Lying 240 nautical miles off the coast of West Africa, the tiny, drought stricken archipelago of ten islands remained in the backwaters of world history until l975 when the islands gained independence from Portugal. Uninhabited prior to discovery in l462 by the Portuguese, Cape Verdeans developed as a mix of Africans, Portuguese, and other European voyagers to the islands. This volcanic archipelago, bathed in dazzling natural colors and light, is a land of stark beauty-soaring mountains, desert terrain and endless beaches. Yet for Cape Verdeans these five hundred years also represent devastating cycles of drought, starvation and death where up to half the total population of the islands died.
The connection between New England and the Cape Verde islands began in earnest after the American Revolution. Desperate for crews to work in the dangerous and low-paying whaling industry, whaling vessels from New Bedford and Nantucket regularly sailed to Cape Verde to pick up sailors. These early ties to New England made the United States the primary point of debarkation for Cape Verdeans. The trickle of immigration to New Bedford and New England in the early l800s turned into a flood at the turn of the century, as Cape Verdeans fled cycles of severe drought, starvation, perennial economic hardship and colonial neglect.
They came across the Atlantic to New England on voyages lasting up to three months on packet ships of dubious seaworthiness, arriving in the ports of New Bedford, MA and Providence, RI, the oldest and largest Cape Verdean communities in America.
Until the early l960s, the packets were the vital link between Cape Verdean and the New England communities, carrying passengers back and forth, and most importantly the barrels of food and clothes back to the families in the islands. Equally important were messages from loved ones that arrived in the New England ports, either by letter, or a personal message sent by way of friends from the same village or island.
The anguish of the separations of distance, years, or a lifetime, is immortalized in Cape Verdean music, especially the “morna”, sung by the wonderful musicians from the “Point” who you’ll meet in SOME KIND OF FUNNY “PORTO RICAN”?©. That feeling of “saudade,” or longing and sadness is a visceral component of Cape Verdean culture and resonates throughout every aspect of society. “Tristealegria,” happy and sad together, bittersweet, is the essence of the stoicism that characterizes the Cape Verdean determination to survive against almost insurmountable odds.
These tight-knit, self-contained communities are concentrated most heavily, in descending order, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and then Connecticut. Cape Verdeans worked in Cape Cod’s cranberry bogs, as well as on the waterfronts and in the textile mills. The door on Cape Verdean immigration, closed by the Johnson Immigration Laws of 1922 and l924, reopened in l968, beginning the second major wave of Cape Verdean immigration in the 20th century. Today, Dorchester, Massachusetts, Brockton, Massachusetts and Pawtucket, Rhode Island are the fastest growing new immigrant communities in the United States.