I learned very quickly that when you emigrate, you lose the crutches that have been your support; you must begin from zero, because the past is erased with a single stroke and no one cares where you’re from or what you did before.
― Isabel Allende
Paula
My professor in Portugal moved to the United States when she was thirteen. She had already been in trouble with the police three times. The two incidents that I remember were that she had attended a poetry reading, where either some of the poetry or some of the poets were somehow possibly critical the fascist regime in control at that time. The other was her involvement in a prank that included her school PA system, a naughty french song, and the arrival of an important religious figure, like a bishop or a cardinal or something, to the campus.
Her parents assessed, accurately by all accounts, that she was not going to fare well under the rigid authoritarian government, with its censorship and secret police (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado; PIDE). They finally gave up on raising her to be obedient and submissive and moved to California, instead. My research keeps showing that economic opportunities were behind all the various waves of Portuguese emigration, but there is strong anecdotal evidence that the authoritarian Estado Novo (1933 – 1974), was also a driving force for many families. Whatever the reasons, Portugal is shaped by absence of its emigrants as much as cities like Los Angeles are shaped by the presence of immigrants.
My ex-husband and I honeymooned in Ireland in 1998. I was something of a disappointment to his Aunt Mary when we arrived. She knew from the wedding invitation I’d sent that I had a Spanish surname. She knew from letters exchanged with my mother-in-law that my father had immigrated to California from Mexico. She had a distinct image in her mind of what I would look like. She had not been told that my mother is Irish-American. When we arrived at the family farmhouse in County Roscommon she declared somewhat accusingly, “you look like you could’ve been raised up the road.”
My aunt-in-law’s brief disappointment aside, I found that throughout Ireland I was welcomed home. Strangers didn’t ask if my people were from Ireland, they asked what part of Ireland they were from. For the record, I have no clue. One B&B owner in particular was eager to let us know her thoughts on the Irish diaspora. I think most Irish-Americans carry a sense of exile, of living far from home. She was the first person to tell me that our absence has been felt.
At the end of the program our professor gave a little speech explaining why she puts so much of her own time, energy, and sometimes money, into this particular program. She is personally driven to try to bring the descendants of Portuguese emigrants home, not forever, but long enough to remember who they are. A part of me was butthurt for a moment, because she was basically announcing publicly that a bunch of us, myself included, are not who this program is for.
But that’s not really it. She was equally warm, and when not warm still equally, with all of us. She gave of herself with no calibrations of our heritage. It was never that the program was only for Luso-Americans, just that it was important to her that it be there for as many of them as possible. I respect that.
On São Miguel there is a monument, Saudades da Terra, located in Emigrant Plaza dedicated to Azorean emigrants past and present. There are emigrant associations and emigrant museums. This sense of generations of branches breaking off of family trees and floating overseas is pervasive. Far more than the romantic, unrequited love, version of saudade, this I understand. There is a missing that is shared by those who have left and those who have been left behind. Home as a place is less complete when it doesn’t include home in the sense of family, of the loved ones the place is for. Portugal misses its scattered children so much more than most of them will ever know.
So we came across the water
From the shores of the isle of green
Speaking separate tongues
In the death of culture– Tonic
Celtic Aggression
Crystal, Clearly 
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