The Portuguese: A Heritage of Oppression A Search for Identity

For most of the Portuguese in Cambridge, the plunge from the familiar rural-agricultural life of the Azores into the mainstream of Cambridge's urban and industrial environment has tremendous cultural impact. Faced with the formidable task of staying economically and socially afloat in a new and alien environment, the Portuguese are confronted with an intense ethnic identity crisis.

Marching to the beat of the traditional social and cultural mores of the homeland, they are thrust into a society that pulses with an entirely different thythm. In this conflict of cultures the Portuguese have few options for dealing with their ethnic identity crisis.

For the Portuguese the impulse to preserve familiar cultural and social traditions must be measured against the adverse effects that ethnic isolationism brings. Insulation within the Portuguese community, while providing a measure of stability and security for the Portuguese, has significant negative implications--minimizing social and economic mobility and crippling efforts at political organization.

Earlier generations of Portuguese immigrants sought to resolve the problem of ethnic identity by complete assimilation into the American mainstream. But while assimilation resolved the Portuguese identity crisis, the price paid was ethnic emasculation, as they diluted their national customs and heritage in American currents.

Today, among the Portuguese the impulse to assimilate is giving way to an increased emphasis on ethnic heritage. Among the newer Portuguese immigrants, pride in national origin and customs is replacing the impulse to Americanize.

Maurino Costa, who came to the United States in 1966, says, "I have learned [since coming here] that sometimes people have been ashamed that they are not from the United States. Today everyone is a little more proud. I think for ourselves we must keep the good things that we have. The 'mixing pot' ideal is not good. We can gain from living in the United States, but we have something to offer too. Everything should not be put in the 'mixing pot' and come out the same."

Many of the younger Portuguese, like Madalena Barboza, who came to Cambridge in 1961 when she was nine years old, flatly reject assimilation as a solution to ethnic identity problems. "We should de-emphasize the ideal of Americanization," Barboza says. "If I'm going to be called anything, I'd like to be called Portuguese, because I don't believe in giving up a nationality and taking on another one. There is no American heritage. I feel that I would be giving up something by becoming American."

Ruben Cabral, executive director of the Cambridge Organization of Portuguese Americans (COPA) points out that ethnic identity is of fundamental importance to the Portuguese in this country. "It is important to preserve your own heritage," Cabral says, "for if you lose your heritage you lose yourself. We have to keep our own things that can identify us. The Portuguese can become anything. They have shown a tremendous facility for adopting other cultures. To preserve our culture we have to have a very strong emphasis on what it is to be Portuguese."

The founding of COPA in 1970 was largely influenced by the question of ethnic identity, especially in its effect on politics. "The whole thing [COPA] developed out of black awareness," Aurelio Torres, a former director of COPA, says. "A lot was being said about black awareness at the time--we wanted to raise Portuguese awareness."

The goals of COPA are two-fold: The organization seeks to raise Portuguese consciousness and to employ this awareness in Cambridge politics. "We are trying to educate the Portuguese community in being Portuguese," Cabral says. "We want to get people not to be ashamed of being Portuguese. We are trying to become united so that political gains can be made. We should get into the American society as Portuguese."

The unification of the Portuguese community in Cambridge has been a less-than-successful undertaking for the COPA organizers. The pressures to assimilate, though declining, are still strong in the Cambridge Portuguese community, and these forces have hampered COPA's efforts to foster Portuguese ethnic identity and political organization.

The Portuguese in Cambridge have not wholly been able to reconcile the warring impulses towards assimilation on one hand and ethnic identity on the other. Precariously balanced between cultures, the Portuguese are forced to walk a tightrope of assimilation over an ethnic no-man's land. While the Portuguese have become increasingly aware of the tangible rewards for ethnic awareness, the forces of assimilation into American society still threaten to engulf them.

"The Portuguese are now where the Irish and Italians were at the turn of the century," Cabral says. "They are searching for an identity. Up to now the Portuguese have taken on the character of the community they were in. The present is a unique time for the Portuguese. They are still trying to get where they want to be."

The irony of COPA's predicament is a sad one for the Portuguese people in Cambridge. For while COPA has based its campaign of political mobilization on the issues of ethnic identity and national pride, their major obstacle has been the heritage of oppression and forced non-involvement that the Portuguese bring with them from Portugal.

Vasco Caetano came to Cambridge three years ago from southern Portugal for political reasons. Unlike Caetano most Portuguese in Cambridge come from the Azores, where economic, not political, issues are felt most acutely,

Only 2 per cent of the Portuguese in Cambridge are political refugees, but the motivation for Caetano's move to this country reveals the major problem that the political environment in Portugal creates for immigrants.

"I came three years ago from south Portugal," Caetano says, "because I don't share the Portuguese government's ideas. And if you don't, you can't do anything. Not many from the Islands come for political reasons, but from the mainland many student-age people leave, although most do not come to the United States."

"The Portuguese people are like a shell [when it comes to politics]--to communicate with them is very difficult," Caetano, now a teacher in the Cambridge School Department's bilingual education program, says. "In Portugal they have no part in politics. So when they get to this country they are afraid of the word 'political' because in Portugal they can't take part in the government."

"Since in my country, nobody has the right to do or say anything, we are afraid of becoming involved with politics," Maurino Costa says. "Organizations like COPA and SPAL [Somerville Portuguese American League] must get the Portuguese together. They must explain what rights the Portuguese have and what they can do if they work together."

Another immigrant points out class differences in political involvement. "Some of the Portuguese in Cambridge and Somerville are involved with politics, but I don't think the working people have gotten involved much," says Vivaldo Meneses, who immigrated to Cambridge five years ago, then moved to Somerville. "Because we can't talk over there, all the Portuguese are afraid of politics."

Even leaders in the Catholic Church, which usually steers clear of politics, emphasize the burden of political oppression that the Portuguese people in the United States must overcome if they are to become involved with the political process.

"In Cambridge's Portuguese community there is almost no involvement in politics," Father Joel Oliveira, pastor of St. Anthony's church, says. "The political system in Portugal is so different--there is no involvement in politics at all by the people--it is hard for the Portuguese to adjust. Many Portuguese in Cambridge are not citizens--others do not want to lose citizenship. They don't know about the American system and situation. The Portuguese in Cambridge make a community apart from the general community. The only thing they try to do is make a better life. They don't mix with other people or get involved. They are too busy with their own problems."

Leaders at COPA have made some progress combating the political apathy that Portuguese oppression has stamped in the Portuguese people, but COPA is aware that it is up against too big a psychological obstacle to expect immediate success.

"The Portuguese people have been brainwashed in the old country," Torres sayd. "They're told that they should stay out of trouble and take care of their families, and they can't adjust to the more liberal political situation here. They just don't take part."

Some of the Portuguese community leaders feel that the Portuguese are aware of the negative implications of their political heritage, but that they cannot overcome it. "They feel it," Cabral says. "Whey you take the train from Lisbon as an immigrant, there is nothing but silence. The people are sad. But when they cross the border they begin to talk and the first thing they talk against is the government. They feel the oppression there.

"But there is another oppression here, only they aren't aware of it. There is no American democracy. I don't know what the future will be for America in five years, but there is the potential for dictatorship."

The political--or, rather, apolitical--background manifests itself in the percentage of Portuguese who apply for citizenship or who vote. "We have thousands of Portuguese in the area, but a very small percentage are citizens," Costa says. "Citizenship is important. Most of the Portuguese can't vote because they don't take their citizenship papers. We are right that we can ask local politicians to work for us, but we must realize that we must give something too. We can't even give votes in return. The Portuguese say 'I have my job, my home--I don't want to get involved."

Oliveira points out that one of the reasons that the Portuguese are ignored by the rest of the city is that they have such a low political profile. "They aren't a stronghold for political people," Oliveira says. "Cambridge doesn't care as much as it should about our people--East Cambridge means too little to the rest of the city."

"The Portuguese don't use the vote because of their Portuguese background," Caetano says. "It takes a long time to overcome this and you have to have leaders. Right now I don't think we have the leaders."

Leading the Portuguese out of their political indifference is an arduous and frustrating task. COPA has made a beginning, as have regional conferences such as the Congress of the Portuguese in America held at Harvard last year under COPA's sponsorship.

At that conference the Portuguese declared, "the first decisive step along the road to a real awareness has been taken."

"Without looking for an easy solution or minimizing the needs of the Portuguese community," a pamphlet from the Congress reads, "we want to take advantage of a place that is legitimately ours in American society."

"Because we live in the United States and because without political strength nothing can be accomplished, we want to point out the great importance of the integration of the Portuguese communities in local political life," the statement continues. "It is necessary ... that we unimpassionedly awaken the Portuguese people in the United States to a valuable political participation and that the people understand Government and its agent, not as superior, inaccessible entities, but in the dimension for which they were created: to serve the community."

"We are here at our beginning," the Congress announced. "It is a first step toward awareness." For the Portuguese in Cambridge that step may well have been taken, but there remains a long way to go.