Teaching in Southern California during the 1980s and with all the Sandinista/Reagan business, our student body had a degree of fluidity as students would show up to stay or wait for the better placement after having arrived from somewhere in Central America and having endured God-knows-what along the way. They were fleeing from a situation of the United States’s creation while it avoided responsibility for dealing with its creation properly. When companies such as those who deal in Bananas saw the potential of exploiting Central America, as they had done since the beginning of the country, took over land, disrupted society, ended any concept of communal farming for the benefit of the community, and basically did to the people of Central America what we had learned to do with Manifest Destiny. Take the land, leave the people to deal with it, and blame them if they just can’t.

We introduced a need to survive in this new societal configuration and, as happens wherever this is done, struggles to be powerful under the new system introduced drug cartels and death squads to guarantee compliance with the newly established local way of doing things.

We took their society, their culture, their land, their homes, and their livelihood and we expected them to stay there and just deal with it. 

The migration that we caused began.

I was having a casual drink when the bartender blurted out, in response to a patron’s comment, that her family immigrated the legal way and so should those people coming from Central America. They should not be treated any differently than anyone else.

There was general agreement among the other patrons, at the time a gathering of first and second generation descendants of immigrants.

I have heard this often in a city built on immigration from the whaling industry to manufacturing, usually expressed by those who would have been considered DACA kids under other conditions. They did not know what the full process of immigration was, being in the womb, or very newly out of it, nor did they have to do anything more than follow parental instructions, and here they were.

I have become a bit of a history buff and this comparison intrigued me as, knowing something about Lusophone history, I seemed to have overlooked some important parts of Portugal’s history that, had I known, might have my attitude vary somewhat.

I was under the false impression that most Portuguese who had arrived in the days before strict immigration laws did so just getting on a whaleship in one county and ending up here with the remaining wave of immigrants coming as labor was needed in factories and an influx of immigrants became essential. When the United States began stricter entry requirements, people had to go to consulates in their home country, fill out papers, pay the fees, supply required documentation, attend an interview to receive an approved visa if all goes well, and arranging how the family would travel, together as a unit or with one family member arriving alone to set things up stateside for an easy process.

I know Portugal had a revolution in 1974 during which the dictatorship was overthrown without any death or carnage, but, rather, with the distribution of carnations, but I think the whole history of the revolution and how it has influenced the generations after, if only those from Portugal proper or the Azores, particularly, would open up and be honest about the drug cartels and death squads that wandered around the Islands creating a threatening atmosphere from which the people had to escape.

A volcano grew and erupted on the tip of the island of Faial, and for 13 months, from September 27, 1957 until October 24, 1958, it was active, destroying houses, and causing the evacuation of 2,000 people from the area. There were no deaths from the eruption, however. 

In response, because of the states’ relationships to Portugal, Senator John F Kennedy of Massachusetts and Congressman John O. Pastore of Rhode Island proposed, and President Eisenhower signed, the Azorean Refugee Act on September 2, 1958, authorizing the emigration of 1,500 people which began a 50% decrease of the resident population of Capelo contributing to an increased standard of living, greater working opportunities, and some improvements in base income for those who remained because, due to amendments and adjustments, the final number became a few thousands more than that with many of the arrivals, having been farmers, moving to California and establishing a huge Portuguese farming community.

What Faial and by extension Portugal seem to be hiding in order to present a rosy picture of the island and its people is the existence of the drug cartels and death squads that had been, and may very well still be operating during that period and after.

Otherwise, those people and their children who came as a result of that Act cannot say they have arrived according to established procedures, unlike those from the south who are experiencing problems similar to what they had secretly, apparently, faced since the people from Compelo, rather than have just as easily availed themselves of the formal system benefited from one specifically designed for them. the Azorean Refugee Act would seem to indicate that they did not arrive as others had but by way of exceptions to the rules, time frames, fees, and services extended upon arrival.

Others with whom I have spoken, no matter where in the Portuguese world they came from, have similar stories to each other of coming to live with family already here, having a member or two of the family coming over first and sending for the rest of the family when things had been arranged, filling out forms, and patiently waiting for the assigned time to leave.

None of them, none, talk about losing their land to industrial farm companies, having to protect their children from the gangs who seized power under what the United States allowed and supported militarily, or the drug cartels. They do rap rhapsodic about the islands, the mountains, the wine, the cheese, the Linguica, and the pastries I love, but we hear nothing about the conditions that drove them from their countries to seek safety here.

There would appear to be a well hidden history and accounting of current events as we only see the tourist brochures and talk to some very close-lipped people.

Considering that the details are exactly the same and those coming from Portugal have had to deal with the same conditions forced on the people of Central America, this hiding of the grossly negative conditions does a disservice to those in Portugal and the Azores who continue to suffer.

My grandparents told us many stories of their youth in Halifax, Nova Scotia. My grandfather got to stay home rather than be sent to the front lines during the War to End All Wars because, as a medic’s assistant, he was needed at home when the explosion of 1917 happened in the harbor, and my grandmother had the scar she got from shattering glass that morning to show her grandchildren on occasion, usually when Nova Scotia sent the annual Christmas tree to Boston.

Yet, not once did they ever mention the conditions they faced before their train ride to their new country. I would have appreciated their adventure more had they only spoken of the drug cartels, the death squads, and their loss of land, livelihoods, and culture to big business causing them to have to flee to Boston to join relatives already here, safely, thank God. 

We never heard about the death squads and drug cartels. It is, apparently, the Maritime Provinces’ best kept inter-generational secret.

They and the Lusophone world know how to keep one.

If they only spoke out, honestly and openly, I might have a better chance of understanding how emigrating from Lisbon is just like having to leave some Central American location.

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