The origins of Saint Malo are tangled in the brackish history of Spanish colonial shipping. During the Manila galleon trade, which ran from the 1560s to 1815, Spanish ships sailed between Manila and Acapulco carrying silk, spices, and porcelain. Filipino sailors crewed these vessels, often under brutal conditions. Some accounts place the founding of Saint Malo as early as 1763, when Filipino sailors deserted their ships and disappeared into the marshlands of Louisiana, where no Spanish officials could find them. Other historians argue the settlement formed later, in the early nineteenth century. What is not in dispute is the reason the men fled: they wanted to escape the brutalities inflicted by their Spanish masters. The swamps of southeast Louisiana, inhospitable to outsiders, offered something the open ocean could not -- a place to vanish.

Saint Malo existed in a jurisdictional void. The Manilamen paid no taxes. No law enforcement official, no representative from St. Bernard Parish, the state of Louisiana, or the federal government had ever visited the village. Priests rarely came. The settlement's isolation was both its protection and its defining characteristic. The fishermen slept, according to Hearn, on mattresses laid upon shelves mounted against the walls, "among barrels of flour and folded sails and smoked fish." Fish was smoked and hung for preservation -- a necessity in a place where supply lines did not exist. The Manilamen courted and married Isleno, Cajun, and Indigenous women, weaving their community into the broader fabric of Louisiana's coastal cultures. Their descendants carry Filipino ancestry to this day; Los Islenos Heritage and Cultural Society of St. Bernard lists Filipino as a significant community that shaped the Isleno identity.

The name Saint Malo carries a darker history as well. Beginning in 1784, a man named Juan San Malo led a group of fugitive slaves through the same swamps south of New Orleans. His band stole livestock, destroyed property, and terrorized settlers until the Spanish government mounted an expedition to capture them. The area where San Malo hid became known by his name, and the Filipino fishing village inherited it. The Manilamen also intersected with another legendary figure: the pirate Jean Lafitte, who recruited Filipino Americans from the region to join his Baratarians -- a group of privately armed fighters who served under Andrew Jackson during the defense of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Historian Marina Espina noted that Jackson's defending force included "regular army troops, state militia, western sharpshooters, two regiments and pirates from the Delta Swamps," which included Filipinos. Though the exact number who fought remains debated, their presence places Filipinos at one of the most famous battles in American history.

Saint Malo survived for generations in the marshes, but it could not survive the 1915 New Orleans hurricane. The storm obliterated the village along with much of the surrounding region. There was nothing left to rebuild. The remnants of the community dispersed and assimilated into New Orleans. For decades afterward, Saint Malo existed only in the memories of descendants and in Hearn's century-old article. Then, in November 2019, a historical marker was installed at the Los Islenos Museum Complex in St. Bernard Parish, acknowledging what had been there. The marker stands as a small, formal recognition of a community that predated the United States itself -- Filipino sailors who chose the Louisiana swamp over the cruelty of colonial ships, and built a life that lasted more than 150 years before the Gulf took it back.