudreaux, helping each other understand the technology being discussed.

Among them was Barry Rogers, captain and owner of the 65-foot trawler Oasis. He found himself discussing the benefits of a tool called a refractometer with a captain named Tuone Cao from Cut Off.

There were some language issues to be sure, but shrimper to shrimper there was no denying that some knowledge was passed back and forth.

“It’s way better,” Barry said of the relations today between the two groups. “Time heals all wounds, people grow up and get smarter, more intelligent and more reasonable. It is getting better.”

Barry said he admires how the Vietnamese fishermen – even a generation or two since the migrations began – have been able to hold onto their language.

“Down-the-bayou French is almost gone,” he noted. Other groups of people when they learned English they forgot to speak their language.”

Barry said the increased dealings with each other, of the Vietnamese, the Cajuns and other ethnic groups working on the water is a good thing. There is power in numbers, and over time he is certain that more unity will create better benefits for all.

“It’s a way better deal,” he said. “It would be better if there could be more. Then we could have one organization for the fishermen in the whole state of Louisiana.”