NEW ORLEANS ? They are the men still rebuilding New Orleans more than three years after Hurricane Katrina, the head-down laborers from Honduras, Mexico and Guatemala who work on the blazing hot roofs and inside the fetid homes for a wad of cash at the end of the day.
But on the street, these laborers are known as ?walking A.T.M.?s.?
Their pockets stuffed with bills, the laborers are vulnerable because of language problems and their status as illegal immigrants. And as Hispanics have become the prey of choice in crumbling neighborhoods here in one of America?s most crime-ridden cities, racial friction between the newcomers and longtime black residents has moved close to the surface.
Geovanny Billado, a worker from Honduras, spoke of one incident in which ?they waited to punch me,? and ?one of them stabs me with a knife.? It was four against one, Mr. Billado said, and he lost the $350 he had earned; another time, it was seven against one.
?You don?t get a chance to say anything,? he said. ?They just fall on top of you. It?s better to just give the money up front. If you don?t give it to them, they?ll beat you and take it anyway.?
It is an under-the-radar crime epidemic: unarmed Hispanic workers are regularly mugged, beaten, chased, stabbed or shot, the police and the workers themselves say. The ruined homes they sometimes squat in, doubling- or quadrupling-up at night, are broken into, and they have been made to lie face down while being robbed.
They are shot when, not understanding a mugger?s command, they fail to hand over their cash quickly enough, shot while they are working on houses, and shot when they go home for the day. Some have been killed, their bodies flown home to families who had been dependent on their remittances.
News reports suggest that at least a half-dozen Hispanic workers have been shot and killed in the metropolitan area since Hurricane Katrina, though the police say they have no idea of the precise number. At least once a week, the police receive reports of a mugging or a holdup ? certainly an undercount, since illegal workers with little or no English generally do not go to the authorities.
For the workers, the violence is a grim fact of their life here, one more risk among many. Waiting for work on recent chilly mornings outside a Lowe?s store on Elysian Fields Avenue and at the edge of an inner-city gas station, more than a dozen Hispanic workers spoke of their vulnerability ? to the bosses they see as cheating them, the police they see as harassing or ignoring them, and the criminals who prey on them.
Unshaven after spending nights in the open air and ragged in their paint-flecked work clothes, the men said that when guns are pointed at them, they have no choice but to hand over their cash.
When the day is over, and their employer for the day drops them off in the darkened Lowe?s parking lot, thugs could be waiting in the shadows for them, several said.
With resignation but no visible anger, more than half told of being threatened or robbed. One man, Armando Cruz, from Honduras, asserted flatly, to nods of assent, ?Most of us here have been robbed.?
Many bluntly assigned a racial component, saying that it was ?los morenos? ? their colloquial term for blacks ? who were after them. ?When we are leaving here after work, we have to go on foot,? Mr. Billado said, speaking through an interpreter. ?The blacks are waiting for us. They?ll beat you up. They?ll take your money.?
Such incidents can occur more than once a week, Mr. Billado said.
The police, the men said, either ignore their calls, admonish them for being in the country illegally or arrive too late at a crime scene to do any good.
?The blacks know when we have cash,? said Juan Guillermo Medina, another waiting worker. ?Yes, it?s dangerous. But we have to be here. It?s the risk we run.?
Juan Francisco Suazo, another worker, recounted an incident in January outside a grocery when he was jumped by two men, one of whom grabbed him around the shoulders while the other brandished a milk crate over his head. The muggers took five days? wages, Mr. Suazo said.
Outside the Lowe?s, another Honduran, Danny Diaz, recalled an incident in which he and a friend were coming out of a store and were ordered to turn over their money by two armed men. His friend was shot in the shoulder, Mr. Diaz said; it was one of three times Mr. Diaz had been assaulted in two months.
Roger Cruz, from Honduras, said: ?A lot of people don?t know how to defend themselves. There?s racism of blacks against Latinos.?
The accusation of racism does not ring true to some city leaders. The Hispanic workers tacitly acknowledge some unfamiliarity with the dangerous ways of inner-city life, and in the eyes of some in New Orleans, they have mistaken simple opportunism for racism.
It is not exactly racial prejudice that makes the Hispanic laborers the target of choice, said the Rev. John C. Raphael Jr., a black former New Orleans police officer and now a minister who has led anticrime rallies here.
?I think it?s not directly racial,? Mr. Raphael said, but rather ?the fact that they were vulnerable, they were taken advantage of.?
Mr. Raphael, one of the most prominent faces in the anticrime movement in New Orleans, called the widespread crime against Hispanic workers a ?tremendous tragedy.?
?These guys work hard all day,? he said, noting the contrast between the massed laborers waiting for work at a gas station at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Claiborne Avenue and a group of men drinking beer in the median nearby.
Janssen Valencia, a police officer who acts as an interpreter and occasionally as a radio counselor for Hispanic laborers here, urges them to hide their money and vary their walking patterns.
?It?s very sad that they?re here helping us rebuild, yet you have an element that?s targeting them,? Officer Valencia said. ?They work all week. Then comes the weekend, they get robbed.?
?What they really voice is: ?That money was for the family. We don?t harm anybody. Why does anybody mess with us?? ?
As work has tightened up with the economic downturn, the atmosphere has turned even grimmer. The muggings continue unabated, even as work days drop off.
?They took money from everybody,? said Cesar Reynoso, a Guatemalan, recalling the afternoon in December when he and five friends were robbed in the rough Central City neighborhood. They were in a sports field, Mr. Reynosa said, and four men pointed guns at them. They took $1,200 from the laborers.
?They just came up and took our stuff,? he said. ?They were just yelling at us.?
He said the laborers called the police, ?but they took forever to get there.?
The men expressed some bewilderment at finding themselves in the crosshairs, and more than a few directed earnest appeals to President Obama to alleviate their plight.
?We dedicate ourselves to look for work, and we just want the chance to be here,? said Mr. Cruz, the Honduran. ?We have children to support.?
Jennifer Whitney contributed reporting.