Interviewer: Preetam Prakash

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I had originally run into Mr. Sanzin while conducting another oral history interview in the area. I had spoken briefly with Mr. Sanzin at the time and he had said that he might be willing to do an oral history interview at some point. I had spoken with Mr. Sanzin a few times over the following weeks and we finally agreed to meet at his house in Gulfport to do the interview.

Mr. Sanzin was born in Gulfport in 1954. His father had come to the area from Yugoslavia after the Second World War. Mr. Sanzin described being raised in a shrimping and fishing community where even young children were expected to work and contribute to the household. He himself got started shrimping at a very early age and had gone to work full time on his father’s shrimp boat after leaving school. Mr. Sanzin recalled that the offshore oil industry had drawn some workers from the area during the 1970s but said that he himself had not had anything to do with this type of work during this decade. He remembered the 1980s as being the time when local people could make considerable money in the shrimping industry. Mr. Sanzin continued working as a shrimper until 2000, when he made the decision to go to work for the offshore oil industry as a boat captain. He described the difficulty that he had moving up in the industry as a person from outside of South LA, but expressed that he had always gotten along very well with the older generation of workers from that area. Mr. Sanzin had been taking some time off from work since the past year, and said that it had been a very good experience for him because he had finally had a chance to spend some time with his family. He was unsure exactly what type of work he would end up doing in the future, but expressed a desire to find something with a high degree of stability.