Word: copa
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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...
...founding of COPA in 1970 was largely influenced by the question of ethnic identity, especially in its effect on politics. "The whole thing [COPA] developed out of black awareness," Aurelio Torres, a former director of COPA, says. "A lot was being said about black awareness at the time--we wanted to raise Portuguese awareness...
...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...
...underemployment of Portuguese immigrants has more than economic implications. According to Aurelio Torres, a former director of COPA: "There is resentment [among the Portuguese] of the switching around of social classes in this country...
...desire to achieve even slight economic gains, however, has hindered efforts to mobilize Cambridge's Portuguese workers. While the Congress of the Portuguese in America (sponsored by COPA and held at Harvard last spring) could declare that "because the immigrants in their homelands are accustomed to the absence of decision-making power in their places of employment, the helpless situation of the worker is perpetuated in the United States [and that] it is necessary to arouse the consciousness of the workers," grass roots efforts in organizing Cambridge's Portuguese have yielded little response...