Cape Verdeans

Cape Verdeans

ETHNONYMS: In New England: Black Portuguese, Brava, Crioul

Orientation

Identification. Most Cape Verdeans dwell in their native Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. Diaspora settlements, however, are located around the world. "Cape Verde" refers to the green color of the islands that sailors first saw after traveling south from European shores. "Black Portuguese" refers to the Cape Verdeans who settled in New England; they are distinct from other black Portuguese-speaking people from the islands of the Portuguese empire (principally Azoreans) who often settled in the same New England Neighborhoods where Cape Verdeans lived. "Crioul" refers to the language the Cape Verdeans speak. In New England the term "Crioulo" also refers to their distinctive life-style.

Location. The archipelagoes of ten larger islands of Cape Verde, of which nine are inhabited, and numerous uninhabited islets are located between 17°13′ and 14°48′ N and 22°40′ and 25°22′ W, about 455 kilometers from the West African coast. Good tradewinds, desirable natural resources of fresh water and salt, and good currents helped make Cape Verde a port of trade in the sixteenth century. Its strategic geopolitical and military position continues to make it a desirable base of operations between Europe and Africa. Its climate is tied to that of the Sahel region of Africa and therefore is dry, with low average rainfall, at 25-30 centimeters annually. Drought is common.

Demography. In 1988 the population estimate for Cape Verde was 357,478 (295,703 in the 1980 census). Population density is 89 persons per square kilometer, with a population growth of 0.92 percent (urbanites were 31.5 percent of the total population in 1988). In 1985 the total labor force was 81,700, and life expectancy was 63 years. In 1988 infant mortality was estimated at 65 per 1,000. The majority ethnic group is mestico, or people of mixed racial heritage, whose skin color ranges from white to black. Cape Verdean settlements of up to 50,000 people can be found in New England, especially in and around Boston (Massachusetts), New Bedford (Massachusetts), and Providence (Rhode Island). There are also settlements in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; in France; in the West African states that formerly were Portuguese colonies (Sao Tome, Principe, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, and Senegal); and in Portugal.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Cape Verdeans speak Portuguese, the official language, as their contact language. Crioulo, however, is their everyday language. It has a Portuguese morphology and an African phonetic system; lexical items derive from both.

History and Cultural Relations

The Cape Verdeans were born of west European colonialism and African slavery. Most likely the islands were used by African and Arab fishing folk and sailors as seasonal bases and as safe ports and provisioning points. They were not discovered and claimed until 1460 when Antonio di Noli and Diogo Gomes assumed control over the Windward Islands (Sotavento) in the name of King Alfonso V of Portugal. Two years later, Diogo Alfonso sighted the Leeward Islands (Barlavento). From then on settlers arrived from Algarve and the Madeira Islands and from the Iberian Peninsula. The largest numbers of these settlers were political exiles, adventurers, and criminals, as well as Portuguese administrators and clergy. The mixing of slaves with these settlers created Luso- (or Portuguese-) African and Afro-Portuguese ethnic groups such as Ladinos, mesticos, and tangomaus, on the one hand, and degredados, feitors, and lançados, on the other hand (see below for further discussion of terms).

Since its settlement in the fifteenth century, Cape Verde was closely linked with the region of Africa now called Guinea-Bissau. The slave-trade economy linked the islands with Africa, western Europe, and the New World in the sixteenth century. During the seventeenth century, slaving increased, although the role of Portuguese vessels declined. By the eighteenth century, whaling had become a crucial aspect of Cape Verdean development and often the only means of escape from drought and abject poverty for the men. This business created a link with New England, whose whaling industry was famous. Contact with New England provided opportunities for Cape Verdeans to settle in North America. Furthermore, American interests kept slaving alive. The "African Squadron" was created in the 1850s to prevent continued American involvement in West African slave trading.

In 1884-1885 the Berlin Congress confirmed the Territorial claims that separated Portuguese and French colonies. In 1870 Guinea-Bissau was separated from Cape Verde for the first time. This division gave Portugal greater administrative control over both regions. The abolition of the Portuguese monarchy in 1910 and the seizure of power by Fascists in 1926 changed little for the islanders. In 1963 Portugal claimed Cape Verde as an "overseas province." It was no longer a colony.

Decolonization in Africa also generated an armed national liberation struggle in Cape Verde, led by the PAIGC, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. PAIGC was founded in 1956 in Guinea-Bissau, having its origins in an earlier clandestine group founded by Henri Labery and the nationalist leader and revolutionary philosopher Amilcar Cabrai. Military confrontations Between Portugal and PAIGC marked the 1960s, forcing the Portuguese government in 1971 and 1972 to revise the Portuguese constitution and to pass the Overseas Organic Law, thus giving Portugal's overseas provinces even more autonomy. Despite the assassination of Cabrai on 20 January 1973, the PAIGC under the leadership of Aristides Pereira formed a new state, which by October 1973 had received diplomatic recognition from countries around the globe. In April 1974, the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement successfully overthrew the Fascist regime and negotiated full independence. On 30 June 1975, a general election was held for representatives to the Cape Verdean People's National Assembly, an act that represented the independence of Cape Verde. The Republic of Cape Verde officially declared its independence on 5 July 1975, although maintaining a unity of state with Guinea-Bissau. In 1980, a coup d'etat split PAIGC and Divided the state into its geographically distinct parts. Cape Verde became an independent country, separate from Guinea-Bissau.

Settlements

Initial settlement through land grants destined the majority of Cape Verdeans to varying states of poverty, destitution, and dependence. The island of Santiago was divided between Diogo Gomes and its codiscoverer, Antonio di Noli; their families retained rights over the island for 130 years. While initial settlement took place upon discovery, it was through slavery that the islands became populated. The first capital was Ribeira Grande (now known as Cidade Velha), abandoned with the economic decline and the self-liberation of slaves on Santiago. Praia, on the island of Santiago, became the capital. Slaves (domestic servants and plantation workers) escaped into the interior, especially on Santiago. They established communities that traded with white settlers. In the mid-nineteenth century freed slaves became small peasants on marginal land and landless laborers. Famines ravaged the population in 1770, 1830, and a generation later. Each time between 40 and 50 percent of the population perished. At the turn of the twentieth century, another drought struck with accompanying famine, killing 25 percent of the population.

The first settlements were created on Santiago in 1462. Sugar plantations were planned, modeled after those of the island of Madeira. Santiago residents were granted exclusive rights to the slave trade along the section of the Guinea coast nearest to the island because their lands were unable to produce sugar for the export market. Portuguese colonial landlords and merchants on the African mainland prevented Cape Verdean economic expansion. Cape Verdean smuggling developed as an important social and economic activity in response to this trade restriction.

Lançado merchants were active along the Guinea coast. Initially they were primarily Jews and then increasingly mulattoes. They also settled along the Gambia River and in Sierra Leone.

Piracy and attacks by foreign flotillas destroyed coastal towns, forcing many of those who survived to flee and settle in the interior.

Droughts shaped Cape Verdean settlement patterns, forcing people to move to areas of relative plenty. Furna, a town on Brava, was created in such a fashion. Droughts forced peasants into cities to obtain alms or public relief, creating shantytowns. Droughts also were responsible for longterm labor migration, following the extension of the Portuguese Empire. For example, Cape Verdean men and women went to the notorious labor camps in the cacao plantations of Sao Tome and Principe.

Sharecropping patterns have changed little since emancipation from slavery and, since independence in 1975, have been defined by absentee landlordism. In practice, though no longer by law, civil authorities usually reinforced traditional patterns of race and class differentiation. The black or mulatto peasant or laborer was as vulnerable to brutality from the police, under the direction of the administrator, as from the landlords. About 90 percent of the Cape Verdeans work as peasants, laborers, or fishers.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. As a socialist country, Cape Verde maintains a mixed economy. State-operated concerns such as the Empresa Publica de Bastecimento (Public Supply Company) or the Sociedade para a Comercializacão e Apoio ao Pesca Artesanal (Society for Fish Purchasing and Marketing) must turn a profit. Remittances from immigrant communities and the substantial aid packages put together by Cape Verde's aid partners have provided crucial economic support for Cape Verdeans. Remittances have played a central role in sustaining household economies since the establishment of diaspora communities. The central government maintains a hands-off policy regarding private investments. Agriculture has been virtually ignored, requiring the importation of most of the islands' food. In rural areas, agricultural production consists almost exclusively of maize, beans, sugarcane, and bananas, although drought has steadily decreased output. Five percent of all Production is produced by 29 percent of the working population.

Industrial Arts. Cape Verdeans use natural resources to fashion ornaments and household implements. For example, men carve coconut shells and sperm-whale teeth into a riety of decorative and utilitarian items. Women weave panos, strips of cotton cloth of West African texture and designs, which were originally woven on simple Mandingo strip looms. Cape Verdean weavers added indigo dye and wove elaborate Moorish or Portuguese designs in contrasting white thread. Pano production, for export as well as local use, involves local cotton growing, dying, spinning, and weaving. The indigo plant and Urzella lichen produce blue dyes, used in the Production of panos, which also have become an important export item.

Trade. The slave trade in Cape Verde started in the sixteenth century, intensified between 1475 and 1575, declined in the early nineteenth century, and ended in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Slaves were replaced by contratados, or contract labor. The export of labor, through contract or immigration, continued to be important well into the twentieth century. During the slaving period, metals, textiles, beads, spices, silver coins for jewelry making, wine, and brandy were traded through the port of Santiago to the Guinea coast. In addition to slaves, Africa exported ivory and beeswax. The "triangular trade" refers to trading relations that tied together New England colonies, the West Indies, and western Africa. Slave trade stimulated other trade in Cape Verdean goods, including animals, salt, and textiles. Panos and indigo dyes were important export items. The abolition of slavery in the middle of the nineteenth century stimulated the market-driven production of palm and coconut products. In the twentieth century, Cape Verde has had to import food because it lacks sufficient water for irrigation.

Division of Labor. Patriarchy has shaped Cape Verdean society. Women bear the brunt of an economy unable to sustain nuclear-family households. Over the centuries, men have had to go in search of work at sea or in America, Europe, or Africa. Women traditionally carried the burden of sustaining the household, often made up of many children, including illegitimate offspring of wealthier men of the region.

Land Tenure. Plantation agriculture resulted in latifundia. Land grants were made in the early sixteenth century by the Portuguese crown to the first settlers and inherited through primogeniture norms, which were broken often. In 1864, the universal primogeniture rule was abolished. For the most part, landownership among Cape Verdeans was severely limited. With the abolition of slavery, freed slaves became sharecroppers on the land of their former owners, paying as much as one-half of their crop to landlords until Independence in 1975. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers were dependent on merchant-moneylender-landlords. Black and mulatto peasants were particularly subject to their coercive brutality, often backed up by local authorities who continued to enforce traditional discriminatory race and class relations.

Emigrants have played an important role in land tenure on the islands. Cape Verdeans living abroad maintain ownership of land inherited from their families and often return from the United States or France to retire. Such people have significant economic and political power.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Cape Verdean kinship is bilateral with a patrilineal preference. The more favored ancestry derives from the white colonial population rather than the African, though the latter is by far the more important demographic factor. Fictive kin practices include godparenthood, or compadrio. When slaves were freed, often a compadrio relationship was maintained between master and freed slave. Illegitimacy is a common feature in Cape Verdean history. Often, lançados (illegal traders and merchants) were illegitimate offspring (filhos de fora ) who used their patrilineal kin networks to ply their trade. Genealogies are used primarily to identify others as descendants of slaves or oneself as a descendant of Europeans.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage relations focus on race as a central organizing feature. Marriage ideally occurs between social and economic equals, as defined by skin color and racial heritage. Premarital sexual relations for women are considered a dishonor, no matter the race of the sex partner. For men, an active sex life is an expected element of "manhood" and knows no racial bounds. Men are supposed to marry within or above their class and within or lighter than their color. The different islands traditionally had slight variations in marriage customs. In Brava and Fogo, the preference for first-cousin Marriage was a strategy for maintaining resources within a family and therefore was practiced among the wealthy. Preferential first-cousin marriages also ensured racial purity. While Marriage norms discouraged racial, class, and kindred exogamy, everyday life gave people opportunities to rebel against or reject such norms. Among Protestants, religion—rather than race or class—defined status, allowing the expansion of mixed marriages. Finally, economic means could transcend all other barriers to marriage. Wealthy men of color found white and "aristocratic" marriage partners. Remittances from immigrant family members enabled traditionally impoverished people and people of color to move into higher status categories.

Domestic Unit. Stem families are common and reflect the poverty under which many Cape Verdeans subsist. The size of a household unit depends on the number of children. Matrifocal households are common, a phenomenon related to a poverty that forces men to seek work elsewhere.

Inheritance. Traditionally, land was inherited on the basis of primogeniture, a norm that continues with exceptions in Santiago. In Fogo, the preference for marriages between first cousins in the landlord class has kept landholdings among wealthy families.

Socialization. Children are very much loved and live within a wide network of family relations that tie together Individuals spread out over many parts of the world. Adults teach children class and race consciousness to help them function properly in Cape Verdean society. Rites of passage related to Roman Catholic traditions prevail.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Traditional patterns of cooperative labor, juntamao, have given way to cooperative associations for production. Divisions of social organization based on slavery and race have blended with class divisions. Miscegenation was an important historical factor and remains the rule. Mulattoes in Cape Verde make up specialized strata within racially and class-stratified society. Skin color and other physical characteristics remain a central organizing principle in society. The hegemony of machismo defines gender relations.

Political Organization. The Republic of Cape Verde constitution defines the state as democratic and revolutionary nationalist. Its objectives include "the construction of a Society free from the exploitation of man by man." By definition, the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (the PAICV) is the "leading political force in the society and in the state." The PAICV is the successor political party to the PAIGC, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (discussed earlier in this essay). In 1974, after armed struggle against Portugal, the new Republic of Guinea-Bissau gained independence. On 5 July 1975, the Cape Verde Islands won their independence as the Republic of Cape Verde. The two republics of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde were united for five years, until their separation in November 1980. With the liberation of Cape Verde from Portuguese colonialism, the legitimacy of the state has increased. The state continues to penetrate further into the lives of even the most remote communities. The Cape Verdean People's National Assembly (ANP) is made up of elected deputies from around the country. Party membership is not necessary. A list of deputies is generated through a consultative process at the level of villages and workplace meetings. The ANP has the power to legislate in its meetings twice each year. In practice, however, the ANP is primarily a ratifying body. The president and the prime minister have the formal powers of government in their hands. Nonetheless, the ANP represents an important democratic element in the formal political structure of Cape Verde society. It is the focus of popular elections and debate regarding legislation.

Social Control. Local social structures, based on class and race, maintain social conformity. Self-government has been difficult at times because of passive political participation, which is a legacy of centuries of authoritarian political regimes. In recent times, youth have mobilized politically through the JAAC—CV (Juventude Africana Amilcar Cabral—Cabo Verde, or Amilcar Cabral's African Youth of Cape Verde). Women are organized through the OMCV (Organização das Mulheres de Cabo Verde, or Cape Verdean Women's Organization). Both organizations reflect the democratic centralism of PAICV. Another mass organization is the UNTC—CS (União Nacional dos Trabalhadores de Cabo Verde—Central Sindical or National Union of Cape Verdean Workers—Central Union), the federation of trade unions. Organizations for mass mobilization, such as JAAC—CV and OMCV, are expanding the ability for people to obtain greater justice at the local level.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Cape Verdeans are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. In the early 1900s the Protestant Church of the Nazarene and the Sabbatarians had successful conversion drives. Each was able to build a church and translate the Gospels into Crioulo. Only 2 percent of the population is not Roman Catholic. Patron-saint festivals are commonly observed through the incorporation of non-Catholic activities. In the 1960s, rebelados, remote Sao Tiago peasants, rejected the authority of the Portuguese Catholic missionaries and began to perform their own baptism and marriage rituals. These people also are referred to as badius, descendants of runaway slaves, and are less assimilated than other groups into Portuguese and Cape Verdean national culture. (More recently, "badius" has become an ethnic term referring to the people of Santiago.) In one annual festival, or festa, in honor of Fogo's patron, Saint Philip, men, women, and children from the poorer classes parade down to the beach early in the morning, led by five horsemen invited as honored guests. Saint John's and Saint Peter's day festivals on the islands of Sao Vicente and Santo Antão include the performance of the coladera, a procession dance accompanied by drums and whistles. During the canta-reis, a festa to welcome the new year, musicians serenade neighborhoods by moving from house to house. They are invited in to eat canjoa (chicken and rice soup) and gufongo (cake made from corn meal) and drink grog (sugarcane alcohol). Another festa, the tabanca, is identified with slave folk traditions that at various times in Cape Verdean history have symbolized resistance to the colonial regime and support of Africanisms. Tabancas include singing, drumming, dancing, processions, and possession. Tabancas are religious celebrations associated with the badius. The badius are the "backward" people of Santiago who represent the opposite of being Portuguese. In this sense, the term represents the essence and disdained characteristics of Cape Verdean identity. Tabancas were discouraged at times when Cape Verdean identity was suppressed and encouraged when pride in Cape Verdean identity was being expressed. Belief in magic and witchcraft practices can be traced from both Portuguese and African roots.

Religious Practitioners. Roman Catholicism has penetrated all levels of Cape Verdean society, and religious practices reflect class and racial segmentation. Conversion efforts were extensive among slaves, and even today peasants distinguish between foreign missionaries and local priests (padres de terra ). Local clergy hardly test the power of local elites. The Church of the Nazarene has attracted individuals who are unhappy with the corrupt Catholic clergy and desire upward mobility through hard work. Folk religious practices are most noticeably related to rites and acts of rebellion. The tabancas include the selection of a king and queen and represent the rejection of state authority. Rebelados have continued to reject the penetration of state authority.

Arts. Expressive and aesthetic traditions are maintained through cyclical ritual events that include the playing of music, singing, and dancing. Contemporary music styles assimilate appropriate themes and forms from these traditions to create popular art, acceptable in metropolitan life and in the diaspora. Pan-African traditions have increasingly tied together the various populations who identify themselves as Crioulo.

Medicine. Modern medical practices are increasingly available to the population as a whole, complementing traditional healing arts.

Death and Afterlife. Illness and death are significant occasions for social gatherings in the households of the afflicted. Friends and relatives participate in visits that may occur over a period of months. Hosts must provide refreshments for people of all stations in society. Mourning falls mainly to women, who participate more in the visitation practices, which in more well-to-do families take place in the sala, a ritual chamber also used for guests.

Bibliography

Beck, Sam (1991). Manny Almeida's Ringside Lounge: The Cape Verdean Struggle for the Neighborhood. Providence, R.I.: GAVEA-Brown.

Foy, Colm (1988). Cape Verde: Politics, Economics, and Society. London and New York: Pinter.

Machado, Deirdre Meintel (1981). "Cape Verdean Americans." In Hidden Minorities: The Persistence of Ethnicity in American Life, edited by Joan Rollins. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America.

Meintel, Deirdre (1984). Race, Culture, and Portuguese colonialism in Cabo Verde. Foreign and Comparative Studies/African Series, no. 41. Syracuse, N.Y.: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.

Nunes, Maria Luisa (1982). A Portuguese Colonial in America: Belmira Nunes Lopes. The Autobiography of a Cape Verdean-American. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Latin American Literary Review Press.

SAM BECK