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Abstract
This essay explores the relationship between food and identity performances within a segment of a Portuguese transnational community with social, economic, and political ties to both the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, and many of the rural villages of Portugal. I examine how some Portuguese-Americans in Newark's Ironbound use bacalhau (salt cod) to perform their identities. Combining ethnographic, historical, and historiographic research methods, I consider how bacalhau operates within a complex system of performance practices and epistemologies through which many Portuguese-Americans situate themselves in relation to past, present, and future time and space.
Acknowledgements
This manuscript was developed from materials generated in graduate coursework and dissertation research conducted from 2004–present. Aspects of this manuscript have been presented in graduate seminars and at the 2006 American Studies Association national conference.
Notes
1. Newark is affectionately referred to as “Brick City.” Most Newarkers concede that the name refers to the once prevalent unattractive brick and cinderblock constructed high-rise public housing projects that sprang up during the urban renewal efforts of the 1950s and after the 1967 riots.
2. In addition to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, the Aveiro region of Northern Portugal, and the Azorean islands (one of two autonomous regions that along with continental Portugal form the Portuguese Republic), the former Portuguese colonies of Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Macau remain popular Portuguese diasporic outposts, as do emigrant enclaves in France and Germany.
3. Vila Nova de Gaia is just across the Douro River from Porto, the capital of the world's Port wine industry. Taylor Fladgate & Yeatman is a 300+ year-old family owned British Port wine shipping firm. It was established in Porto alongside other Port wine enterprises as a result of the British wars with France, which interrupted their access to Bordeaux wines, and the Methuen Treaty of 1703, in which England granted lower duties to Portuguese wines than those of France and Germany. Because the Douro wines did not travel well, they were fortified with brandy to sustain the long journeys. This fortified style, which became popular in England and Portugal, became known as Port wine.
4. Belleville, New Jersey, is a working class township just north of Newark. Monte is one of four freguesias or civil parishes within the concelho or municipality of Murtosa.
5. This essay focuses upon Newark's Portuguese residents, but the term “luso” intimates diasporic encounters, familial relations, and cultural affinities between Portuguese-speaking peoples. Newark's Lusophone community includes a diverse and sizeable Brazilian population as well as enclaves from Portugal's former African colonies—most notably, Cape Verde and Angola. Lusofonia refers to the notion of cultural cohesion among countries with Portuguese as an official language. For a critique of Lusofonia, see Onésimo T. CitationAlmeida's “Lusophonia: Some Thoughts on Language.”
6. MLA data procured from the 1990 and 2000 censuses and cross referenced with ethnographic field notes support this assertion.
7. In 1993, Murtosa's favorite son, Augusto “Auggie” Amador, was elected to the Newark Board of Education. The first Portuguese-American ever elected to public office in the City of Newark, Amador was appointed deputy mayor in 1997, and in July of the following year was elected to the Newark Municipal Council where he continues to represent the predominantly Portuguese East Ward.
8. The word saudade is said to have originated in the sixteenth century, and is commonly translated as nostalgia or longing as the result of displacement or separation (see CitationBebiano; CitationHatton; CitationHolton; CitationSarkissian; Feldman-Bianco).
9. When I shared this recollection with his son, Fernando, Fernando reminded me that César, who served his mandatory military service in the Portuguese Navy, never learned how to swim.
10. Founded in Newark 1928 by Portuguese businessmen, the bi-weekly publication maintains its offices in the Ironbound. The Luso-Americano is one of the oldest and most widely circulated Portuguese-language newspapers in the United States.
11. The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican convened from 1962 to 1965. Many of its “watershed” reforms—which included the Church's official renunciation of claims to power over nation-states—were brought about by progressive bishops acting on behalf of their local constituencies (CitationWilde 576). Bishops can also modify rules of fast and abstention for Catholics in their dioceses.
12. John was the 16th most popular name in the United States the year that his grandson was born. See <http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/popularnames.cgi>. João (pronounced jh-yoo-ow), the Portuguese equivalent, is often difficult for native English speakers to pronounce.
13. As an aside, this movement also coincided with the Nativist movement and efforts to squelch political and economic dissent often voiced by multi-ethnic labor unions.
14. Special thanks to Stephan Palmie for providing me with an early draft of this manuscript.