Announcing the Luso World Cinema Blogathon!

Today is Mary Astor day on Turner Classic Movies‘ Summer Under the Stars schedule, so what more perfect day is there to announce the launch of the Luso World Cinema Blogathon? Like I do, Astor had a Portuguese-American mother, making us both descendants of the Lusosphere. I’ll explain what that is in a moment, but I’m sure you already can guess this blogathon is personal to me. It’s the first one I’ve ever created let alone hosted. I’m motivated by the twin urges of self-education and advocacy.

This blogathon is a way for me to reconnect with my heritage, learn more about it, and understand it within the greater context of the Lusosphere. This blogathon is a way for others share or better understand their heritage and take pride in it. This blogathon is a way to educate others about Lusophones and help reduce their accidental erasure.

My Portuguese-American Backstory

I’m now the age my Portuguese-American grandmother was when I was born. Being only twenty-something years apart in generations, I enjoyed a large extended family beyond aunts, uncles, and cousins of every degree. I knew Great-Grandparents, Great-Aunts and -Uncles, and even Great-Great-Aunts and -Uncles. In the older generations, I’d hear accents, and they knew how to speak Portuguese. My mom’s side of the family immigrated here in the 1910s, so they made it in before the American government enacted the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s.

My maternal grandparents, being the first generation born here and growing up during a time when people of Southern European descent were viewed as different, were very assimilation focused. They were bilingual, but their parents varied in English-speaking ability. Instead of teaching my mother’s generation how to speak Portuguese, my grandparents would act as translators for any older relatives unable to express themselves as needed in English to the younger generations, including mine.

It was in my great-grandparents’ homes I’d hear family voices speak Portuguese or be served pastéis de bacalhau (codfish balls) and other tasty Portuguese foods. My mother and I would have to self-learn any recipes later. Save for going to festas (feasts), my grandparents embraced American foods and pop culture.

They weren’t unusual in their urge to assimilate and want to feel accepted. Growing up in a very Portuguese-American area, I heard people self-policing each other and being quick to say someone was a “greenhorn” either teasingly or reproachfully. At the same time on the playground, children had a few phrases in broken or rude Portuguese they’d say to each other, like “Cala a boca” or Shut your mouth.

My grandparents loved American movies. I’d go over their house and watch James Cagney sing about being a Yankee Doodle Dandy or some other classic. They liked contemporary movies, too. When E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL came out, my grandfather quoted a friend to speak for himself: “Joe, you get to love that thing.”

He would tell me tall tales about the movies. He said that he knew Mae West and John Wayne. The people and the era he picked were of the American West. He wasn’t explicitly integrating himself as a Portuguese-American man into the narrative; he was simply himself in the stories. The son of immigrants enjoying a fantasy where he was as American as anyone else.

I do regret not being pushy as a kid and asking to be taught Portuguese or getting more family history. Near the end of his life, my grandfather took out a series of vintage family portraits. He explained who everyone was, including the family friend who was darker Portuguese, so he couldn’t get served in New York City. The restaurant server assumed he was mixed race. I wished I had written everything down. I didn’t know our remaining time together would be short. He wasn’t diagnosed as sick yet, but maybe he guessed and maybe that triggered his nostalgia. He hid his symptoms.

Advocacy & Some History

Before I delve into Lusophones, I want to share a frustrating aspect of the Portuguese-American experience. The plus is that a lot of the old prejudices against Portuguese-Americans isn’t as prevalent. The continued negative is there is still not an understanding of the culture or history.

This often results in accidental erasure through a mindset that sees no difference between the Portuguese and even Lusophones and other groups. They are treated as “the same difference” as people they may or may not share commonalities with, but may be close in geography with.

People have asked me variations of the following questions in their own words. Why is Portugal a separate country than Spain? Shouldn’t Portugal be annexed by Spain? Aren’t all Portuguese really Spaniards under another name? Portuguese DNA is distinct from Spanish DNA? Isn’t Portuguese a dialect of Spanish? It’s good people are asking questions to learn, but you can see the underlying assumption is there is little cultural difference.

Now on to Lusophones at last! As defined by Wikipedia, “Lusophones (Portuguese: Lusófonos) are an ethno-linguistic group of peoples and nations across the world that speak the Portuguese language.” The Lusosphere are the nations, regions, and communities comprised of or from which Lusophones are descended.

Lusophone is a compound word. Its prefix is Luso, and its suffix phone means voice. Luso comes from the word the Romans gave to the area that now comprises much of modern day Portugal, Lusitania. The Romans at one point colonized the Iberian Peninsula. They found a group of Celtiberians called the Lusitanians in this area and named it after them.

Here’s where things get tricky for the average person. The Romans named the whole peninsula Hispania. From that word came Hispanic, which we call the Spanish speaking world and cultures–or at least we should. There are some people who insist that the Portuguese are Hispanics because the Romans named the overall land Hispania. To use that line of thinking means to ignore the wishes of what a people actually want to be called.

The Portuguese rejected association with the words Hispania and Hispanic, but the embraced the other label from their former colonizers, Lusitania. Hence taking the Lus- from Lusitania and turning into the Luso that gets combined with Lusophone. Luso voice means the Portuguese voice.

The major Lusophone countries or regions of the world are located in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. They are Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, East Timor, Goa, Macau, and the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. Like Hispanics, Lusophones can be from almost any race.

The breadth of the Lusosphere is not due only to exploration, trade, or missionary work. Portugal once rivalled Spain as a world power, and like Spain, Portugal colonized and enslaved parts of the world. Brazil won its independence in 1822. Portugal abolished its transatlantic slave trade in 1836, but slavery in its African colonies wouldn’t be outlawed until 1869. Between the 1960s to 1970s, Portugal lost or divested itself from most of its remaining colonies. In 1999, it returned its final colony Macau to China.

Lusophones spread to other parts of the world through economic and political diasporas, particularly those of Portugal and Brazil, and traditional immigration. Cape Verdeans are likely the first free group of people with African heritage to willingly immigrate to the United States. Today Lusophones can be found all over the world and not just in Portuguese-speaking countries or areas.

Every Page About the Blogathon!

The Luso World Cinema Blogathon, Part 1: Why?
The Luso World Cinema Blogathon, Part 2: Co-Host
The Luso World Cinema Blogathon, Part 3: Who or What to Write About?
The Luso World Cinema Blogathon, Part 4: Guidelines
The Luso World Cinema Blogathon, Part 5: Banner Art
The Luso World Cinema Blogathon, Part 6: The Participants & Topics