Diasporic Whales: Cape Verdean Experience in New England

Sophia Moore

I. Shared Seafaring

The Cape Verdean diaspora in New England is deeply connected to seafaring histories, especially concerning whaling, shared between Portugal and the United States. This essay aims to dissect that history, drawing comparisons between the Lusophone and American maritime empires. In the past three centuries, the Cape Verdean diaspora in New England has grown and evolved with changing conceptions of identity and indigeneity, yet always maintaining strong cultural and linguistic ties to the motherland.

The United States and Portugal are historically intertwined due to their shared histories as maritime empires during the colonial period. Despite the colonial empires of Great Britain and Spain being more well-known, it was actually Portuguese maritime technology that led to the development of modern ships capable of traversing vast oceans (Williams 98-99).

According to Frederick G. Williams, Portugal was the first European nation to capture foreign territory outside Europe since the Roman times when it overtook the city of Ceuta in Northern Africa in 1415. Following this, the Portuguese took to the seas to colonize holdings in Africa, Arabia, India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Oceania, and South America. The Jesuit missionary and preacher Father António Vieira said, “Truly . . . God gave [my] countrymen a small land for their birthplace, but all the world to die in” (Williams 101). An empire like this was unprecedented, with Portuguese control over the seas lasting over two centuries and Portugal being the last European power to decolonize in 1975 (Morier-Genoud and Cahen 1). As a result of this prolonged empire-building, human migration was both “a cause and a consequence” (Morier-Genoud and Cahen 1).

The Portuguese maritime empire encompassed many trades, including agricultural, precious metals, and the Transatlantic slave trade. However, one important economic activity was whaling, which took place across the Portuguese empire in the 12th century. When whales became scarce along European coasts due to overhunting, Portuguese whalers moved to African coasts and Atlantic islands like the Azores and Cape Verde to find more. Eventually, the Portuguese were also hunting whales in Brazil. Whales were a valuable resource, being used for their oil, meat, bones, and other parts (Brito). Being a nation surrounded by the sea on two sides, fishing in general had always been important in Portuguese culture.

The history of whaling in Cape Verde is especially interesting. Being volcanic islands, the archipelago is not particularly well-suited to agriculture. Residents had to rely on hunting, fishing, and meager livestock farming. Sperm whales were regularly hunted in Cape Verde, with their oil being exported to Portugal before the discovery of whales in Brazil (Brito).

In North America, whaling has a long history. Native Americans hunted whales in canoes in what is today Long Island before the 17th century (Brito). A full-fledged industry took off in the 1700s. Most of the most important whaling locations were located in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, including towns like Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Barnstable, and New Bedford. The first American whaling business was established in New Bedford in the late 1700s by the Russell family (Recarte 3). Most people working for whaling enterprises in North America at the time were hired Native Americans.

The whaling industry was not limited to hunting whales alone. The colonial economy was stimulated certainly through the trade of whale body parts and their derivatives, but also by “adjacent industries” like shipbuilding, manufacture of sails and rope, and service-based industries supporting the population of whaling workers (Recarte 3). Inventions like an improved oil lamp, and their related industries, were the direct result of whaling.

By the 19th century, New Bedford was the “whaling capital of the world”, home to over 300 whaling ships (Recarte 4). This attracted many immigrants to the town, with the largest groups being from the Portuguese colonies of Cape Verde and the Azores. Due to the lack of natural resources on the Cape Verdean archipelago, many Cape Verdeans emigrated to Portugal, Senegal, Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Sweden, France, São Tomé and Principe, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau to find work. Most migrants were young men who came to North America to work, later bringing their families once they had established themselves. Ties between the United States and Cape Verde grew significantly due to this labor relationship, so much so that an American consulate was established on the islands in 1816 (Sánchez Gibau).

Clearly, the movement of Cape Verdeans and other Portuguese-speaking people throughout the world was motivated by more than simply “crusade and conquest” (Bastos 29). “Labor-related trajectories of Portuguese subjects … into foreign imperial economies,” like those of Cape Verdeans into the American whaling industry, were key for the proliferation of Lusophone communities (Bastos 30).

II. Cape Verdeans in New England

The Cape Verdean diaspora can be described as an “imagined community”, a term first coined by historial Benedict Anderson in 1983 (Anderson). Though members of the Cape Verdean diaspora are spread across the world and may never share the same physical location or meet one another personally (either in the homeland or in a diasporic community abroad), they share an imagined community of culture, language, and history which binds them to one another across time and space. Their identity is a social construction.

Cape Verdeans are also part of a wider Portuguese imagined diaspora, or Lusofonia, that is worldwide and includes Portugal and other former Portuguese colonies (Bastos 28). “Portugal relied heavily on diasporic/emigrated groups to create and maintain its empire,” according to scholars Eric Morier-Genoud and Michel Cahen (8). Just as Cape Verdeans themselves are diasporic today, the islands were colonized by the historic Portuguese diaspora, many of which were “persons who had been condemned to exile, convicted, as well as New Christians” (Morier-Genoud and Cahen 8). In this way, Cape Verdeans living outside the archipelago can be considered doubly diasporic. Today, the wider Lusophone diaspora must be continually forged: it does not simply exist due to the wide variations between Portuguese-descended cultures across time and space (Morier-Genoud and Cahen 9).

Massachusetts’ population today has been deeply influenced by this history. According to the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers, Portuguese is the third most-spoken language in the state behind only English and Spanish. Nearly 3% of Massachusetts’ population speaks Portuguese, with over 300,000 people of Portuguese ancestry currently living there (accounting for nearly 5% of the population). Of those, 60,000 are of Cape Verdean ancestry and nearly 70,000 are of Brazilian ancestry.

Cape Verdeans themselves are of primarily mixed racial origin (European and African), with nearly 80% of Cape Verdeans being “mulatto” according to researcher Gina Sánchez Gibau (Sánchez Gibau). While the majority of European ancestry among Cape Verdeans is Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italians and European Jews also settled in the islands during colonization. The islands, located in the region of Macronesia which also includes the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, were uninhabited until their discovery by Portuguese sailors in 1456, when they were settled by European men who later brought enslaved, mostly female, Africans (Carling and Batalha 14). Given their proximity, both geographically and racially, to the Portuguese, Cape Verdeans were used as “middlemen” in the Portuguese empire and often sent to other Portuguese colonies as administrators and intermediaries (Carling and Batalha 14). However, Cape Verde and other Portuguese colonies naturally developed distinct cultures despite a constant connection to Portugal due to geographic distance and inexistence of rapid means of transportation and contact (Morier-Genoud and Cahen 8).

Sanchez Gibau believes that Cape Verdeans living in the United States “negotiate their identities by situating themselves within both African and Cape Verdean diaspora communities.” These diasporic identities incorporate history, culture, traditions, politics, social structures and everyday life.

Cape Verde’s colonial history is relevant and includes the enslavement of Africans, a plantation-based economy, racial and cultural “miscengination,” institutional neglect from Portuguese colonizers, and a struggle for independence only realized in 1975 (Carling and Batalha 14; Sánchez Gibau). Cape Verde, due to its mixed heritage, is home to many different types of people on a “continuum of color and class” (Sánchez Gibau). However, segregation and colorism within the archipelago still existed, with the largest island, Santiago, being perceived as more African. African-influenced musical and dance styles like tabanka and batuku were banned by Portuguese colonizers. The transatlantic whaling trade also influenced the character of the islands—islands like Brava were frequented by American and European sailors stopping for supplies on journeys across the Atlantic, leading to a characterization as less African and more European, and therefore more privileged (Sánchez Gibau).

Though they themselves were a mixed population, it was not always easy for Cape Verdeans to assimilate into the melting pot of American culture while being perceived as both foreigners and Black. The norm in the United States is white and European—anything else is seen as “other” (Sánchez Gibau). According to Sánchez Gibau, Cape Verdeans found an “an environment fraught with xenophobia and racial discrimination” in the United States (Sánchez Gibau). Especially before independence from Portugal, when Cape Verdeans were still considered Portuguese citizens, many attempted to use their ‘Europeanness’, as well as their shared language (Kriolu or Capeverdean), Catholic religion, and other cultural markers to differentiate themselves from other African-descended groups already living in the United States, knowing that Black communities faced “stigmatization and racism” (Sánchez Gibau). Cape Verdeans were more likely to self-identify as Portuguese or as an inhabitant of their specific island, rather than ‘Cape Verdean’, prior to independence (Carling and Batalha 17). Due to this, it is difficult to measure the exact amount of Cape Verdeans living outside the islands before independence, as they were recorded as immigrating as Portuguese citizens at the time (Carling).

Despite their efforts to distance themselves from Black Americans, Cape Verdeans still suffered from racialization (including segregation) in the United States, where they were/are mostly perceived as African-Americans. However, Sánchez Gibau notes that many Cape Verdeans are quick to differentiate themselves from Black Americans, despite recognizing themselves as racially Black. While being Black is a “racial identity”, being a Black American is a “distinct cultural group” separate from the Cape Verdean community (Sánchez Gibau). Cape Verdeans can “actively challenge ideas of racial categorization” by identifying as either Cape Verdean, Black, African, or any combination of the above (Sánchez Gibau). This “negotiation” and “reconciliation” of nationality, ethnicity, and race is not unique to Cape Verdeans, but is a shared experience among many immigrant communities in the United States, “a society that discourages multiple identification” according to Sánchez Gibau (Sánchez Gibau).

The Cape Verdean community has also aligned itself with the Latino community in New England, shopping at the same grocery stores, working similar blue-collar jobs, and living in poor communities like Dorchester and Roxbury. Many also share similar religious practices, including Catholicism and the fundamentalist Igreja Universal popular with the Brazilian community. According to some of Sánchez Gibau’s field subjects, Cape Verdeans are often mistaken as Latino (specifically Puerto Rican or Dominican) due to their appearance, speech, or level of English.

With the rise of the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 70s, many Cape Verdeans living in America came to embrace Africanness and reject the formerly-widespread Portuguese self-identification, which was at times used to distance and elevate Cape Verdeans away from other African diaspora communities. Today, according to Sánchez Gibau, many Cape Verdeans in the United States identify “with African Americans but not as African Americans.” Many participate in African American social organizations and incorporate aspects of Black American culture into their lives.

The independence of the newly democratic islands, bolstered by support from a worldwide diasporic community, further negated the “privilege” Portuguese citizenship and identity had held in the past, allowing for new expressions of culture through dance, music and language that were distinctly Cape Verdean-American (Carling and Batalha 14; Sánchez Gibau). Affinity with other newly-independent former Portuguese colonies, especially Guinea-Bissau, and widespread consumption of Portuguese-language media from Portugal and Brazil helped maintain a connection with the greater Lusophone diaspora even after political ties with Portugal itself were cut (Carling and Batalha 14-15). As scholar Cristiana Bastos wrote, “The termination of the Portuguese empire in the 1970s did not erase its phantasmatic presence, whether within nostalgic or anticolonial milieux” (Bastos 28). Connections with the greater Pan-African movement, symbolized by the colors on the Cape Verdean flag of independence and participation in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), were also emphasized (Carling and Batalha 14-15).

The 1960s and 70s were also when Cape Verdean immigration began to increase again to the United States, following a decrease between the 1920s and 1950s due to strict immigration laws against “Third World” nations (Sánchez Gibau). This gap, according to Sánchez Gibau, accounts for differences within the Cape Verdean diaspora between the families of those who immigrated in the 19th and early 20th century and those who immigrated later. The latter group typically maintains a stronger cultural and linguistic bond with the contemporary culture of the islands (Sánchez Gibau).

The “cultural gap,” to use Sánchez Gibau’s phrasing, between descendants of early Cape Verdean immigrants and recent arrivals is a source of division within the community in New England. Earlier migrants may not have had the opportunity to visit the islands like many today can, but a “steady stream of newcomers” from the islands helped maintain a common thread of community across generations, connecting the diaspora with the islands. The concept of Cape Verdeanness is also influenced by geopolitical structures—does the diaspora include only those who are citizens of Cape Verde, or does it also incorporate those born in other nations and even their descendants? (Carling). The Kriolu language especially has served as both a cultural marker and vehicle for the transmission of shared history and traditions.

In her field research, Sánchez Gibau found that despite their differences, Cape Verdeans tended to identify as Cape Verdean first and American second, and to identify with the specific island or community they belonged to on the archipelago. Cape Verdean identity is a “nonissue” on the islands, but becomes relevant in the diasporic community. This is especially true in an American context, where the concept of a racially and culturally mixed society is seen as alien. Further, considering that many Americans are not even aware of the existence of the island nation, the Cape Verdean community is “socially invisible” (Sánchez Gibau).

Today’s Cape Verdean identity, both in the United States and on the islands, is informed by a deep connection to the diaspora as a whole. According to the United Nations, over 700,000 Cape Verdeans live outside the islands, an amount about double that of those living in the archipelago (“Cabo Verde”). Cape Verdean communities can be found in up to 40 countries worldwide, perhaps the inspiration for the popular Kriolu phrase ‘té na lua ten kab’verdidn’, meaning that even on the Moon there are Cape Verdeans (Carling). Accurate estimations of the size of the Cape Verdean diaspora can be difficult to calculate, considering the fluidity of movement between the home country and other countries and the prevalence of undocumented migration (Carling). Many Cape Verdeans born on the islands spend their lives working abroad, returning home for their retirement in order to invest in their home country (Sánchez Gibau).

The Cape Verdean government actively supports the involvement of the worldwide diaspora in national development: emigrants are offered subsidies when they purchase property or homes in the archipelago, and promoting Cape Verdean diaspora communities abroad is even enshrined in the Cape Verdean constitution (Sánchez Gibau; Carling). Former president Mascarenhas Monteiro said, “it is now the time to launch an appeal for tradition and a very profound sense of solidarity among all Cape Verdeans, whatever country their presence graces,” an initiative facilitate through government institutions like PROMEX (the official Center for Investment and Export Promotion) and IAPE (the Institute for Assistance to Emigrants) (Carling). At the turn of the 21st century, the Cape Verdean government began to emphasize relations with Portugal and the United States (both nations with large diasporic communities) both economically and politically, even adopting a more European-inspired flag in place of the former Pan-African colors and modeling the islands’ governmental system after Portuguese democracy (Carling and Batalha 15). The other Macronesian archipelagos are still European holdings to this day, and there were talks around 2006 of incorporating Cape Verde as a member of the European Union (Carling and Batalha 15).

According to the United Nations, “Cabo Verde is highly dependent on tourism and the human, financial and other resources and capacities of its diaspora, through the mobilization of its resources both in terms of professional competencies and remittances” (“Cabo Verde”).

According to Sánchez Gibau, modern systems of telecommunications and the Internet, airline infrastructure, and the ability of obtaining dual citizenship facilitate the diaspora’s status as a “transnational community.”

III. Conclusion

The Cape Verdean global community redefines diaspora for the 21st century—a diaspora connected by airplanes, Wi-Fi, and pop music. Though Cape Verdeans and their descendants may have migrated far from the tiny Atlantic archipelago, cultural and linguistic cross-currents continue to tie them to the homeland. The connection between Cape Verde and New England, today the home to the largest Cape Verdean community in the world, rests on shared aquatic history forged through the whaling industry.

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