The Making of the Cape Verdean is a book written about Cape Verdeans who migrated from the Cape Verde Islands in the late 1800's to the 1970's to New Bedford Massachusetts. The book is based on the historical facts about the Portuguese colonization of the Cape Verde islands and its people located off the West Coast of Africa. The author provides the history of colonization under Portuguese rule of Salazar and how the Cape Verdean people survived famine, imprisonment, torture, politcal unrest and the abandonment of the Portuguese government. In addition, the author gives you a voyeuristic view of what life was like growing up in the Cape Verdean community in New Bedford after they migrated to the United States. This book is a powerful recap of of Cape Verdeans from this period and location. There is no other documentation that captures the Cape Verdeans the way "The Making of the Cape Verdean" does in this book.

The Making of the Cape Verdean

By Manuel E. Costa Sr.

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Jeanne M. Costa
All right reserved.
;ISBN: 978-1-4634-0134-4

Contents

Foreword...........................................................................ixPreface............................................................................xviiAcknowledgments....................................................................xixQuotes.............................................................................3Historical Background of Cape Verde Islands........................................7Cape Verde Islands.................................................................16St. Thiago.........................................................................19St. Vicente........................................................................24Fogo...............................................................................31Brava..............................................................................34St. Antão.....................................................................37Sal................................................................................38St. Nicolau........................................................................39Boa Vista..........................................................................41Maio...............................................................................43Alheu Branco, Ilheu Raza, St. Luzia, & St. Maria...................................44General Information................................................................44Education in Cape Verde............................................................49Marriage and Illegitimacy..........................................................54The Future of Cape Verde...........................................................56Emigration to the United States....................................................61The Saga of the Cape Verdean Stevedore.............................................65Main Street of Cape Verdeans.......................................................67Our Country Cousins—Gente di Matto (People of the Woods).....................79Cape Verdeans and White Portuguese.................................................85Cape Verdeans and Black Americans..................................................89Playing the Dozens.................................................................93The Cape Verdean Man...............................................................95The Cape Verdean Woman.............................................................100Beautiful Cape Verdeans............................................................104Cape Verdean Economic Life—Past & Present....................................108Number Playing.....................................................................114The Cape Verdean & Crime...........................................................119The Cape Verdean Police............................................................121Cape Verdean Music / Canta Reis....................................................123Cape Verdean Social Life...........................................................135On Church, Religion, Death, Marriage & Divorce.....................................144Nostalgia..........................................................................152The Cape Verdean Dietary Habits in U.S.............................................166Home Remedies......................................................................170The Cape Verdean and Education.....................................................172The Cape Verdean and Sports........................................................180Cape Verdean Leadership............................................................184Well-To-Do Cape Verdeans...........................................................188Bibliography.......................................................................199Epilogue...........................................................................203A: Mannie Costa Letters............................................................209B: The Park Wall by Jeanne M. Costa................................................266C: Tables..........................................................................268D: Conta d'Odju: The All Seeing Eye................................................270E: List of Cape Verdean American Businesses........................................272F: Leon Dash Articles..............................................................276G: Poetry by Teobaldo Virginio de Melo.............................................286H: Speech by Amilcar Cabral........................................................288

Chapter One

Quotes

"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world—Aworld which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the relevant of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the type of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro, two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

William Edward Burghardt Dubois. The Souls of Black Folk

"A people that denies its past cannot escape being a prey to doubt of its value today and of its potentialities for the future."

Melville J. Herskovits Myth of the Negro Past

"Know the truth and the truth shall make you free"

King James Bible, John 8:32

"Know thyself!"

Socrates

"Perhaps it is too soon to write the history of the liberation of the Portuguese colonials. But those who will one day write it will have to recall a fact of characteristic influence on the development of these struggles, whether in their internal dynamic or in their relation with the outside world: the wall of silence built around our peoples by Portuguese colonialism. And this at a time when the continental 'wind of change' had begun to announce its message of the African awakening and the return of Africans to history.

While hastily modifying the Portuguese constitution so as to escape the obligations of the UN Charter, the fascist colonialism of Portugal also took care to suppress all means of non-official information about its 'overseas provinces.' A powerful propaganda machine was put to work at convincing international opinion that our peoples lived in the best of all possible worlds, depicting happy Portuguese 'of colour' whose only pain was the yearning for their white mother-country, so sadly torn from them by the facts of geography. A whole mythology was assembled. And as with other myths, especially those concerning the subjection and exploitation of people, there was no lack of 'men of science,' even a renowned sociologist, to provide a theoretical basis—in this case, luso-tropicalismo. Perhaps unconsciously confusing realities that are biological or necessary with realities that are socio-economic and historical, Gilberto Freyre transformed all of us who live in the colony-provinces of Portugal into the fortunate inhabitants of a Luso-Tropical paradise.

Not without success, as shown by an incident during the second All-African Peoples' Conference in Tunis during...