1. “Brother of Jose Ponce Arreola Discusses Recovery of Remains,” WWL-TV, August 18, 2020, https://www.wwltv.com/video/news/local/orleans/hard-rock-collapse/brother-of-jose-poncearreola-discusses-recovery-of-remains/289-3ac6d30a-74aa-42f6-aeaa-07f679536b5f.
2. Randy Gaspard, “Days Prior to Hard Rock Collapse, Citadel Well Aware of a Problem, Profits Over Safety, Sad!,” Facebook, October 15, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/randy.gaspard.311/videos/173870670402890/?t=8; Lee Zurik and Cody Lillich, “Zurik: Third City Inspector Likely Did Not Visit Hard Rock Site when He Signed Off on Work,” Fox8live, last modified February 20, 2020, https://www.fox8live.com/2020/02/20/zurik-third-city-inspector-likely-did-not-visithard-rock-site-when-he-signed-off-work/; Jules Bentley, “Built to Kill: The Hard Rock Collapse Is Simply Business as Usual for Louisiana,” Antigravity, November 2019, http://antigravitymagazine.com/feature/built-to-kill/.
3. Lynnell L. Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Deniz Daser, “Citizens of the City: Undocumented Latinx Migrants Organising Politically in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Public Anthropologist 3, no. 1 (March 2021): 148–176; Rachel Breunlin and Helen A. Regis, “Putting the Ninth Ward on the Map: Race, Place, and Transformation in Desire, New Orleans,” American Anthropologist 108, no. 4 (December 2006): 744–764. Sarah Fouts is currently working on a book-length manuscript that explores these frameworks in greater depth.
4. Kirsten Silva Gruesz, “Converging Americas: New Orleans in Spanish-Language and Latina/o/x Literary Culture,” in New Orleans: A Literary History, ed. T. R. Johnson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 137; George Lipsitz, How Racism Takes Place (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 236–237; Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism,'” Antipode 34, no. 3 (July 2002): 349–379. On racial capitalism, see Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).
5. “Kailas Companies | Real Estate Development & Management,” Kailas Companies, accessed April 13, 2021, https://www.kailascompanies.com/; “Developer, Praveen Kailas, Sentenced to 30 Months for Theft of Government Funds and Conspiracy Charges,” United States Department of Justice, December 18, 2013, https://www.justice.gov/usao-edla/pr/developer-praveen-kailassentenced-30-months-theft-government-funds-and-conspiracy; Timothy F. Green and Robert B. Olshansky, “Rebuilding Housing in New Orleans: the Road Home Program after the Hurricane Katrina Disaster,” Housing Policy Debate 22, no. 1 (February 2012): 75–99; David Hammer, “Hard Rock Hotel Developer’s Troubled Past First Exposed by WWL-TV,” WWL-TV, October 16, 2019, https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/orleans/hard-rock-developer-had-troubled-pastexposed-by-wwl/289-834e15ba-3a60-4dff-9bbf-648d400565c5. In January 2020, Kailas was ordered by a judge to stop harassing tenants in a property he owned. Just a block away from the collapse, the thirty-one-story International Style skyscraper towers over the French Quarter, a stark contrast to the assemblage of wrought iron balconies, Creole cottages, and Greek Revivalist–style structures that give the Vieux Carre its charm. Kailas sought to vacate tenants who had occupied the high-rise property for over a decade in order to demolish the interior apartments and offices and make way for two more hotels. Anthony McAuley, “Stop Harassing Tenants at 1010 Common, Judge Orders Hard Rock Developer Kailas,” Times-Picayune, January 24, 2020, https://www.nola.com/news/business/article_29c4d89e-3ed9-11ea-8802-07cdef30ed8e.html.
6. Michael Isaac Stein, “Hard Rock Developers Have Contributed Nearly $70,000 to Mayor Cantrell and Her Political Action Committee,” Lens, January 28, 2020, https://thelensnola.org/2020/01/28/hard-rock-developers-have-contributed-nearly-70000-to-mayor-cantrell-and-her-political-action-committee/; McAuley, “Stop Harassing Tenants.”
7. Richard Thompson, “Plans Unveiled for Hard Rock Hotel, New Orleans: 18 Floors, 350 Rooms on Canal Street,” Advocate, February 15, 2018, https://www.nola.com/article_782b5dbc-9d2a-59e2-96a5-9b6048df5007.html; “Hard Rock International Plans French Quarter Hotel and Residences in 2019,” Canal Street Beat, February 20, 2018, https://canalstreetbeat.com/hard-rock-international-plans-french-quarter-hotel-and-residences-in-2019/.
8. Leo B. Gorman, “Latino Migrant Labor Strife and Solidarity in Post-Katrina New Orleans, 2005–2007,” Latin Americanist 54, no. 1 (March 2010): 1–33; A. L. Murga, “Organizing and Rebuilding a Nuevo New Orleans: Day Labor Organizing in the Big Easy,” in Working in the Big Easy: The History and Politics of Labor in New Orleans, ed. Thomas J. Adams and Steve Striffler (Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2014), 211–227; Daser, “Citizens of the City.”
9. Erin Moore Daly, “New Orleans, Invisible City,” Nature and Culture 1, no. 2 (Autumn 2006): 135; Rebecca Torres et al., “Building Austin, Building Justice: Immigrant Construction Workers, Precarious Labor Regimes and Social Citizenship,” Geoforum 45 (March 2013): 147. In the twenty-year period between 1977 and 1997, the number of jobs in tourism went from 22,488 to 35,824, an increase of 60 percent. In the period between 1994 and 2002, hotel rooms in the city increased 40 percent. David Gladstone and Jolie Préau, “Gentrification in Tourist Cities: Evidence from New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina,” Housing Policy Debate 19, no. 1 (2008): 140, 139. Globally, of the twenty-two (and eleven under construction) Hard Rock Hotels, only one, located in Atlantic City, is unionized. Robert Habans and Allison Plyer, “Benchmarking New Orleans’ Tourism Economy: Hotel and Full-Service Restaurant Jobs,” Data Center, December 2018, https://s3.amazonaws.com/gnocdc/reports/benchmarking-tourism-brief-habans-et-al.pdf.
10. Daser, “Citizens of the City”; Jade Scipioni, “NFL’s Drew Brees Is Not Only a Passing Legend but also a Savvy Investor,” Fox Business, October 9, 2018, https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/nfls-drew-brees-is-not-only-a-passing-legend-but-a-savvy-investor.
11. Deniz Daser, “Leveraging Labor in New Orleans: Worklife and Insecurity among Honduran Migrants” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2018).
12. John Burnett, “See the 20+ Immigration Activists Arrested under Trump,” NPR, March 16, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/03/16/591879718/see-the-20-immigration-activists-arrested-under-trump. For more on deportability, see Daniel M. Goldstein and Carolina Alonso-Bejarano, “E-Terify: Securitized Immigration and Biometric Surveillance in the Workplace,” Human Organization 76, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 1–14; and Nicholas P. De Genova, “Migrant ‘Illegality’ and Deportability in Everyday Life,” Annual Review of Anthropology 31 (October 2002): 419–447.
13. Adam Davidson, “Who Wants to Buy Honduras?,” New York Times, May 8, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-honduras.html; Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Henry Holt, 2007); Christopher A. Loperena, “Honduras Is Open for Business: Extractivist Tourism as Sustainable Development in the Wake of Disaster?,” Journal of Sustainable Tourism 25, no. 5 (2017): 618–633; “Ten Years after the Honduran Coup: Selected Readings,” North American Congress on Latin America, June 28, 2019, https://nacla.org/news/2019/06/28/ten-years-after-honduran-coup-selected-readings.
14. “Nestled Oceanside in Beautiful Tela Bay, Honduras,” Indura Beach & Golf Resort, accessed April 14, 2021, http://induraresort.com/m/.
15. “Spa & Wellness,” Indura Beach & Golf Resort, accessed April 14, 2021, http://www.induraresort.com/spa-wellness.html.
16. Loperena, “Honduras Is Open for Business.”
17. Beth Geglia, “As Private Cities Advance in Honduras, Hondurans Renew Their Opposition,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (blog), December 3, 2020, https://cepr.net/as-private-cities-advance-in-honduras-hondurans-renew-their-opposition/; Beth Geglia, “Honduras: Reinventing the Enclave,” NACLA Report on the Americas 48, no. 4 (October 2016): 353–360; Nina Lakhani, “Honduras: Accused Mastermind of Berta Cáceres Murder to Go on Trial Next Month,” Guardian, March 2, 2021, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/02/berta-caceres-honduras-accused-mastermind-trial.
18. Anastasia Moloney, “Honduran Minority Fears for Survival after Leaders Abducted,” Reuters, July 31, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-honduras-landrights-violence-trfn-idUSKCN-24W1OG.
19. Interview with Garifuna community leader conducted during Sarah Fouts’s fieldwork to Barra Vieja and the Atlántida region of Honduras in July 2015. Population numbers for the Garifuna people in the United States are hard to track based on census data because Garifuna don’t fit the rigid identity structure of census formats. James Chaney’s work cites an estimate from 1997 for the New Orleans data on Garifuna people in New Orleans; however, the numbers are likely much higher. Nationwide statistics approximate one hundred thousand people. For New Orleans Garifuna information, see James Chaney, “Malleable Identities: Placing the Garínagu in New Orleans,” Journal of Latin American Geography 11, no. 2 (2012): 128. For information on Garifuna in New York, see David Gonzalez, “Garifuna Immigrants in New York,” Lens (blog), July 24, 2015, https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/24/garifuna-immigrants-in-new-york/. For information on Garifuna and the US census, see “Garifuna and the 2020 Census,” PhilanTopic (blog), Candid, December 2, 2019, https://pndblog.typepad.com/pndblog/2019/12/garifunas-and-the-2020-census.html.
20. James Rodríguez, “Garifuna Resistance against Mega-Tourism in Tela Bay,” North American Congress on Latin America, August 5, 2008, https://nacla.org/news/garifuna-resistance-against-mega-tourism-tela-bay; “The Garifuna Community of Barra Vieja on Trial for Defending Ancestral Territory,” Latin America in Movement, April 6, 2015, https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/170135?language=en; Proah, “The Garifuna Community of Barra Vieja on Trial for Defending Ancestral Territory,” Latin America in Movement, April 6, 2015, https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/170135?language=en.
21. Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988), 55; Allan Vorda and Jamaica Kincaid, “An Interview with Jamaica Kincaid,” Mississippi Review 20, no. 1/2 (1991): 7–26.
22. Jeff Adelson and Jessica Williams, “The Hard Rock Hotel Collapsed 17 Months Ago; Now Demolition Nears Its End,” NOLA, March 30, 2021, https://www.nola.com/news/politics/article_8ae71346-91b0-11eb-a2f8-67fa982790f9.html. For information on how other activist groups have suggested a similar way of memorializing, see Justin Montrie, “Call for Public Hearing on the Hard Rock Hotel Disaster | Call for a Community Rights Park,” Change.org, accessed August 30, 2020, https://www.change.org/p/the-people-call-for-public-hearings-on-the-hard-rock-hotel-collapse-this-isa-call-for-a-community-rights-memorial-park-at-1031-1041-canal.