NEW ORLEANS -- So what if French hasn't been the lingua franca in Louisiana for almost 200 years?
Louisiana -- itself named for France's King Louis XIV -- still is loaded with reminders of France, from the city of Lafayette to the capital, Baton Rouge, to Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.The tricolor still flies prominently above a statue of Joan of Arc at Place de France near the French Quarter's French Market. New Orleans even named a street after former French President Charles de Gaulle.
These are all reassuring symbols to the French, unabashed exporters of their culture. And such reassurances seem to be what keeps an official French presence here despite Louisiana's diminished political and economic significance in the South.
Established in 1804, the French Consulate in New Orleans has seen a precipitous decline in its traditional responsibilities since the mid-1980s, when growth in Southern cities such as Atlanta and Miami began to take off.
Pulling out now, many think, would produce a stinging response: Non!
"I think a lot of French citizens would manifest their displeasure with closing the consulate," said Bernard Maizeret, the French consul general for Louisiana.
Serious discussions about closing the consulate began after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, when a number of Western nations refocused diplomatic resources in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, said Maizeret.
Since then, an official French presence here has survived in large part on national pride, while a number of other countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy and Holland, have withdrawn.
Louisiana was claimed by the French explorer Sieur de La Salle for King Louis XIV in 1682 and controlled by France for the better part of the next 121 years, until the Louisiana Purchase.
Maizeret estimates that nearly 300,000 Louisianans -- mostly in the Lafayette area -- still speak French to some extent, and France wants them to have every reason to continue to do so.
"I think the French care more about our French than Louisianans do and I think it's important they keep their role," said Kermit Bouillion, 48, of Lafayette, who owns a cafe in nearby Erath where French Cajun bands play to packed houses. "With the consul in our state and the presence he has, I think people here are more proud of their French background and speaking the language."
Bouillion and others who care about Louisiana's historical links to France are pleased by ongoing renovations at the consul's Garden District mansion, where signs of neglect had lent credence to fears the office would close.
The office was once the only official French presence in the South, covering Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
In 1985, a French consulate opened in Miami, followed by one in Atlanta in 1989. That, combined with an expansion of the Houston office in 1991, reduced the New Orleans consulate's territory to only Louisiana -- and the Houston office even took responsibility for economic matters here.
Such developments left the New Orleans office with the rather unconventional raison d'etre -- as far as consulates go -- of promoting French culture to a relatively small region.
However, France boosted Maizeret's staff, adding a vice consul to free up the consul general for public appearances, and a language specialist to help coordinate Louisiana's French teaching and immersion programs.
The consulate works closely with the state Council for the Development of French in Louisiana to recruit French teachers, promote French-language publications and broadcasts and organize cultural exchanges. Several French or bilingual newspapers are published in the state and French TV programs are shown periodically in several areas.
"The French are so proud of who they are -- their culture and language," said council spokesman Alan Brown. "When they find a willing audience like Louisiana, they're certainly not going to let that slip away."
On the Net:
CODOFIL: www.cajunculture.com/Other/CODOFIL.htm
Louisiana's site: www.state.la.us
France's diplomatic site: www.diplomatie.fr/index.gb.html