Paper short abstract:

Cape Verdean and Portuguese activists in New England create museums, exhibits and cultural projects to reclaim migrant history narratives. These recent memorialization projects challenge state-level cultural collaborations, shaping local power relations and international cultural diplomacy efforts

Paper long abstract:

Cape Verdean and Portuguese community activists in New England have been involved in recent efforts to create museums, exhibits and cultural projects that reclaim narratives of their migrant histories. With continuous and ongoing international labor mobility flows over the past 100-plus years, these communities have long been involved in partnerships with international state governments, including the Estado Novo dictatorship, as well as in the post-colonial context of post-dictatorship Portugal and independent Cabo Verde. Twentieth century efforts on the part of the Estado Novo included collaborations with immigrant civic and cultural organizations to create celebratory nostalgia projects through museum exhibits and cultural memorialization intended to influence international policy. The creation of one popular heritage site, at Dighton Rock, Massachusetts, erased the indigenous origins of petroglyphs to speciously argue for the 15th century settlement of Portuguese in the region (part of white nationalist power discourses of belonging in the "movement to Americanize the immigrant"). Other heritage projects celebrate Portuguese maritime "discoveries" including earlier Estado Novo cultural diplomacy efforts in the US that have a counterpart with contemporary Portuguese democratic state projects. Several contemporary immigrant cultural memorialization initiatives, however, have challenged these discourses by creating critical nostalgia projects including Cape Verdean museums, oral history collection, and cultural exhibits that find new pathways for immigrant communities to reshape narratives and critique celebratory hagiographies. The paper examines the complexity of narrative constructions in which local community organizations critique local power discourses while sometimes soliciting funding and collaborations with international state actors pursuing their own interests.