Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So this week, in the middle of all this noise about missiles and straits and downed jets, something happened in a small city in Louisiana that I think tells a much bigger story.
Bueno, cuéntame.
Right, tell me.
¿Qué pasó exactamente?
What exactly happened?
A vehicle plowed into a Lao New Year parade in New Iberia, Louisiana.
At least fifteen people were hurt.
And my first reaction was: wait, there's a Lao New Year parade in Louisiana?
Mira, esa es exactamente la pregunta correcta.
Look, that is exactly the right question.
Y la respuesta es muy interesante.
And the answer is very interesting.
Right, so before we even get to the crash itself, I want to understand the community.
Because I covered Southeast Asia for years and I still had to stop and think: Laos, Louisiana, how did that happen?
Es que hay una historia detrás de eso, una historia muy triste.
The thing is, there is a story behind that, a very sad story.
Los laosianos llegaron a Louisiana después de la guerra de Vietnam.
The Lao people came to Louisiana after the Vietnam War.
And specifically, I want to name this properly, because it often gets lost: there was a secret war.
The CIA ran a covert operation in Laos through most of the sixties and seventies, recruiting Hmong and lowland Lao fighters to fight a proxy war against North Vietnamese supply lines.
Sí, exacto.
Yes, exactly.
Laos fue el país más bombardeado de la historia, por persona.
Laos was the most heavily bombed country in history, per person.
Los americanos tiraron más bombas en Laos que en toda la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
The Americans dropped more bombs on Laos than in all of the Second World War.
That statistic still stops me cold every time.
More than two million tons of ordnance.
And the extraordinary thing is most Americans have never heard of it, because it was classified for years.
Bueno, y cuando los comunistas ganaron en 1975, mucha gente de Laos huyó.
Well, and when the communists won in 1975, many people from Laos fled.
Cruzaron el río Mekong en barcos pequeños, con mucho peligro.
They crossed the Mekong River in small boats, with great danger.
The Mekong crossing.
I interviewed a man in Minnesota once who made that crossing as a twelve-year-old.
He said his mother made him tie himself to a piece of bamboo in case he fell off the boat in the dark.
A ver, eso es terrible.
Right, that is terrible.
Y después de cruzar el río, muchas familias vivieron años en campos de refugiados en Tailandia.
And after crossing the river, many families spent years living in refugee camps in Thailand.
And then resettlement in the United States, starting in the late seventies.
Now, here is where Louisiana comes in, and it is not an obvious destination.
La verdad es que Louisiana tiene una historia especial con los refugiados del sudeste asiático.
The truth is that Louisiana has a special history with Southeast Asian refugees.
Las iglesias católicas de la región ayudaron mucho con el proceso.
The Catholic churches of the region helped a great deal with the resettlement process.
Which makes sense, actually.
Laos was heavily evangelized by French missionaries.
Catholic networks in Louisiana, a deeply Catholic state, connected with Catholic Lao and Vietnamese refugees.
There was infrastructure there already.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y también, la geografía ayudó.
And also, the geography helped.
Louisiana tiene ríos, tiene pesca, tiene un clima húmedo y caliente.
Louisiana has rivers, it has fishing, it has a hot and humid climate.
Para muchos laosianos, eso era más familiar que Minnesota o Wisconsin.
For many Lao people, that was more familiar than Minnesota or Wisconsin.
I had not thought about that, but it is so obvious in retrospect.
You come from the Mekong Delta region, a world built around rivers and rice and fishing, and suddenly you are in the bayou.
It is not home, but it rhymes with home.
Me gusta eso, «rima con el hogar».
I like that, 'rhymes with home'.
Bueno, y New Iberia es una ciudad pequeña, de unas treinta mil personas, pero tiene una comunidad laosiana importante desde los años ochenta.
Well, and New Iberia is a small city, around thirty thousand people, but it has had a significant Lao community since the nineteen eighties.
So now we get to Lao New Year itself, because this is the cultural heart of what happened.
Pi Mai, they call it.
It falls in mid-April, which is also when you get Songkran in Thailand, Thingyan in Myanmar, the same festival across the whole region.
Es una fiesta de agua, ¿no?
It is a water festival, right?
La gente se lanza agua para celebrar el nuevo año y para limpiar el año viejo.
People throw water at each other to celebrate the new year and to wash away the old year.
Exactly.
It is tied to the Buddhist calendar, to the end of the dry season, to renewal.
And in a diaspora community, a festival like this carries enormous weight, because it is one of the main ways the culture survives being transplanted.
Mira, eso es muy importante.
Look, that is very important.
Cuando vives lejos de tu país, las fiestas tradicionales no son solo diversión.
When you live far from your country, traditional festivals are not just fun.
Son una manera de decir: «Todavía existimos.
They are a way of saying: 'We still exist.
Todavía somos quiénes somos.»
We are still who we are.'
No, you are absolutely right about that.
I have seen it everywhere I have worked.
The Lebanese community in Buenos Aires celebrating Eid in a Spanish-speaking city.
Filipino workers in Beirut marking regional feast days.
You cling to those moments.
Y en el caso de los laosianos en Louisiana, es más complicado.
And in the case of the Lao community in Louisiana, it is more complicated.
Porque la guerra que los obligó a salir fue, en parte, una guerra americana.
Because the war that forced them to leave was, in part, an American war.
Y ahora viven en América.
And now they live in America.
That tension is real and I do not think most Americans spend a single second thinking about it.
Here is what gets me: the United States recruited Lao fighters, used their land as a battlefield, and then when it all collapsed, tens of thousands of people had to flee.
The resettlement was, in some sense, a moral debt.
La verdad es que eso pasa mucho en la historia.
The truth is that this happens a lot in history.
Un país hace una guerra lejos de su territorio, y después los refugiados de esa guerra llegan a ese mismo país.
A country fights a war far from its territory, and then the refugees from that war arrive in that same country.
Es una ironía muy grande.
It is a very deep irony.
And the community that built itself in Louisiana, in New Iberia, in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, did it largely without recognition.
These are not communities you see in the headlines.
They just built temples, opened restaurants, taught their kids the language.
A ver, ese es el trabajo más difícil de la inmigración.
Right, that is the hardest work of immigration.
No es cruzar el mar o el río.
It is not crossing the sea or the river.
Es mantener tu lengua, tu comida, tu música, en un lugar donde nadie la conoce.
It is maintaining your language, your food, your music, in a place where nobody knows it.
So when a community organizes a public parade, a Lao New Year parade down the streets of New Iberia, Louisiana, that is not a small thing.
That is fifty years of cultural survival made visible.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y entonces un coche chocó contra ese desfile.
And then a vehicle crashed into that parade.
Es muy triste.
It is very sad.
No sabemos todavía si fue un accidente o algo peor.
We do not yet know whether it was an accident or something worse.
And I want to be careful here, because at the time of recording we do not have a confirmed motive.
What we know is fifteen people injured, a celebration interrupted.
But the pattern of vehicle attacks on public events in recent years means these things are never simple to process.
Bueno, sí.
Well, yes.
Pero lo que es seguro es que la comunidad laosiana de Louisiana va a continuar.
But what is certain is that the Lao community of Louisiana will continue.
Estas comunidades son muy resistentes.
These communities are very resilient.
Sobrevivieron guerras, campos de refugiados, el Mekong de noche.
They survived wars, refugee camps, the Mekong at night.
The thing is, resilience is real, but it is also a word we sometimes use to avoid talking about the cost.
These communities have carried an enormous amount.
And they have done it quietly.
Es que las comunidades pequeñas en América muchas veces no tienen una voz grande en los medios.
The thing is, small communities in America often do not have a big voice in the media.
Los cubanos en Miami, sí.
Cubans in Miami, yes.
Los mexicanos en California, sí.
Mexicans in California, yes.
Pero los laosianos en Louisiana, no tanto.
But Lao people in Louisiana, not so much.
Which is part of why this story matters beyond the accident itself.
It is a reminder that the American story of immigration is so much more textured than the simple narratives we tell about it.
Mira, para mí, lo más fascinante es que Laos y Louisiana son dos palabras que empiezan igual, con «La».
Look, for me, the most fascinating thing is that Laos and Louisiana are two words that start the same way, with 'La'.
Pero son mundos completamente diferentes.
But they are completely different worlds.
I am going to let that land for a second because I genuinely had not noticed that.
Laos, Louisiana.
There might be a book in that.
A ver, pero también es importante hablar de la comida.
Right, but it is also important to talk about the food.
Porque la cocina laosiana en Louisiana mezcló cosas de los dos mundos.
Because Lao cuisine in Louisiana mixed things from both worlds.
El arroz pegajoso con especias cajún, por ejemplo.
Sticky rice with Cajun spices, for example.
That is a real thing and it is extraordinary when you taste it.
The food cultures rhyme too, actually.
Both are built around rice, around fish, around fermented flavors, around cooking that takes time and patience.
Exacto, y eso facilita la integración, pero sin perder la identidad propia.
Exactly, and that makes integration easier, but without losing your own identity.
Puedes ser laosiano y también ser de Louisiana.
You can be Lao and also be from Louisiana.
No tienes que elegir.
You do not have to choose.
And that, honestly, is the most hopeful version of the immigration story.
Not assimilation, where you erase where you came from.
Not isolation, where you never engage with where you landed.
But something in between, a new thing that did not exist before.
Bueno, y la próxima vez que celebren el Año Nuevo lao en Nueva Iberia, espero que sea más grande, con más gente, y con más ruido.
Well, and the next time they celebrate Lao New Year in New Iberia, I hope it is bigger, with more people, and with more noise.
Porque esa fiesta tiene una historia muy importante detrás.
Because that festival has a very important history behind it.
I hope so too.
And if you are listening to this and you have never heard of Pi Mai, go look it up.
Find out if there is a Lao community near you.
Because this is one of those stories that the world is too busy to tell, and it deserves to be told.