Portuguese Americans

ETHNONYMS: Luso Americans, Portages, Greenhorns

Orientation

Identification and Location. Portuguese Americans are a diverse group whose social identity is emotionally tied to Portugal's colonial and postcolonial history. Most families can trace their family trees and migration routes back to the Azores, Madeira, or the European continent. During Portugal's colonial era Cape Verdean immigrants of Luso-African descent were included among the Portuguese. Their archipelago was granted political independence in 1975 after the Portuguese Revolution of the Carnations. Cape Verdeans have mobilized themselves as a distinct ethnic group in the United States since that time.

The terms Portuguese American and Luso American are commonly used as labels for self-identification. These terms also can be used to identify entire Portuguese communities that may include Azoreans, Madeirans, Continentals, and their descendants.

Strong regional and local identification distinguish and separate Azoreans, Madeirans, and Continentals. Some scholars consider this extreme regionalism and these traditional rivalries as residues of bairrismo. This social process shaped the residential settlement patterns of Portuguese American communities. Immigrants from the same islands and continental districts and villages tended to cluster and live together in the United States.

The epithet Portage is a bastardization of the formal Portuguese. Outsiders use this expression to insult and stigmatize immigrants and their descendants. Greenhorn is another derogatory label used by outsiders and insiders alike to stigmatize, antagonize, and insult the most recent immigrants and their children. Luso American descendants of the first wave of immigration use this label more commonly and vindictively than do outsiders.

Demography. The U.S. Bureau of the Census recorded 900,060 persons of Portuguese ancestry in 1998. The median age of this population of 453,120 women and 446,940 men was thirty-three years old.

The majority of Portuguese Americans reside in California and Massachusetts. In 1990, 275,492 (31 percent) lived in California and 241,173 (27) percent lived in Massachusetts. Sizable communities also exist in Rhode Island: 75,773 (9 percent); New Jersey: 56,928 (6 percent); Hawaii: 39,748 (4 percent); Connecticut: 35,523 (4 percent); New York: 34,455 (4 percent); and Florida: 23,975 (2 percent). The remaining 115,993 (12 percent) are scattered throughout the other states with the exception of the Dakotas.

Linguistic Affiliation. Portuguese is a Romance language derived from Latin and is part of the larger family of Indo-European languages. The earliest form, which was spoken between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, was called Galician Portuguese and resembled the language spoken in northwestern Spain. The language variety from Coimbra and Lisbon emerged as the standard form in the sixteenth century.

Modern Portuguese still has northern and southern dialects. The northern dialect retains its ancient Galician roots, and the southern dialect has some Arabic influence. The forms of Portuguese spoken in the Azores and Madeira are distinctive regional dialects.

Most immigrants from the Azores, Madeira, and the Continent arrived speaking Portuguese and continued to speak their native language to their children at home. While immigrants in the work force struggled to learn English by immersion, older people relied exclusively on Portuguese. Many acquired some English comprehension from radio and television but depended on bilingual relatives, especially children and grandchildren, for English translations.

Few traces of Portuguese speech survived past the second generation of the first wave of immigrants. The major exceptions were family names, kin terms, food names, names of folkloric objects, and swear words. The Portuguese of most first-generation immigrants incorporated English influences, mostly in vocabulary rather than pronunciation or grammar. There was also a great deal of code switching back and forth between English and Portuguese at home, at the workplace, and in public.

History and Cultural Relations

Scholars identify four historical periods of Portuguese immigration to the United States. The earliest immigrants sailed between 1500 and 1870. The first mass migration crossed the Atlantic from 1870 to 1921. Portuguese immigration declined during the dormancy period from 1922 to 1958. The latest wave of mass migration began in 1958, expanded in 1965, and peaked after the Portuguese Revolution that began on April 25, 1974. Immigration declined during the final decade of the twentieth century.

The Portuguese explorer João Roderigues Cabrillo anchored in San Diego Bay on September 9, 1542, and was the first European to explore California. Sephardic Jews emigrated to America in the eighteenth century to avoid religious persecution. Abraham de Lyon introduced grape cultivation to Georgia, and Aaron Lopez promoted the sperm whale oil and candle industry in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Portuguese Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde became ports of call for Yankee merchants and New Bedford whalers in the nineteenth century. Portuguese islanders signed on as crewmembers when whalers, schooners, and clipper ships took on provisions. Most young sailors preferred the risks at sea to boredom, poverty, and military conscription at home. Many disembarked and settled near the waterfronts of established whaling seaports in New England, California, and Hawaii.

The annual reports of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service documented 35 Portuguese immigrants in 1820 and an incremental growth up to 5,272 over the next fifty years. The earliest immigrants were Azorean men and boys from Pico, Fayal, Saint George, and Flores who sailed on New Bedford and Nantucket whalers. Many landed and settled in the whaling ports of New Bedford and Edgartown, Massachusetts; Sag Harbor and Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York; Stonington, Connecticut; and San Diego, Monterey, and San Francisco, California. Those who abandoned whaling for commercial fishing moved to Provincetown and Gloucester, Massachusetts, where their descendants still form the backbone of the local fishing fleets.

The first wave of mass migration by Azore an families began in 1870. Those families relied on the direct steamship passage established between Boston and Horta, Fayal. Most sought employment in the emerging textile industries in New England and were hired as unskilled laborers. Azorean immigration from Saint Michael, the most densely populated island on the archipelago, surpassed that from Fayal in the 1890s after the construction of a sea wall and deep harbor for transatlantic steamers. Migration from Saint Michael rose dramatically when the U.S. consulate moved to Ponta Delgada.

Madeirans and Continentals arrived between 1900 and 1920. Many were political refugees who feared the republican forces that overthrew the monarchy on October 5, 1910. This wave of 189,941 immigrants established ethnic enclaves in New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the Blackstone River Valley from Cumberland to Providence, Rhode Island.

Azoreans implemented a chain migration in which the earliest migrants facilitated the immigration of the remaining family members. Islanders from Pico, Fayal, Saint George, Flores, and Terceira continued westward to California. Portuguese Americans in Hawaii experienced a fate different from that of their mainland cousins. The Hawaii Sugar Plantation Association recruited Madeiran labor to work the plantations, as did the American Hemp Company from Illinois in the 1840s. Nearly twenty thousand Portuguese had settled in Hawaii by the turn of the twentieth century.

U.S. immigration policies and legislation dramatically reduced Portuguese immigration during the 1920s. The Johnson Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 established a quota of 440 visas a year for Portugal. Only 46,746 immigrants entered during that period.

Portuguese mass migration resumed in 1958 after the passage of the Azorean Refugee Acts. This legislation assisted 4,800 immigrants displaced by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes in Fayal. The U.S. Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the quota system, and Azorean chain migration resumed. Migration peaked at 101,710 during the decade of the Portuguese Revolution. Although migration has slowed substantially, more than a quarter million immigrants had come to the United States by the end of the twentieth century.

The recém-chegados (recent arrivals) expanded and revitalized the earlier settlements in New England and California and established new communities in Connecticut and New Jersey. Many recent arrivals were largely unaware of the history and traditions of the earlier group. The newer group was also better educated than its predecessors. They exhibited an ethnic pride that stood in sharp contrast to the attitude of a generation that grew up ashamed of its heritage.

The ease of modern travel and Internet communications have sustained contact with the old country. Ethnic heritage and bilingual education programs have cushioned the assimilation of the second wave and stimulated fresh interest in Portuguese language and culture.

Settlements

Most close-knit family groups settled in small cities and suburbs where they could own a mortgage-free home. In New England the typical Portuguese immigrant home assumed two distinct forms: casa velha and casa nova (the old house and the new house). The casa velha was located in the old tenement neighborhoods. These pastel-colored vinyl-sided tenements with verdant grape arbors and vegetable gardens added color and life to drab mill towns. Casas novas were built by upwardly mobile immigrants in the suburbs. These classic Mediterranean stucco houses with red tile roofs are accented with traditional masonry, tiles, and black wrought-iron fencing. Lawn shrines to Our Lady of Fatima and tiled icons of patron saints decorated the doors of both types of homes.

Economy

Subsistence. The domestic economy of Portuguese immigrant households is based on the mutual support of an extended family of parents, working-age children, and other family members living under the same roof. Their family organization originally developed on village farms in the Continent and the Atlantic islands. The majority of Azorean whalers and Portuguese fishermen acquired their new skills in the United States. Some of these people continued to work the soil in small truck gardens and dairy farms in the suburbs beyond the seaports. Itinerant farm workers picked cranberries, blueberries, and apples in New England and grapes, lettuce, and fruit in California.

Commercial Activities. Merchants set up small shops in the neighborhood business district to meet the workers' needs. In California the Portuguese became miners, farmers, and ranchers. They established large-scale dairy farms in the San Joaquin Valley and pioneered tuna fishing in San Diego. The Hawaiian Portuguese abandoned the sugarcane fields for service jobs in the city early in the twentieth century.

Industrial Arts. Skilled and experienced carpenters and masons entered the construction trades. Unskilled laborers worked on highway and landscape crews. In New England women joined men in the textile mills and garment industries.

Division of Labor. Half the Portuguese American population is gainfully employed. Nearly 20 percent of this work force holds managerial and professional positions. Another 30 percent holds technical, sales, and administrative jobs. The service sector and the production, crafts, and repair trades each employ 14 percent. Another 19 percent work as operators, fabricators, and laborers. The remaining 3 percent are employed in farming, forestry, and fishing.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The Portuguese maintained their traditional extended family structure in the United States. The earliest immigrants were young single males and married men hoping to sponsor their families' passage when their finances permitted. Entire families arrived during the first wave of mass migration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act reinforced this trend by granting priority to close relatives who settled with their families in established communities. The households of second- and third-generation descendants usually are occupied by nuclear families with strong emotional ties to distant kin and members of the extended family.

Kinship Terminology. Portuguese Americans still reckon kinship descent bilaterally, and most use Portuguese kin terms. Those kinship terms have Latin roots: mãe e pãe (mother and father), filho e filha (son and daughter), irmão e irmá (brother and sister), avó e avô (grandmother and grandfather), bisavó e bisavô (great-grandparents), madrinha e padrinho (godmother and godfather), primos e primas (cousins), and compadres (fictive kin). The Greek terms tia and tio (aunt and uncle) are the sole exception.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Portuguese Americans tend to be endogamous in terms of class and ethnicity. Immigrant parents prefer that their children marry someone from their natal village, but island endogamy is acceptable. Island exogamy is common but is considered problematic. Most ethnic exogamy occurs with other working-class Catholics from the Irish, French Canadian, Polish, and Hispanic communities. Nearly 60 percent of the 722,513 persons over fifteen years of age are married. Another 6 percent are widowed. Less than 2 percent are separated, and only 8 percent of Portuguese marriages end in divorce.

Domestic Unit. Many Portuguese Americans tend to remain in the communities in which they were born. Even upwardly mobile descendants build new single-family homes in suburbs close to the old immigrant centers. The concept of a dominant male head of household still prevails among Portuguese men. The entrance of Portuguese women into the American labor market challenged and diminished traditional male authority. Older women maintained traditional gender roles. They resigned themselves to their factory routines and domestic obligations to their husbands and children. Many of their daughters, however, resented this double standard and rebelled against the suppression of women.

Inheritance. Portuguese American families generally maintain the tradition of partible inheritance. Firstborn adult children frequently are designated as the executors of the parents' final will and testament. Portuguese American women have the right to receive and bestow property.

Socialization. Maternal grandmothers are important child care providers in bilingual and bicultural Portuguese American households. They often introduce children to Portuguese language, cuisine, and religious beliefs and practices. Grandfathers, godfathers, aunts, and uncles also provide emotional guidance and fiscal support to young parents.

The children of working-class families were not always encouraged to stay in school beyond the required age. Many were urged to seek gainful employment and contribute to the income of the extended family. While immigrant parents clung to familiar customs, their children encountered an American way of life that produced a dramatic generation gap. English-language proficiency, American schools, and peer influences alienated many Portuguese American descendants from their immigrant parents.

The earlier immigrants and their descendants endured the Depression and Americanization programs that stigmatized Portuguese language, customs, and identity. Many members of that generation abandoned their native language and denied their ethnic identity out of shame. The children of Portuguese immigrants who arrived in the 1960s received advocacy and support from the bilingual and bicultural staff of immigrant assistance centers. Their children enrolled in bilingual education programs at school.

The traditional emphasis on family welfare still inhibits Portuguese students. Only a minority seek higher education beyond the local community. Most enroll in local community colleges and state universities.

In recent years successful Luso Americans from both waves of immigration have reaffirmed their Portuguese identity and heritage. Despite their historical and cultural differences, recent immigrants and Luso American descendants are bridging the gaps that originally separated them. Together they have reconstructed their immigrant history and legendary past to preserve and promote their communities across the country.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Portuguese immigrants settled in ethnic neighborhoods and organized themselves for economic protection, recreational activities, and preservation of their language and culture. They established five types of voluntary associations to ease their entry into the mainstream of American life: protective associations, social clubs, religious confraternities, band clubs, and educational associations. Membership usually was determined by one's regional identity.

Protective associations provided insurance benefits in case of unemployment, illness, or death. Social clubs resembled village taverns in the old country, and several fielded soccer teams. Religious confraternities celebrated patron saint feasts in their Catholic parishes. Brass band clubs led processions and performed at the local church feast. Educational associations ensured that the language, literature, and cultural history would not be mistaken for Spanish. More than fifty American universities offer Portuguese studies programs.

Political Organization. Ethnic newspapers, radio, and television provide a communications network and forum for Portuguese American merchants, educators, and community leaders to serve their constituents in their native language. Until recently the Portuguese media focused primarily on immigrant issues rather than the Portuguese American community as a whole. Air mail, transatlantic telephones, jet travel, and personal computers have provided reliable channels to sustain ties with relatives in the old country. RTP (Radio Television of Portugal) beams instantaneous satellite dispatches from Lisbon and the entire Portuguese-speaking world directly into immigrant households.

Recent immigrants and their descendants are more involved with their homeland than the earlier arrivals could be. Portuguese American folklore groups, brass bands, and soccer teams engage in an active cultural exchange with their counterparts in the islands and on the Continent. The development of modern travel and communications technology has sustained and strengthened Portuguese American social identity.

Conflict. The two waves of Portuguese immigration encountered different political climates over the course of their histories. The earlier immigrants were viciously assailed by American nativists and Know-Nothings, and restrictive quotas and Americanization programs were imposed on their families. All things Portuguese were stigmatized. The Great Depression, World War II, and the 1950s further Americanized their children. Many people married into other ethnic groups and lost their linguistic and cultural identity.

Portuguese immigrant families in the 1960s arrived seeking new economic opportunities and encountered the social and political turmoil of the civil rights and antiwar movements and a recession. Portugal had its counterpart in the African colonial wars. The Portuguese Revolution of April 25, 1974, heightened the political consciousness of Portuguese Americans.

American schools and social service agencies mobilized Portuguese Americans to confront discrimination and stigmatization. They offered citizenship programs and voter registration drives to naturalize citizens and introduce them to the political process. Portuguese immigrants and their descendants currently hold local and state political offices in New England, California, and Hawaii.

The circumstances and experiences of the recémchegados were dramatically different from those of the immigrants and descendants of the first wave. These two groups live in close juxtaposition but not in harmony. The Portuguese American community is quietly and slowly resolving the conflict of loyalties between the third- and fourth generation descendants of the original immigrants and the latest wave of recent arrivals.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. The Portuguese are Roman Catholics with a legacy of anticlericalism. Their ethnic parishes became focal points of community life at the turn of the twentieth century. The historical emergence of Portuguese American neighborhoods is dated by the times when their churches were built. The first Portuguese American parish, Saint John the Baptist, was established in New Bedford in 1869. Five more Portuguese churches were built in Boston, Fall River, and Gloucester, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Oakland, California, before 1900. These national parishes offered spiritual solace and comfort by ministering to Portuguese families in their native language. The churches incorporated familiar religious icons and sponsored traditional celebrations.

Portuguese immigrants retained ancient, pre-Christian folk beliefs in the supernatural. They attributed most of their ills and the bad weather affecting crops and livestock to witchcraft practiced by bruxas and feiticeiras. Many people were believed to have the power of mau olhado (the evil eye). These witches could cast an evil spell on others with a simple gaze. Villagers warded off psychic attack with a figa, a clenched fist with the thumb stuck between the first and second fingers. Gold charms and religious talismans were worn around the neck and wrists for spiritual protection.

The Portuguese regard the Devil as a real and menacing force. The taboo word diabo is avoided for fear of invoking his sinister and evil presence. Portuguese Americans still protect themselves from evil with holy water and the sign of the Cross.

Religious Practitioners. Portuguese Americans recognize an important distinction between the clerical hierarchy and the congregation during festas (feasts). Priests are responsible for coordinating liturgical rituals and interpreting religious dogma. Religious brotherhoods (irmandades ) sponsor festas at the congregational level. The Holy Ghost Brotherhood, the Holy Rosary Sodality, and countless feast committees have perpetuated the Portuguese ritual calendar.

Ceremonies. Portuguese immigrants and their American-born descendants express their regional collective identity through celebrations of folk religious festivals. Azoreans observe Holy Ghost festivals from Easter to July in New England and California. The most notable celebrations are held in Fall River, Massachusetts, and Gustine, California. Azoreans also celebrate other patron saint feasts, including Santo Cristo in Fall River and Senhor da Pedra in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Azoreans often schedule vacations so that they can attend the feasts in the islands. They sanctify and transform their homecoming into a religious pilgrimage.

Madeirans have celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of the Mount in the mountains behind Honolulu since 1901. They also established the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1915. The Madeiran feast committee promotes this event as "the largest Portuguese feast in the world." Their public extravaganza held on the first weekend of August draws more than 250,000 visitors to New Bedford.

The postcolonial Portuguese government has recruited bilingual Americans to serve as cultural brokers between Portugal and the United States. Immigrant community leaders collaborate with their Portuguese consulates to celebrate the Day of Portugal, Camoes, and the Portuguese communities. The Day of Portugal, held on 10 June, honors Luis de Camoes. His epic poem of Portugal's Age of Discovery, the Lu-siadas, has become the embodiment of the national culture.

Arts. Portuguese Americans mark ritual space and time with colorful displays of ephemeral art. The festival grounds and streets leading to the church often are decorated with arches of greens festooned with colored lights, flags, and flowers. The procession routes are outlined with pasadeiras das flores (flowered carpets), and the statues of the saints are adorned in their finest raiment. Household shrines for the Holy Ghost crown are often more elaborate than creche displays at Christmas.

Religious rituals are always accompanied by a secular festivity called an arraial. Ceremonial eating, drinking, singing, and dancing occur on the church grounds after the religious services. The Portuguese prepare traditional food for their feasts. The menu invariably includes linguiça (pork sausage), chouriço (spicy pork sausage), favas (beans), cacoila (marinated pork), massa sovada (sweet bread), and sopa de couves (kale soup). Brass bands, folk musicians, and folkloric dancers in regional costumes provide entertainment. Portuguese fado can be heard at ethnic restaurants on weekends.

Medicine. Portuguese Americans make use of modern medical and mental health services. In New England many Azoreans still rely on folk healers called curandeiros. who use a mixture of traditional herbs, prayer, and spiritual rituals during their healing sessions. These remedies are considered as important as a medicine cabinet full of drugs and pills prescribed by a physician.

Public health and medical professionals have designed outreach programs to treat Portuguese Americans for hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression. Portuguese immigrant women refer to their symptoms of anxiety, depression, and mental health disorders as "nerves."

Death and Afterlife. Death marks the ritual end of an individual life and the reconfiguration of the surviving family. Portuguese Americans call on ethnic morticians and funeral directors to deal with their grief. Bodies customarily are placed in an open casket for a single day at the funeral parlor. Floral rosary beads, a broken heart, and a clock marking the time of death adorn the casket. Immediate family members openly express their grief with continuous sobbing and wailing. The seating arrangement by the casket indicates family rank and relationships. Everyone wears black outfits. Visitors customarily embrace and kiss the entire extended family in the grieving line. Family members and close friends of the deceased often are selected as pallbearers. They carry the coffin into the church where the person was baptized for their final Mass of the Dead. The ritual concludes with burial in the family plot and a ceremonial meal. Portuguese Americans meticulously maintain their family grave sites every Memorial Day rather than on All Saints Day.

Widows customarily wear black for the rest of their lives. Other relatives wear black for variable lengths of time, depending on their relationship to the deceased. Devout women create little altars on their bedroom bureaus. Photographs of the deceased are added to this sacred space decorated with crucifixes, images of saints, and burning candles. Relatives perpetuate this cult of the dead by offering masses and prayers for the soul of the deceased on the anniversary of his passing.

For the original article on Portuguese Americans, see Volume 1, North America.

Bibliography

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Cabral, Stephen L. (1989). Tradition and Transformation: PortugueseFeasting in New Bedford. New York: AMS Press.

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STEPHEN L. CABRAL