LOUISIANA

Louisiana has had some bad press lately on account of Hurricane Katrina, but watching the rebirth of its most famous city, New Orleans, serves to remind us that Louisiana is perhaps the most culturally unique state in the U.S. due to its strong French heritage.

When Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana purchase, what would eventually become Louisiana and almost the whole of the Mississippi basin were under French control. Almost every state but Louisiana shook off its French influence, for Louisiana was home to the major French outpost of the region – the territorial capital and port city of New Orleans. Louisiana’s identity is this French heritage, right down to Mardi Gras, beignets and creole (cooking, ethnicity and patois). Even Louisiana’s legal system and civil structure are based on the French civil system rather than the English common law system that other states have adapted. For instance, in Louisiana there are parishes instead of counties, and judicial decisions rest heavily on codified law rather than judge-made legal principles.

Louisiana’s iconic geographic feature is the bayou. The Miscopy River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and its delta comprises Louisiana’s whole southern coast. This marshy region is home to Louisiana’s Cajun culture and both this rich land and culture are in danger of being lost. Louisiana’s wetlands are disappearing at an alarming rate, and the culture they support is disappearing with them. Part of the problem is that southern Louisiana is poor and doesn’t offer much in the way of employment outside of crawfishing. Indeed, seafood is Louisiana’s largest export, and it is the largest producer of crawfish in the world. There is some oil drilling and refining work available in this part of the state, too, as there are oil fields beneath the Gulf of Mexico.

New Orleans, which sits on the Upper Delta on Lake Pontchartrain, is home to a rich cultural heritage, too. Particularly, the city is noted for its musical traditions and is the birthplace of Dixieland Jazz. Southern blues found its first urban audience and made an entre into the rest of the United States via New Orleans. Besides music, New Orleans is renowned for its food. New Orleans restaurants feature traditional and fusion French cuisine unlike any other in the United States, Cajun and creole cuisine such as gumbo and jambalaya, traditional southern fare like fried chicken and red beans and rice, and seafood such as crawfish. No description of Louisiana, particularly New Orleans, would be complete without mentioning Mardi Gras. The month-long festival is perhaps the most famous of its kind, with the possible exception of its South American cousin, Rio’s Carnival.

Though Louisiana conjures up images of swampy crawfish cookouts and bacchanalian Mardi Gras parades, there is more to the state than New Orleans and the bayou. The capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge, on the upper reaches of the delta, and Shreveport, in the northwestern corner of the state, is its third largest city. Shreveport is also the second biggest tourist destination behind New Orleans because of riverboat gambling. The city also boasts an opera, an orchestra, a theater company and a ballet company.