Word: cabral
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ruben Cabral, executive director of the Cambridge Organization of Portuguese Americans (COPA) points out that ethnic identity is of fundamental importance to the Portuguese in this country. "It is important to preserve your own heritage," Cabral says, "for if you lose your heritage you lose yourself. We have to keep our own things that can identify us. The Portuguese can become anything. They have shown a tremendous facility for adopting other cultures. To preserve our culture we have to have a very strong emphasis on what it is to be Portuguese...
...goals of COPA are two-fold: The organization seeks to raise Portuguese consciousness and to employ this awareness in Cambridge politics. "We are trying to educate the Portuguese community in being Portuguese," Cabral says. "We want to get people not to be ashamed of being Portuguese. We are trying to become united so that political gains can be made. We should get into the American society as Portuguese...
...Ruben Cabral, acting executive director of COPA, estimates that the Portuguese supply 80 per cent of the cheap labor in Cambridge. Often, the Portuguese work in jobs far below their capabilities...
...many who were well educated in Portugal, coming to this country is a kind of spiritual death," Cabral says. "My father was a minister in Portugal and when he came here he worked in a factory...
...Cabral observes that one of the reasons the Portuguese are unwilling to rock the boat to obtain increased benefits is that conditions in America, bad as they are for the Portuguese, are still better than what they left behind...