ST. BERNARD PARISH, Louisiana On a cold day in November 2019, two podcasters and a historian boarded a small boat on the edge of Louisianas Lake Borgne and drifted into the bayou. They were bound for St. Malo, the first permanent Filipino settlement in the United States. Sailors from the Philippines, known as the Manila Men, settled there in the mid-19th century, decades before the Civil War.

Paola Mardo, a petite, fast-talking Filipina American journalist who flew in from Los Angeles with her partner Patrick Epino for the journey, wanted to gather recordings for Long Distance , their podcast about Filipinos abroad. Mardo, Epino and Michael Salgarolo, a lean, bookish New York University historian who studies the Manila Men, wanted to see St. Malo before it disappeared from the map. All three identify as Filipino American. (Disclosure: Salgarolo is the writers partner.)

Were all in the diaspora, Mardo said. These Filipinos in St. Malo were the first.

The travelers planned to join local Filipino Americans at a grand celebration of the communitys history in Louisiana the next day. They passed through choppy waters and reedy spartina grass along the lakes south shore, where bustling fishing villages once thrived.

There are no structures left because the wetlands are sinking into the sea at a rate of 28 square miles per year . Only 75% of the wetlands that existed in 1932 were still present in 2016, according to one U.S. Geological Survey report , and what remains is increasingly under threat. Coastal erosion and climate change, together with human destruction of the wetlands, are to blame.

Since St. Malos founding over 170 years ago, its significance in Filipino and American history had never been acknowledged by the state or federal government. Over the past decade, local Filipino Americans have lobbied the Louisiana legislature to formally recognize St. Malo as the birthplace of their community, which has grown to 12,000 people in the state and 4.2 million people across the U.S.

For Filipinos, who are constantly portrayed as foreigners and outsiders in America, St. Malo is something that a lot of people look to to say, Hey, weve been here a long time. We belong on American soil, Salgarolo said.

The Filipino American community in Louisiana was founded by descendants of the original St. Malo settlers and other early Filipino immigrants to the area. For decades, its leaders have raised awareness about their long and little-known history. In recent years, theyve grappled with an unprecedented dilemma: how to preserve and memorialize their history when their oldest physical touchstone is vanishing into the sea.

The History Of St. Malo

While a number of historians have studied St. Malo and its inhabitants, documents about the site are scarce. Academics often cite an 1883 Harpers Weekly article by journalist Lafcadio Hearn, who traveled to the site in search of the Filipino settlers.

Hearn described an eerie trip through the marsh that led to a hidden village of fantastic houses poised upon slender supports above the marsh, like cranes or bitterns watching for scaly prey.

The cinnamon-colored inhabitants were strange, wild, picturesque, he wrote, noting that they often sent money home to aid friends in emigrating. An illustrator named J.O. Davidson who traveled with Hearn sketched mysterious houses and swarthy men. His drawings were later made into engravings for the article and are now the only images of St. Malo that exist.