Diniz Borges Interview 1
Item
Title
Diniz Borges Interview 1
Description
Diniz Borges, was born on the island of Terceira, Azores. At the age of 10 he emigrated with his family to the United States, having lived and worked in the Central Valley ever since. He founded his first radio program at the age of 18 and co-founded the first 24-hour Portuguese radio station in Central California. He has served on numerous boards of Portuguese-American organizations at the local, state, and national level. He taught Portuguese at Tulare Union High School and the College of the Sequoias for 22 years. He is a lecturer at Fresno State where he is the founding director of the Portuguese Beyond borders Institute (PBBI). A contributing writer to various Portuguese language newspapers in the US, Canada, and the Azores, he has published several books in Portugal including anthologies and translations. He was the first Portuguese language teacher to be recognized as an Outstanding California World Languages Teacher.
Creator
Borges, Diniz
McCoy, Kelley
Relation
Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute
Identifier
SCUAD_pbbi_00001
Date
07-10-2019
extracted text
Diniz Borges: Diniz Aurélio Lourenco Borges. That's was my first, that
was my full name given when I was born in Terceira Island, Praia da
Vitória.
Kelley McCoy: We're you named after anyone?
Diniz Borges: My first name is my grandmother, my paternal grandmother's
last name, and then Aurélio is my second name, which was supposed to be
my first name, but it wasn't accepted at the time in Portugal. They had
rules under the dictatorship which names were accepted, which weren't,
and then Lourenco, or Lawrence in English, is my maternal grandfather's
name, so my mom's maiden name, and then Borges, like that's my last name.
Kelly McCoy:Now, you we're saying that in Portugal it's standard to have
four names?
Diniz Borges: It's still standard today to have four names. It was
certainly from my generation and it still is today, which is most
Portuguese have two given names. Today is a little bit different, but
there's still lots of Marias and Joses in Portugal, and so there's lots
of people with, you know, Paulo Jose or, you know, Alice Maria, and
then you traditionally have your mother's maiden name and your father's
last name. And in Portugal, when I was born, it wasn't just, your
mother's maiden name. It was your mother's name because women in Portugal
until the 1970s did not take on their husband's names. So, you know,
we've had feminists in Portugal before they had any in the United States
because we just didn't take them. My mother only took my father's name in
1968 when we immigrated to America. Her name was always Maria Albertina
Lourenco, and my father, Borges, so she never went by Borges until she
came here to the states.
Kelley McCoy: Now, when were you born?
Diniz Borges: I was born in 1958, October 22, 1958.
Kelley McCoy: And where were you born?
Diniz Borges: In the city of Praia da Vitória in the island of Terceira,
Azores.
Candace Egan: Can I make one quick comment? You need more gapping between
finishing and stopping. You’re almost stepping on it.
Kelley McCoy: Oh, OK.
Candace Egan: Your questions. So, just give a beat and then ask the next.
Kelley McCoy: OK.
Diniz Borges: OK.
Kelley McCoy: All right.
Diniz Borges: I’ll pause also.
Kelley McCoy: Do we need -Candace Egan: We’re fine.
Kelley McCoy: OK. All right. Do you have any recollection of your
childhood in the Azores?
Diniz Borges: Oh, yes. I have found memories. I was almost 10 when I
immigrated. I actually turned 10 October 22, 1968. We were on the
island of San Miguel. There are nine islands in the Azores. The San
Miguel is the largest island, and that is the island where we have
the U.S. diplomatic presence, the U.S. Consulate. I was there with my
family, my mom and dad, my brother who at the time was three. We were
waiting to get our visa, our immigration visa, to come to the United
States. And so, I did what at the time was the mandatory education in
Portugal. I came at the age of 9, almost 10 years old, with a fourth
grade, which in Portugal at the time was the mandated education. You did
not have to go past the fourth grade, believe it or not.
Kelley McCoy: So, when exactly did your family emigrate to the United
States?
Diniz Borges: My family, us, we came in 1968. My grandfather, my maternal
grandfather, my mom's father, immigrated to the United States in 1910.
And he came alone, and my maternal grandmother, his wife, soon to be
wife, she also came with a sister in 1911, so they married shortly after,
well a few years after, my grandfather was here 18 years. He went back
in 1928. He sold his dairy here in Tulare six months before the
depression. Had he waited a few more months, he would not have been
able to sell it because nobody could sell anything after the depression
hit. But, things were high. Things were off the wall, and he hit, he sold
his dairy, he was in the United States, like I said, for 18 years, nine
years single, nine years married. My mother is one of eight girls, and
five of them were born in the U.S. So, he went back in 1928 with five
daughters, with a little bit of money, quite a bit, actually. He was able
to buy quite a bit of land there and continue his dairy operation, it was
a different size, obviously, but in the Azores. Then, my aunts, those
five who were born here, my mother was not, my mother was born in
Portugal, so my mother was one of the three youngest that were born, who
were born there, and in the 1950s, my aunts, who were American citizens,
and it was a very tough economic time for Portugal, and especially in the
Azores. And my aunts started coming to America, and then there was the,
there were two immigration acts. One of them was the Azorean Refugee Act
of 1957/58, and that one was for people specific from one island because
there was a big volcanic eruption, the island of Faial. But then in the
1960s, the so-called Family Reunification Act, which is still the law of
the land as far as immigration in the United States of America, allowed
people to bring their siblings. So, you could sponsor your sister, your
brother, your mom, or your dad or your son or daughter, and one of my
aunts sponsored us, and we came over in 1968 and another one of my aunts
as well.
Kelley McCoy: So, in 1968, you said earlier that you arrived here when
you were nine years old?
Diniz Borges: Ten, yes.
Kelley McCoy: Okay, so just turned 10. How many of you came at that time?
Diniz Borges: How many of us from our family?
Kelley McCoy: From your family.
Diniz Borges: Just the four of us. My mom and dad, myself and my brother.
We came in 1968. There were, some of my aunts had come before, the ones
who were American citizens, or two of them anyway. A few of them who were
American citizens never wanted to come back, wanted to immigrate,
actually one of them, and then we arrived here in 1968 just the four of
us.
Kelley McCoy: So, you mentioned the Family Reunification Act, but why did
your family decide to leave the Azores?
Diniz Borges: The Azores of the 1960s, and I just had an interview about
the volcano, the Capelinhos volcano, there was a project about this, the
Azores of the 1960s to me was a very sad place, now that I look back at
it. We had a couple of things going on. We were living a dictatorship.
Portugal was living what is known as a Salazar dictatorship. Salazar, and
then his successor, Marcello Caetano ruled Portugal for almost 50 years.
It was a brutal dictatorship in a lot of ways, and for the Azores, it was
brutal because the Azores were kind of forgotten. So, there was this
group of island, nine islands in the middle of the Atlantic, and they
were completely forgotten. And we were, but by the same token, we were
not forgotten when it came to exploit some of the things that we had.
Then, at the same time, Portugal was fighting colonial wars in Africa.
Portugal at the time still had five Portuguese colonies in Africa. The
only, you know, or one of the few I should say, European empires that
still had colonies, and there's a story behind that, but in the 1960s,
and these colonies, especially Angola, which is now an independent
country, they're all independent countries, Angola, Mozambique and
Guinea-Bissau, at that time Portuguese called these, took up arms against
Portugal. So, every single available young man was sent off to war. And
although I was only 10, my father always thought, you know, he didn't
want to send me to war. But, that wasn't the main reason. We came over
because although my family, my mom, we had owned our home, which is
something we didn't own in America for a while. We owned our home. My
dad had 12 acres, so he was not a man who didn't have, who were poor. It
just, the way the structure, the economic structure was, with a house
paid for and 12 acres, you still couldn't advance. I mean you could make
a living, you could live, you know, you could put food on the table, but
you couldn't advance economically. My father tried to leave before. He
actually tried in the early '60s before these wars became a big thing,
leave to Angola, I was like two years old when my father tried to leave
for Angola. You had to actually, it was part of Portugal, but you had to
have clearance from the dictator to leave the country anywhere, even
within the country. Okay. So, my father was not, was turned down to go to
Angola as an immigrant, and then he came to America. The reason why he
came was basically sort of to chase the so-called American dream,
whatever that might be, but he came basically because he saw father-inlaw had lived here 18 years and was able to accumulate some wealth.
And in his thought, I'll go there. I'll be there another, you know, a
dozen years, and accumulate something, you know, come back so I can live
a little bit with this home and this land that I have, invest a little
bit. And, of course, he died here. But, he never went back. And, our
immigration was kind of like that. A lot of people left for some economic
opportunities, many of them thinking that it would be a temporary
situation. But then, of course, America became home.
Kelley McCoy: What possessions did you bring with you?
Diniz Borges: Good question. Wow. We brought very little. We brought some
debts. My father, although, like I said, he owned a little bit of
property in his home, banking system was really horrific in Portugal at
the time. One of the reasons why, you know, the economy wasn't what it
was. And so, my father did not have any, we didn't have any money
basically, and so he didn't want to take a loan out on his house or his
property. So, he actually got loan, he got a loan from a so-called loan
shark to pay for our passageway, to pay for our four airline tickets and
our stay in San Miguel to get our visa. And so, we brought with us a
little bit of debt, and then we also, we brought basically the clothes on
our back. We didn't bring any kind of special things that we had in our
home because our home stayed basically the way it was. Our idea was we're
only going for a few years.
Kelley McCoy: Where did your family settle and why that particular place?
Diniz Borges: We settled here in Tulare, or the Tulare area, Tulare-Kings
county. We came, and we settled because my aunts lived here. Two of my
aunts lived here, the two who are American citizens, two of the five were
American citizens, had immigrated, and we came to their home, and of
course, you know, he was milking cows at the time, my uncle, that's my
father who had not milked cows, he did not like the dairy industry in
Portugal, who did everything to get out of the industry that his father
had dairy and some cows, and my father did not like it, but that's what
he did here for quite a few years and then he got out of that as well.
But he, so we came here, like most immigrants. There was, you know, a
support system set in place where there's family. So, most of the time
you just go where family lives and you stay around that area. There
are some immigrants in California that didn't happen because some of the
areas that their families had immigrated to didn't have much economic
opportunity, and so they left. Not that Tulare county had great economic
opportunities, but it did have a stable job or someone who didn't have
the skill or the language especially, like my father did.
Kelley McCoy: So, you're a 10-year-old boy—
Diniz Borges: Yes.
Kelley McCoy: What were your first impressions and early experiences like
in the United States?
Diniz Borges: Well, my first impression was scary because we got lost in
the airports. And so that was a scary, that was my first impression, but
we didn't, we flew from the Azores to Boston, and then from Boston to
San Francisco and San Francisco to Fresno. We got lost in San Francisco.
And it just happened that my father saw a man who he knew from Portugal,
who had just been there to take a relative who was visiting Portugal. And
they kind of looked at each other, and they said we know each other, and
they spoke Portuguese, and he helped us. We missed our plane to Fresno,
and we didn't make it to Fresno until the next day, but we didn't know
anything what to do, so we slept all night on the airport, in little
seats at the airport. And so, so my first experience was basically
a scary experience because of someone who's lived on an island where you
are familiar with everything, and an island within an island. I mean,
within an island, you lived in your village and your town and your little
city. You didn't even know the other side of the island that well. So, it
was a scary thing. Then, when I went to Portugal, when I went to school
about 10 days after when we were in America, my dad had a job. We moved
into a home at the dairy and that he was first work was, and we went to a
school here in Tulare county, a rural school, still a rural school Paolo
Verde, and that was kind of a unique experience because I got there with
my Portuguese passport and my aunts with us. And we went to school, and
that's where my name kind of has these different changes, and I went to
school, and they said, what is your name. And I said Diniz, and they said
that doesn't exist in English. So, your name is Dennis. And actually all
of my legal documents are D-E-N-N-I-S because became Dennis, Lorenco
became Lawrence, you know, and Borges that was a name that people already
knew in Tulare because it was kind of a popular Portuguese name. And so,
and that happened with a lot of other people. It wasn't just me. So,
there was kind of an instantaneous Americanization process, let's put it
that way, but then school went fine. I had some few issues, like any
EL student will have them. But I was, I went to school starting basically
in November, and by May, I communicated well in English, very well, and I
was successful that year.
Kelley McCoy: Did you speak any English when you came over here?
Devin Nunes: No, I knew how to say maybe like five words. I shouldn't say
that, maybe a dozen. I was raised, the area I was raised in the Azores,
until I was 10 years old, and the U.S. has an Air Force base in the
Azores in the island of Terceira, and at that time, it was much better
for servicemen to live outside of the base, because you got an allotment
to live outside and the funds that they were given to live outside the
base not only paid for a better home than they had on base but also paid
for maid service, you know, or a butler, or you know, some kind of,
someone to do your yard, you know. And so, and they were able to have
these luxuries that you wouldn't be able to have on base or in many other
parts of the world. So, I was raised, and people in our neighborhood that
spoke English. However, there wasn't much contact, because first of all,
we didn't understand the language. Second of all, the students, or the
young people may age wouldn't go to the same school I did. They would go
to the American school on base. And so, but I was raised, my dad worked
at the airbase temporarily, for a temporary, for a contractor, and my
uncle Pedreno [phonetic], godfather, also worked at the officer's club.
He was one of the first, was one of the few people that spoke English,
and he worked at the officer's club as a waiter. And so, I had contact
with America through him, through my father, through, you know, knowing
American people who lived there, but not enough. My first words I learned
in English were trick or treat because we heard that these Americans for
Halloween, which we did not celebrate in Portugal, we celebrated the All
Saints Day because of being a Catholic country, and so that, and we had
a similar thing called Pão de Deus, bread for God during the All Saints
Day. However, the day before All Saints Day, they would celebrate with
these masks and everything else, which we did for Marty Gras, but they
gave away candy, but you had to learn these words, trick or treat. So,
hey, I put on, you know, something, and I got--we'd never had any candy,
so we hit every single American house that we knew in the neighborhood,
and those were the first two words that I learned. But I knew things
like, you know, good morning and thank you, but maybe not, not more than
10 words.
Kelley McCoy: What were the biggest adjustments you had to make as a
newcomer to the United States.
Diniz Borges: Well, at the age of 10, you kind of adapt because you're a
kid and kids adapt well, and you, you know, it's just, you know, part of
who you are and I saw some major adaptation on my mom and my dad. I think
it was much rougher for them. My father was 38, and my mom was 33. So, I
think for them it was a little bit more of an adjustment. As I grew up,
you know, when I was 10, 11, 12, my dad when he first came to America,
and he came because he thought he could accumulate, you know, some wealth
in return, he would move for $25. I had a different school just about
every year, so for me it was a little bit tough, that was the tough part.
We were migrants, you know, in a way, because my dad believed that, you
know, if there's a dairy out there that paid him another $25 a month,
at that time it was a lot of money, he would move. And so I had different
schools. That was an adjustment for me because I had done to the same
school, although by now by the time I was 11, I knew the language, but,
you know, in Portugal, I had the same school for four years, the same set
of friends. To me it was different. And also, I dressed different. My mom
didn't spend a lot of money on clothes. There was a lot of hand-me-downs
from my cousins because they wanted to save. And so, I dressed different.
I was different. And as I drew up a little bit, you know, like I got into
my teenage years, you know, 13, 14, that was probably a little bit
rougher than originally when I got here at 10.
Kelley McCoy: You mentioned that you thought that it was more of an
adjustment for your parents, who were in their late 30s. Anything
that you can recall in the way of maybe anti-immigrant sentiment
prejudice directed toward the family?
Diniz Borges: I don't think that they received it, and the reason why,
I'm not saying it wasn't, and you know, anti-immigrants or any kind of
prejudice, you know, going on at the time, but we lived in a very
Portuguese world. So, you know, my father went to the bank where there
were, you know, five tellers that spoke Portuguese, and he would go to
the doctor's office, that there were people who spoke Portuguese in the
1960s and '70s. And so, he would go to the Portuguese celebration where
everybody was Portuguese or didn't speak Portuguese because some of them
were second and third generation, but they kind of--I think there was a
little bit, I felt a little bit in school. And I felt a little bit in
school not from people who weren't Portuguese, but from people
who were Portuguese, I felt from second and third-generation Portuguese.
I once had, I will never forget this, I was 12 years old. I was at a
school in Visalia, Packwood school, it's an elementary school that no
longer exists actually. It was a little small rural school, and I was
there, and I was playing with a, we were having recess. And one of the
kids says, you can't come play over here, and I said, why not? My friend
is there. And he said, he's not your friend. And these are kids talking
obviously. I said, well yes he is. No he's not. I said, yeah he is. He's
Portuguese like me. Not like you. We're not like you. I'm Portuguese too.
I'm Portuguese. You're a port-a-gee. I said, well what does that mean?
Well, my father owns a dairy, your father milks the cows. You're not like
us. You weren't born in America. And so, I felt a little bit more of
that, you know, from kids, you know, being silly and maybe, you know, I
don't know, maybe something from the home, who knows. But anyway, I felt
a little bit more of that as I went through school than I felt. I mean I
recall this vividly, and I just told this story not too long ago. In high
school, I had one of the teachers, when I went to high school, I had one
of the teachers, one of the counselors ask me what do you want to be, you
know. The things that we all, that are still going on, now it's actually
done differently. And, you know, you think, and I said, you know, I think
I'd like to be a teacher. And I didn't know if I was going to make it or
not because my father when I--, I was already milking cows when I was 13
years old with him and going to school and it was tough for me. But, you
know, he, and he said, aren't you Portuguese, and I said, yes I am. And
he said, well you, you handle yourself quite well. You should consider
being a hay salesman. And this happened in 1970, whatever it was, you
know. So, I felt it a little bit more. I don't think my father
actually never felt that, basically because he lived in a very Portuguese
world in America.
Kelley McCoy: In what ways was life in the Azores different than the life
that you found here?
Diniz Borges: Well, life in the Azores for me as a child was much
different because it was, I knew everything. You know, I mean it was my,
I was in my natural habitat, and I had my grandparents, or my
grandmother, my grandfather passed. I had my grandmother, was very close,
was the woman hero in my family, and my wife knows this and my mother and
everybody else. And so, and I had, and I had a whole support system, and
of course, I had, you know, my friends from school, and it's who I was
going, you know, I never imagined myself anywhere else. So, so, you know,
it was a very safe place for me. And even for my parents. I, you know, I
tell my kids this all the time because they were, although they were
raised kind of Portuguese with us, my wife and I spoke all this
Portuguese with them, the language part, culturally not Portuguese,
culturally a mixture of everything, like we all are in America; however,
I used to tell my kids all the time, one of the toughest things was my
father and my mother wanted to protect me so much, because this was all
strange to them, that I was never allowed to, you know, go to kids'
birthday parties. I was never allow to stay over, you know. Sometimes I
would go, but very rarely, and he would go take me and go pick me up an
hour later, you know, and it was just this sense that we don't know
anybody, and you know, we're strangers in this land, other than when we
are at a Portuguese event, and so, and most of my friends were not
Portuguese, you know. They were different, you know, from school. Most of
my friends were different ethnicities. So, I basically, you know, how
shall I put it, I basically felt that my life had changed immensely. You
know, I can't do some of the things, I can't do the fun things. My dad
let me go to the beach by myself when I was nine years old, my friends
and I would go to the beach, and here I couldn't even leave the house. I
couldn't even go to a neighbor's house or something like that. In the
dairy I could, but you know, outside of there. So, there was this sense
of security that I lost and the sense of freedom.
Kelley McCoy: What traditions did your family retain after moving here?
Diniz Borges: Well, we still, we've become Americanized like everyone
else, and, you know, we celebrate the holidays we all celebrate in
America. I think we continue some family traditions mainly, to be honest
with you, more around food. You know, food is an important tradition in
all cultures. And mainly, you know, we still for Christmas, when
everybody does, you know, whatever people do for Christmas here in the
states, there's a wide variety of things, you know, but you know, we
still, we don't do the, we don't do the--for Thanksgiving, for example.
We don't do the turkey. We'll do Portuguese cuisine. You know, some of my
friends think it's, you know, it's anti-American or whatever you want to
call it, but we celebrate a lot still with Portuguese food. And for
Christmas, we do the traditional Portuguese codfish. You know, and my
kids actually do it. Both of my sons do it. So, we maintain a lot of the
traditions around food, you know, the foods around birthdays and holidays
and special events. I was raised a lot, like I said in the Portuguese
American community, so I went to all the Festas when I was a young man.
My sons were part of the Portuguese marching band in Tulare. We made sure
that they were part of the Portuguese folklore group as they were raised
up. They went to Portuguese school. I've been in Portuguese rganizations,
not really involved in a lot of the Holy Ghost Festas but in some of the
cultural organizations. And so, we've carried a lot of the traditions,
and a lot of the religious traditions as well, especially my mom and dad,
more than myself or my kids. But we've kept mainly around food and also
around the holidays.
Kelley McCoy: Why would you say that it has been important to you to
maintain these particular traditions and customs?
Diniz Borges: Well, when I was, when I was a teenager, I kind of didn't
want to be Portuguese. And part of, because, you know, my father didn't
let me do anything, you know, I mean, and didn't let me do anything for
security reasons, you know, because of what I've explained. So, I
thought, well, you know, the best thing is just don't be Portuguese.
There's enough Portuguese going on at home. So, whenever I leave I'm not
Portuguese. And, when I was basically going, you know, through my teenage
years, I kind of, you know, pushed away from that. There was a friend of
mine when I was 17 years old, I always read a lot in Portuguese. I
continued reading in Portuguese. I enjoyed reading, and I read a lot more
in Portuguese than I did in English, to be honest with you. And even with
my teenage years. My cousins were in the Azores, and they would send me
books, you know, that they would read, and they were very nice. And this
is before, of course, the internet and all that kind of stuff. And so we,
when I was 17, I had a friend of mine, a friend of my dad's actually, who
did a Portuguese radio program, who was a Portuguese broadcaster, parttime. He was in sales and he had a part-time, 1-hour a week, and he and
his wife were going to the Azores on vacation to see their family, there
was some family illness, and they were going for about three weeks. And
he asked me to do the program for him. And so, I started, I didn't, I
always liked radio, and I listened to it all the time. We listened to it
at home, and so I went to do the program. When I went to do the program,
I kind of took a really different turn toward the language and the
culture, especially towards the land, the beauty of the language. I never
thought it was beautiful. I just thought it was, you know, the language I
spoke with my mom and dad. But then once I knew English and I was
studying English and everything else, I took a little bit different turn.
And so, after that, I became involved in Portuguese radio. I became a
broadcaster, you know, part-time and then full-time, and then, and so, at
that particular time, and I was recently married, after that, and so we
made a decision to start using more Portuguese. My wife, you know, was
also, you know, she came over here as well, and so we started using a
little bit more Portuguese in the house with the boys. Actually, my
eldest son went to school as an EL student, like I did. He was five years
old. He didn't know how to speak a single word of English or maybe the
same 10 that I knew, but I had a nice argument with a teacher who wanted
to put him in the EL program, and I said no, he'll do fine, and he did.
Four months later, he was speaking English, and so he, and so we became
very involved in the Portuguese American community, because that return
debt to me happened in my late teens because of this man. And I think
it's, it's part of who I am. I can't really explain it, but I don't see
myself, you know, I teach Portuguese, as people know, for a living, and
I've taught it for a living for years, and I just, not just because I
teach it, I just can't imagine myself without the language and the
culture. It's part of who I am. But, I don't go to all the Festas. I
don't go to all the events. I don't go to all the different things, there
are some things in the Portuguese culture I don't partake in. I don't
partake in bull fights. I don't like them. I think they're anti-humane.
And so, there's some things in my culture that I'll criticize and
I don't like, but it's still who I am.
Kelley McCoy: How important is it to you, you mentioned your sons, how
important is it to you that your sons and your beautiful grandchildren
maintain a relatively strong sense of the Portuguese identity?
Diniz Borges: I don't know if it's that important to me. I would like
them to continue. I think it's a choice that they have to make. I think
we all become American, you know, within a couple generations. Both of my
boys don't even, don't live in this area. They've lived in the areas
that, one of them lives in the area, there are Portuguese but a few, and
the other one does not. And so, they still can speak the language, and
that is because it was their first language, not as well as they spoke
and read it, you know, when they were, you know, in their teens, but they
still, they still communicate, and my grandkids, I think, you know, we
tell them the stories. I think what's important for families is to tell
stories. And if you just tell those stories through your kids and your
grandkids, and they may think of them, some of them are really weird and
strange, and some of them are, but it then clicks in after, you know,
after a few years, and I think that, you know, I think that it is
important for me that they not just, you know, carry on the tradition
with food around the holidays and other special times of the year, but
also a sense of who you are. I have this plan to take my kids, my kids
went back, went back, they never went back, not back to them, they went
to the Azores with us twice, and it was important, especially the second
time because Mika was 15 and Steven was 17, and they kind of gave them a
sense of this is the place where it all began. And I think there is a
little bit of, it's important to know your roots, not that it's going to
make you, you know, not that I would want my kids or my grandkids to live
the same Portuguese life that I lived or certainly that my father
lived. They're Americans first and foremost. But it is good to have your
sense of roots because it gives you a sense of belonging. You know,
you're an American, but America is this. And I think that's, I think
that's important because I think it will make you a better American. I
think when you don't know the sense of your roots, whether they be
Portuguese or Scottish or African or Asian, I mean, it kind of, you know,
then there is nothing that can solidify some of the opinions that
sometimes you hear from other people who may be very nativist in thoughts
and not understand that there is no "nativism," you know, with the native
Americans in America, so I think it's important, and I would hope that my
grandkids would have this. I think one of the wonderful things in the
Portuguese American community that's happening now, especially in the
last ten years, is the interracial marriages. Because now we have the
symbiose of these cultures, and that's what, that's the truthness of
America. Because, you know, if you just live in a Portuguese home all
of your life and you don't absorb other cultures, then you won't
understand them. So, you'll be Portuguese all your life, and that to me
is a bad American. So, I think in order to be American you have to, you
know, understand your roots but know that the country itself is not
Portugal. I don't know if that makes any sense, but you can pick all this
out.
Kelley McCoy: Yes, it does. It absolutely does. You know, you mentioned
stories, and that was actually one of my next two questions. So just, you
know—
Diniz Borges: Okay, okay. What's—
Kelley McCoy: So, would you share one, is there a particular story that's
been defining for you that you've perhaps passed onto your sons. You
know, you said that you felt that it was important that you share with
them certain stories.
Diniz Borges: I shared, well, there's, you know, things that tie around,
you know, can I answer it [inaudible].
Kelley McCoy: Sure, you can [inaudible].
Diniz Borges: No, it’s just because I, it keeps going off and I don’t, I
don’t , but do you need something? Have some.
Kelley McCoy: No, I don’t. How is it going from your end? Is it working
all right?
Candace Egan: Yeah, it looks good.
Diniz Borges: It’s just –
Kelley McCoy: Is the pacing OK? Better with
the –
Diniz Borges: It’s just the phone was going on all the time.
Kelley McCoy: I’m sorry. I kind of get into the interview mode and I
forget.
Candace Egan: Yes. No, you’re fine.
Diniz Borges: I thought it was something important but it’s actually
[inaudible], so it’s not going to be that important.
Kelley McCoy: Well [inaudible], we’ve got to [inaudible].
Diniz Borges: I love Lucy, but it can’t be that important.
Kelley McCoy: OK.
Diniz Borges: So -Candace Egan: No, hang on. Everybody ready?
Kelley McCoy: OK.
Candace Egan: OK, go for it.
Diniz Borges: You know, there are always stories from, you know, folk
tales that all cultures have that, you know, you know, we have our own
version of Snow White and everything else. But, what I try to tell my
kids where some of the stories, some of the things that happened to me or
that were part of who I was when I was in Portugal when I was in the
Azores, and when I left. Immigration is not easy. When people think that,
you know, everybody wants to come to America or everybody wants to go to
Brazil or everybody wants to go wherever it might be. It is hard for one
to leave one's land. Even a poor land. Because it's what you know and how
you know and where you're from and who you are. And my father, and the
Azoreans are very religious in some ways but a very nontraditional
Catholic in other ways. Azorean men, for example, are very religious
but they're very anti-clerical. You know, so they're, you know, in
general, you know, making a generalization obviously, but especially my
grandfather's generation. My grandfather at the time was a man that had,
you know, a little bit of wealth, and so in the Catholic church, in the
Azores at the time, everybody stood up. You know, there were no seats.
There were some seats up front, chairs, that were paid for by people who
had some economic power. My grandfather did, and he had nine chairs, one
for his wife, and one for his eight daughters. He never stepped foot in
the church, never. And yet, when he was about to die, he wanted to make
confession. And the priest that went to my grandfather's confession at
his, about a day and a half before he passed, was just a visiting priest
from another village, from the village, our priest was ill as a matter
of fact. And he, the confession lasted one hour and 15 minutes. And the
priest came back and said, I have never heard a confession like this.
This man is not only super intelligent, but this man has a very different
view on religion that I've never heard. And so, in his own way he was.
And so, you know, these stories like this, I mean that I try to pass
onto my kids and to my grandkids is be whatever you want to be and don't
be conform, it would have been, my grandfather was seen as an outcast
for not going to church. He was, in the village where 99 percent of the
people went to church, but that's how he chose to live. And so, and
some of his stories that he told me about America, I've told my
grandchildren as well, how he came and how he, for example, he landed
in Ellis Island. He was lucky that he kept his name, because his name was
Manuel, so it's a name that people knew, and then he would, for years he
would tell me this, that he came from New York to California in what he
called the fire, the fire wagons. And I didn't know what the fire wagons
were, you know, I thought it was a fire truck, you know, because we had,
you know, some fire trucks in Portugal, we had a few, you know, like the,
you know, why would he, when I got here is when I saw a train, which I
had never seen in my life, and in the Azores we didn't have trains. And
it was the fire because of the smoke and the cold and everything else
that was done. And so these stories at immigration, I think, are stories
that you can tell, you know. And when sometimes, because as families,
with my sons, they're both very political, and part of it is my fault,
because we, every, you know, Friday night, we would have a family--we
ate dinner every night together just about. But, especially on Friday
nights, we would do kind of a family thing before they would go out with
their friends, things like that. And so, and we discussed politics.
Whether they agreed with me or disagreed, we discussed politics, and we
discussed a lot, and we discussed a lot about immigration, because of our
family heritage as well. And I tell them the story that, like I said, my
father came over and he had this, he had to pay his passageway, as I
explained earlier. And four years after we were here he decided to go
back to the Azores, because he had made promise to the Holy Ghost. That's
the reason why we had these Festas all over the Holy Ghost celebrations.
He had made a promise to the Holy Ghost, which is the third person in the
Trinity, and he had made a promise that if he, which is very important in
the Azores. The Holy Ghost in the Azores is a mythical figure, not just
divine but a mythical figure. It's not a third person in the Trinity.
It's a person that lives in your house, just like anybody else. There was
a lot of paganism mixed in, but it's, and so he made a promise that if
you would go, that if he was able to pay his passageway and collect some
money, the first thing he would do is to go back and have Festas because
Festas they are all done not by the halls as here because they're just
kind of re-creating that happened there, they're done by people in their
home. And so to re-create a Festa in his house and to give out alms, to
give out what in Portugal is called the Ismul [phonetic], those are
offerings, and the offering is a piece of meat, a bread, and a jug of
wine to every single person in the village or every single family in the
village I should say, in honor of the Holy Ghost. Because the idea of the
Holy Ghost is to share what you have. Okay. And so, and so we, so here's
this man that had come here to accumulate a little bit of wealth to go
back but felt the sense that at the end of four years I better go pay
this off because I have this debt to this entity. And of course to me it
was the best time of my life because I was there for five months and not
have to worry about school went April came back in like September, but
this, but how immigration marks a person, when we left the Azores the
first time, my dad didn't want to say goodbye to my mom, to his mom. So
we left in the middle of the night by ship, on a ship from one island to
another. So in the middle of the night, we had a taxi driver. In the
middle of night we left without anybody seeing us or anybody knowing that
we were leaving other than my aunts, but she didn't like, both my
grandmothers didn't know that they wanted to say goodbye, because they
were going to come back, you know, so why say goodbye. But then, my
grandmother was older when we went back four years later, and we said
goodbye, and I had this horrible image of leaving in a taxi and my
grandmother holding on from the taxi and saying don't go because I will
never be able to see you again. And I would, you know, and I, you guys
have been my life, here all my life, because lived with her. And so I had
this horrible image. So, immigration is not easy. So, when people leave
with whatever they left behind, whether it's even a poor place, there's
always a part of you that stays behind, and so that's what I tried, these
are some of the kind of live stories that I try to, you know, recreate
with my family when we get together for holidays. Because I think it's
important for them to have this sense of, you know, of what happened,
you know, with our family.
Kelley McCoy: So, you've continued to maintain close ties to the Azores
over the years?
Diniz Borges: I have.
Kelley McCoy: How often do you go back?
Diniz Borges: A lot. I mean I go back, for a vacation, not as often as
maybe I should, it's now a very nice place to go on vacation, but I go
back because of my professional life. So, ever since I was, even before I
was teaching, when I was in Portuguese broadcasting, we'd go there for
conferences or to do some special events, and then with my teaching,
because I, not just because of my teaching, but I maintain a biweekly
column in the Portuguese press it’s a newspapers there. So, so because
of my writing for them and collaboration with the press, I've been, you
know, tied to the Azores. And I have friends, some of my friends that
stayed behind and some others like me, you know, went onto the political
world, or, you know, in academia, and so I've maintained, you know, some
of these bonds. And then, between 1990 and 2002, I did this crazy thing
here in Tulare for 12 years. I did a literary symposium where we would
bring writers and musicians and artists from Portugal. It's kind of like
a retreat for them and to get to know the Portuguese communities because
I felt there was kind of a misconception. And so, they would be in Tulare
usually for four days, along with some academics here from the States
or Portuguese America, and it would be an event that we did with the
community as long as, with them amongst themselves, and so that kind of
made me continue my ties with Portugal. Yeah.
Kelley McCoy: Do you still have family there?
Diniz Borges: I do. I have cousins and one aunt.
Kelley McCoy: So, you received your Bachelor's degree from Chapman
University, your Master's from Cal State Dominguez Hills, and you've
been an educator for many years, you knew from the time you spoke with
that counselor, hmm, I think I want to be a teacher. What attracted you
to the field of education?
Diniz Borges: I always had a lot of respect for teachers. I loved
teachers when I was in Portugal. I didn't love them as much when
I was here the first couple years in the United States because of the,
because of the communication, you know, the barrier. But, I also did, you
know, I did have some great teachers. I had some great teachers in
Portugal, different than teachers here in the United States. I mean, I
was, I was, the teachers in Portugal were very demanding. The teachers in
the United States, I always felt, were much more understanding. When I
was nine years old, we used to have these, in the fourth grade, which was
our final year of education, elementary education, so we would have these
competitions. Like the spelling bees, but it would be anything from Matt,
which I was not good at, but I was pretty good in history. And so, we had
these competitions between the schools. And all the schools on the
island, all the schools in the island participated. I made it to the
semi-final, and then I made it to the final. And I lost on the last
question to another young man at the time. And when I left, instead of
the teacher saying good going, she slapped me. She literally slapped me,
twice. I mean and said to me, you know, which is totally uncalled for,
and said to me, you dummy, you knew the answer to that question. And so,
but I still had a lot of respect for, you know, and today I understand
what she was doing, you know. Here ways were not obviously cohesive in
today's world or any world, but that's the way it was. However, here I
had a lot of, I had a lot of respect for the teachers who, you know,
especially tried to help me with the language. So, it attracted me,
basically, I think it's a noble profession. I still think it's the
noblest of all professions, and as I grew up, I went into broadcast
journalism, as I said, in Portuguese obviously, and it was tough making a
living because it was a small community, but we did okay. And I got
involved in other aspects in business, but I always wanted to teach and
so that's why I went into that field after I was a few years in
broadcast, and I didn't want it to be. I was a social science major. I
was not a Portuguese major. Portuguese was the language of my life, and I
had taken courses, but I wasn't a Portuguese major. I was a social
science major, and I wanted to be a history teacher and actually thought
of even doing community college. However, the Portuguese teacher had been
here 19 years in Tulare, and she was my son's, my son was, at that time,
we knew her, and she called me, and she said I am going to retire, and I
want you to be the next Portuguese teacher. And so, I applied, and my
life changed after that. So, I became a Portuguese teacher, and then
when, of course, since a little more of that line work as far as. But I
think, you know, I think one time when I was teaching, I told, I was at a
seminar and I think that I, whether I taught Portuguese or social science
or, you know, English, whatever, I think a teacher is a teacher,
especially at, you know, at the elementary and secondary level. First
of all, you got to like kids, and second of all, you have to, you know,
you have to, you have to be passionate for the subject you teach, yes,
but at that, at those levels also, you just have to like being with
students and teaching because, you know, if you like the profession, now
I think you can teach anything, you can learn the subject.
Kelley McCoy: Right.
Portuguese American,
experiences, to what
you've moved through
personally?
Well, so to what extent do you believe that being
the sum of you Diniz including those immigrant
extent do you believe that has shaped the way that
this world, both professionally as well as
Diniz Borges: That's a loaded question. Well, I believe that, you know
after I started reaccepting who I was and to me it happened at the age
of 17, 18, you know, and some people it takes longer, you know, whatever,
I believe that, and I'm glad I had those rebellious, not rebellious in
the aspect, but rebellious in the aspect of my culture. I'm glad that at
the age of 13, 14, 15, etc., I wasn't, you know, as Portuguese or didn't
want to be as Portuguese as my father and my mother were, and I think
that was important because it also prepared me for the world that I
needed to live in. You know, the world I needed to live in needed to be
the American world. So, it prepared me for that a little bit
unconsciously obviously. It wasn't a conscious decision. But I think it
was important also, and it was important to acquire, to require, to
reacquaint yourself, you know, with that. And I think it was, and I think
part of it, because, you know, although I wanted to be American, and I
wanted, you know, not to be as Portuguese, I didn't want to talk, I
didn't want to talk Portuguese, it was kind of a, you know, there was a
paradox there, obviously, you know, a very big paradox, because I didn't
want to be Portuguese, you know, I didn't want to talk Portuguese when I
was at the bank with my father, you know, or everywhere else. No, you
know, I don’t want people to know I’m Portuguese. But by the same token,
at home I always spoke Portuguese, and most of the stuff I was reading
was Portuguese, you know. And so, and so there was this Paradox here.
However, I think it has shaped who I am because of my involvement in the
community, yes. I think, had I not been involved, had I gone into the
journalism or broadcast journalism at the beginning, had I not gone into
Portuguese radio, and had I not been involved in the Portuguese
organizations, and had I also, you know, in some of the cultural
organizations that still exist here in Tulare, I probably would have been
like some of my friends. I know friends who, one of my friends in the
fourth grade who don't speak Portuguese any longer, and then came, with
very broken Portuguese, and they came at the age of 10, like I did,
and their parents came, you know, without known English as well. But
their world became much more American and less Portuguese, and
they dropped that. My reacquaintance and my living both worlds side by
side, in the beginning it bothered me. In the beginning it bothered
me because I felt I was in the middle of a bridge and didn't belong to
this side or that side. You know, where in the heck do I go? You know,
but then, you know, as I started reading more and started, you know,
reading more Portuguese authors and reading a little bit more about
different diasporas, I began to feel that, you know, the world is
changing, and you don't have to be on side of the bridge or the other
side. You can actually, it's actually a good thing to be with both. But
that took a while. You know, it's a good thing to be with both. And
today, I can't imagine myself without the Portuguese language or
without, not just because of my professional life but also because of who
I am. I mean it's the language I write in. It's the language, you know,
it's the language, or if I write in English, I'm translating from
Portuguese to English. It's, you know, my world is basically those two
languages and those two cultures. I, there are things in the American
culture, you know, that this hodge podge of everything that I love, you
know, there are things in the Portuguese culture I detest. But I think
that you can embrace both of them, and I think it prepares you to be a
better American and actually a better citizen of the world.
Kelley McCoy: So, I have one last question for you. And you kind of
already talked a little bit about it, but I'm giving you an opportunity
to distill it for us. What does being Portuguese American mean to you?
Diniz Borges: It means, it means living with two cultures. It means being
a little bit more a citizen of the world, as I mentioned earlier. And
being open to other ways besides the American system, which is a great
system, you know, I'm not going to question that, but I think it's, I
think that's--well, let me put it this way. Me being a PortugueseAmerican is special just if I, is the same special, with the same degree
as if I was a Chinese-American or a Greek-American or an AfricanAmerican. I think that hyphen adds to it because I don't think, I think
everybody has something, whether is Native American or whatever, you
know, and I think that it adds to the American. I think having that
hyphen adds to who we are as people, not just me as Portuguese American.
I think America to me is an idea. It's not a country. And so, it is a
country obviously, it is a country like all other countries, but the
beauty about America is that you can be Portuguese, you can be Greek, you
can be African American, you can be whatever. You can be from many parts,
and you can mix in those, and we can grow from that. Yeah, there's been
lots of negative things and lots of horrible things that have happened
amongst these 250 years. But, you know, but we are also a paradoxical
country like all ideas are paradoxical. So, I think that, I think that by
me being a Portuguese American adds a little bit more to the American
that I'd like to be. I like being American this way, just like I think a
Chinese American like to be American that way. I don't see it as a, I
don't see it as a, as a handicap, but I don't see it also as from an
arrogant aspect of I'm better because I'm a Portuguese American, than a
Greek American, than an African American or than a Chinese American. I
think it just adds to who you are. It's part of my culture. I'm, you
know, Portugal has also a rich history. I'm glad that I was part of
that history, that my family was part of that history, with some horrific
things in as well, but that's with everybody. But, you know, in essence,
I think that it adds to the American flavor, and there are some things
that are, you know, may be anecdotal, but they add to who I am. I mean I
think that, you know, the Portuguese, as we all know from our elementary
history classes, you know, we're involved in the navigation, you know,
Henry the Navigator, we all know, remember Henry the Navigator. And I
think that a lot of times, my son tells me this all the time, and he's
probably right. He says, Dad, it must be something because I can find a
place pretty easy. You know, when my other friends can't. So, there must
be something in the gens with this navigation that passed on from Henry
to us, you know, 500 and some odd years later. So, I think that this rich
culture, what I'm most proud about the Portuguese part of my Portuguese
American is the bridging of cultures that the Portuguese did. Okay. We
did some horrific things. We were involved in the slave trade. We were
involved in some other things that are not, you know, that we need to
acknowledge and Portugal has acknowledged, and that we need to be
cognizant of, you know. But we did bridge some cultures. We did go to
different parts of the world and bring the world a little bit closer,
especially in our, you know, and our history is about 500 years ago. And
in our history as a country after we finally got rid of the monarchy has
been, you know, with the dictator ship in the middle of the 20th Century,
it has been a country of a lot of progress. Even though for conservative,
you know, very traditional Catholic country, it has been a country of a
lot of progress. You know, women were able to vote in Portugal before
they were able to vote in the United States. And the idea of my mother,
you know, not taking on her husband's name, and many other things. Okay.
So, I'm, I think being a Portuguese American adds to the American flavor
because of these things that, maybe I'm picking and choosing, yes, from
my culture, and from my history of my ethnicity. And maybe picking and
choosing, but I do choose to pick and those that I think add to how I
could be a better American citizen.
Candace Egan: So, I have a follow-up.
Diniz Borges: Yes, ma'am. Finally.
Candace Egan: I want you to, and probably not as long, but I want you to
answer that question in Portuguese.
Diniz Borges: Okay. That's a good idea. Okay. You guys will understand,
right? Para mim ser luso-americano, portanto ser Português na América, é
parte de quem eu sou. Através dos anos, porque vim de lá, dos Açores com
10 anos, tive como todos os jovens têm, em que há uma parte que quer ser
mais do país onde estamos, e menos do país de onde viemos, e isso
aconteceu comigo também, entre os 13, e 16 a 17 anos, mas eu penso que
ser de uma cultura milenar como é a cultura portuguesa, ser de um grupo
de ilhas que padeceu imenso através dos séculos, ser insular, vir de um
espaço que também teve uma grande ligação à América, através de vários
séculos, penso que permite-me ter uma outra visão, diferente das pessoas
que viveram nos Estados Unidos e não tiveram ou de nascerem num outro
país ou de serem criados numa outra cultura como foi o caso dos meus
filhos que nasceram aqui mas foram criados numa outra língua e outra
cultura, daí que ser português na América é uma vantagem e adiciona ao
espírito americano. That was a Reader's Digest version, as a friend of
mine would say, you know. I used to have a, I used to have a teacher,
a history professor, who would ask me sometimes, he was fascinated about
Portugal, and he would ask me things about Portugal, and he said just
give me the Readers' Digest version, please. [laughter]
Kelley McCoy: I have to tell you, I thought this was an excellent
interview.
Diniz Borges: Oh, thank you.
was my full name given when I was born in Terceira Island, Praia da
Vitória.
Kelley McCoy: We're you named after anyone?
Diniz Borges: My first name is my grandmother, my paternal grandmother's
last name, and then Aurélio is my second name, which was supposed to be
my first name, but it wasn't accepted at the time in Portugal. They had
rules under the dictatorship which names were accepted, which weren't,
and then Lourenco, or Lawrence in English, is my maternal grandfather's
name, so my mom's maiden name, and then Borges, like that's my last name.
Kelly McCoy:Now, you we're saying that in Portugal it's standard to have
four names?
Diniz Borges: It's still standard today to have four names. It was
certainly from my generation and it still is today, which is most
Portuguese have two given names. Today is a little bit different, but
there's still lots of Marias and Joses in Portugal, and so there's lots
of people with, you know, Paulo Jose or, you know, Alice Maria, and
then you traditionally have your mother's maiden name and your father's
last name. And in Portugal, when I was born, it wasn't just, your
mother's maiden name. It was your mother's name because women in Portugal
until the 1970s did not take on their husband's names. So, you know,
we've had feminists in Portugal before they had any in the United States
because we just didn't take them. My mother only took my father's name in
1968 when we immigrated to America. Her name was always Maria Albertina
Lourenco, and my father, Borges, so she never went by Borges until she
came here to the states.
Kelley McCoy: Now, when were you born?
Diniz Borges: I was born in 1958, October 22, 1958.
Kelley McCoy: And where were you born?
Diniz Borges: In the city of Praia da Vitória in the island of Terceira,
Azores.
Candace Egan: Can I make one quick comment? You need more gapping between
finishing and stopping. You’re almost stepping on it.
Kelley McCoy: Oh, OK.
Candace Egan: Your questions. So, just give a beat and then ask the next.
Kelley McCoy: OK.
Diniz Borges: OK.
Kelley McCoy: All right.
Diniz Borges: I’ll pause also.
Kelley McCoy: Do we need -Candace Egan: We’re fine.
Kelley McCoy: OK. All right. Do you have any recollection of your
childhood in the Azores?
Diniz Borges: Oh, yes. I have found memories. I was almost 10 when I
immigrated. I actually turned 10 October 22, 1968. We were on the
island of San Miguel. There are nine islands in the Azores. The San
Miguel is the largest island, and that is the island where we have
the U.S. diplomatic presence, the U.S. Consulate. I was there with my
family, my mom and dad, my brother who at the time was three. We were
waiting to get our visa, our immigration visa, to come to the United
States. And so, I did what at the time was the mandatory education in
Portugal. I came at the age of 9, almost 10 years old, with a fourth
grade, which in Portugal at the time was the mandated education. You did
not have to go past the fourth grade, believe it or not.
Kelley McCoy: So, when exactly did your family emigrate to the United
States?
Diniz Borges: My family, us, we came in 1968. My grandfather, my maternal
grandfather, my mom's father, immigrated to the United States in 1910.
And he came alone, and my maternal grandmother, his wife, soon to be
wife, she also came with a sister in 1911, so they married shortly after,
well a few years after, my grandfather was here 18 years. He went back
in 1928. He sold his dairy here in Tulare six months before the
depression. Had he waited a few more months, he would not have been
able to sell it because nobody could sell anything after the depression
hit. But, things were high. Things were off the wall, and he hit, he sold
his dairy, he was in the United States, like I said, for 18 years, nine
years single, nine years married. My mother is one of eight girls, and
five of them were born in the U.S. So, he went back in 1928 with five
daughters, with a little bit of money, quite a bit, actually. He was able
to buy quite a bit of land there and continue his dairy operation, it was
a different size, obviously, but in the Azores. Then, my aunts, those
five who were born here, my mother was not, my mother was born in
Portugal, so my mother was one of the three youngest that were born, who
were born there, and in the 1950s, my aunts, who were American citizens,
and it was a very tough economic time for Portugal, and especially in the
Azores. And my aunts started coming to America, and then there was the,
there were two immigration acts. One of them was the Azorean Refugee Act
of 1957/58, and that one was for people specific from one island because
there was a big volcanic eruption, the island of Faial. But then in the
1960s, the so-called Family Reunification Act, which is still the law of
the land as far as immigration in the United States of America, allowed
people to bring their siblings. So, you could sponsor your sister, your
brother, your mom, or your dad or your son or daughter, and one of my
aunts sponsored us, and we came over in 1968 and another one of my aunts
as well.
Kelley McCoy: So, in 1968, you said earlier that you arrived here when
you were nine years old?
Diniz Borges: Ten, yes.
Kelley McCoy: Okay, so just turned 10. How many of you came at that time?
Diniz Borges: How many of us from our family?
Kelley McCoy: From your family.
Diniz Borges: Just the four of us. My mom and dad, myself and my brother.
We came in 1968. There were, some of my aunts had come before, the ones
who were American citizens, or two of them anyway. A few of them who were
American citizens never wanted to come back, wanted to immigrate,
actually one of them, and then we arrived here in 1968 just the four of
us.
Kelley McCoy: So, you mentioned the Family Reunification Act, but why did
your family decide to leave the Azores?
Diniz Borges: The Azores of the 1960s, and I just had an interview about
the volcano, the Capelinhos volcano, there was a project about this, the
Azores of the 1960s to me was a very sad place, now that I look back at
it. We had a couple of things going on. We were living a dictatorship.
Portugal was living what is known as a Salazar dictatorship. Salazar, and
then his successor, Marcello Caetano ruled Portugal for almost 50 years.
It was a brutal dictatorship in a lot of ways, and for the Azores, it was
brutal because the Azores were kind of forgotten. So, there was this
group of island, nine islands in the middle of the Atlantic, and they
were completely forgotten. And we were, but by the same token, we were
not forgotten when it came to exploit some of the things that we had.
Then, at the same time, Portugal was fighting colonial wars in Africa.
Portugal at the time still had five Portuguese colonies in Africa. The
only, you know, or one of the few I should say, European empires that
still had colonies, and there's a story behind that, but in the 1960s,
and these colonies, especially Angola, which is now an independent
country, they're all independent countries, Angola, Mozambique and
Guinea-Bissau, at that time Portuguese called these, took up arms against
Portugal. So, every single available young man was sent off to war. And
although I was only 10, my father always thought, you know, he didn't
want to send me to war. But, that wasn't the main reason. We came over
because although my family, my mom, we had owned our home, which is
something we didn't own in America for a while. We owned our home. My
dad had 12 acres, so he was not a man who didn't have, who were poor. It
just, the way the structure, the economic structure was, with a house
paid for and 12 acres, you still couldn't advance. I mean you could make
a living, you could live, you know, you could put food on the table, but
you couldn't advance economically. My father tried to leave before. He
actually tried in the early '60s before these wars became a big thing,
leave to Angola, I was like two years old when my father tried to leave
for Angola. You had to actually, it was part of Portugal, but you had to
have clearance from the dictator to leave the country anywhere, even
within the country. Okay. So, my father was not, was turned down to go to
Angola as an immigrant, and then he came to America. The reason why he
came was basically sort of to chase the so-called American dream,
whatever that might be, but he came basically because he saw father-inlaw had lived here 18 years and was able to accumulate some wealth.
And in his thought, I'll go there. I'll be there another, you know, a
dozen years, and accumulate something, you know, come back so I can live
a little bit with this home and this land that I have, invest a little
bit. And, of course, he died here. But, he never went back. And, our
immigration was kind of like that. A lot of people left for some economic
opportunities, many of them thinking that it would be a temporary
situation. But then, of course, America became home.
Kelley McCoy: What possessions did you bring with you?
Diniz Borges: Good question. Wow. We brought very little. We brought some
debts. My father, although, like I said, he owned a little bit of
property in his home, banking system was really horrific in Portugal at
the time. One of the reasons why, you know, the economy wasn't what it
was. And so, my father did not have any, we didn't have any money
basically, and so he didn't want to take a loan out on his house or his
property. So, he actually got loan, he got a loan from a so-called loan
shark to pay for our passageway, to pay for our four airline tickets and
our stay in San Miguel to get our visa. And so, we brought with us a
little bit of debt, and then we also, we brought basically the clothes on
our back. We didn't bring any kind of special things that we had in our
home because our home stayed basically the way it was. Our idea was we're
only going for a few years.
Kelley McCoy: Where did your family settle and why that particular place?
Diniz Borges: We settled here in Tulare, or the Tulare area, Tulare-Kings
county. We came, and we settled because my aunts lived here. Two of my
aunts lived here, the two who are American citizens, two of the five were
American citizens, had immigrated, and we came to their home, and of
course, you know, he was milking cows at the time, my uncle, that's my
father who had not milked cows, he did not like the dairy industry in
Portugal, who did everything to get out of the industry that his father
had dairy and some cows, and my father did not like it, but that's what
he did here for quite a few years and then he got out of that as well.
But he, so we came here, like most immigrants. There was, you know, a
support system set in place where there's family. So, most of the time
you just go where family lives and you stay around that area. There
are some immigrants in California that didn't happen because some of the
areas that their families had immigrated to didn't have much economic
opportunity, and so they left. Not that Tulare county had great economic
opportunities, but it did have a stable job or someone who didn't have
the skill or the language especially, like my father did.
Kelley McCoy: So, you're a 10-year-old boy—
Diniz Borges: Yes.
Kelley McCoy: What were your first impressions and early experiences like
in the United States?
Diniz Borges: Well, my first impression was scary because we got lost in
the airports. And so that was a scary, that was my first impression, but
we didn't, we flew from the Azores to Boston, and then from Boston to
San Francisco and San Francisco to Fresno. We got lost in San Francisco.
And it just happened that my father saw a man who he knew from Portugal,
who had just been there to take a relative who was visiting Portugal. And
they kind of looked at each other, and they said we know each other, and
they spoke Portuguese, and he helped us. We missed our plane to Fresno,
and we didn't make it to Fresno until the next day, but we didn't know
anything what to do, so we slept all night on the airport, in little
seats at the airport. And so, so my first experience was basically
a scary experience because of someone who's lived on an island where you
are familiar with everything, and an island within an island. I mean,
within an island, you lived in your village and your town and your little
city. You didn't even know the other side of the island that well. So, it
was a scary thing. Then, when I went to Portugal, when I went to school
about 10 days after when we were in America, my dad had a job. We moved
into a home at the dairy and that he was first work was, and we went to a
school here in Tulare county, a rural school, still a rural school Paolo
Verde, and that was kind of a unique experience because I got there with
my Portuguese passport and my aunts with us. And we went to school, and
that's where my name kind of has these different changes, and I went to
school, and they said, what is your name. And I said Diniz, and they said
that doesn't exist in English. So, your name is Dennis. And actually all
of my legal documents are D-E-N-N-I-S because became Dennis, Lorenco
became Lawrence, you know, and Borges that was a name that people already
knew in Tulare because it was kind of a popular Portuguese name. And so,
and that happened with a lot of other people. It wasn't just me. So,
there was kind of an instantaneous Americanization process, let's put it
that way, but then school went fine. I had some few issues, like any
EL student will have them. But I was, I went to school starting basically
in November, and by May, I communicated well in English, very well, and I
was successful that year.
Kelley McCoy: Did you speak any English when you came over here?
Devin Nunes: No, I knew how to say maybe like five words. I shouldn't say
that, maybe a dozen. I was raised, the area I was raised in the Azores,
until I was 10 years old, and the U.S. has an Air Force base in the
Azores in the island of Terceira, and at that time, it was much better
for servicemen to live outside of the base, because you got an allotment
to live outside and the funds that they were given to live outside the
base not only paid for a better home than they had on base but also paid
for maid service, you know, or a butler, or you know, some kind of,
someone to do your yard, you know. And so, and they were able to have
these luxuries that you wouldn't be able to have on base or in many other
parts of the world. So, I was raised, and people in our neighborhood that
spoke English. However, there wasn't much contact, because first of all,
we didn't understand the language. Second of all, the students, or the
young people may age wouldn't go to the same school I did. They would go
to the American school on base. And so, but I was raised, my dad worked
at the airbase temporarily, for a temporary, for a contractor, and my
uncle Pedreno [phonetic], godfather, also worked at the officer's club.
He was one of the first, was one of the few people that spoke English,
and he worked at the officer's club as a waiter. And so, I had contact
with America through him, through my father, through, you know, knowing
American people who lived there, but not enough. My first words I learned
in English were trick or treat because we heard that these Americans for
Halloween, which we did not celebrate in Portugal, we celebrated the All
Saints Day because of being a Catholic country, and so that, and we had
a similar thing called Pão de Deus, bread for God during the All Saints
Day. However, the day before All Saints Day, they would celebrate with
these masks and everything else, which we did for Marty Gras, but they
gave away candy, but you had to learn these words, trick or treat. So,
hey, I put on, you know, something, and I got--we'd never had any candy,
so we hit every single American house that we knew in the neighborhood,
and those were the first two words that I learned. But I knew things
like, you know, good morning and thank you, but maybe not, not more than
10 words.
Kelley McCoy: What were the biggest adjustments you had to make as a
newcomer to the United States.
Diniz Borges: Well, at the age of 10, you kind of adapt because you're a
kid and kids adapt well, and you, you know, it's just, you know, part of
who you are and I saw some major adaptation on my mom and my dad. I think
it was much rougher for them. My father was 38, and my mom was 33. So, I
think for them it was a little bit more of an adjustment. As I grew up,
you know, when I was 10, 11, 12, my dad when he first came to America,
and he came because he thought he could accumulate, you know, some wealth
in return, he would move for $25. I had a different school just about
every year, so for me it was a little bit tough, that was the tough part.
We were migrants, you know, in a way, because my dad believed that, you
know, if there's a dairy out there that paid him another $25 a month,
at that time it was a lot of money, he would move. And so I had different
schools. That was an adjustment for me because I had done to the same
school, although by now by the time I was 11, I knew the language, but,
you know, in Portugal, I had the same school for four years, the same set
of friends. To me it was different. And also, I dressed different. My mom
didn't spend a lot of money on clothes. There was a lot of hand-me-downs
from my cousins because they wanted to save. And so, I dressed different.
I was different. And as I drew up a little bit, you know, like I got into
my teenage years, you know, 13, 14, that was probably a little bit
rougher than originally when I got here at 10.
Kelley McCoy: You mentioned that you thought that it was more of an
adjustment for your parents, who were in their late 30s. Anything
that you can recall in the way of maybe anti-immigrant sentiment
prejudice directed toward the family?
Diniz Borges: I don't think that they received it, and the reason why,
I'm not saying it wasn't, and you know, anti-immigrants or any kind of
prejudice, you know, going on at the time, but we lived in a very
Portuguese world. So, you know, my father went to the bank where there
were, you know, five tellers that spoke Portuguese, and he would go to
the doctor's office, that there were people who spoke Portuguese in the
1960s and '70s. And so, he would go to the Portuguese celebration where
everybody was Portuguese or didn't speak Portuguese because some of them
were second and third generation, but they kind of--I think there was a
little bit, I felt a little bit in school. And I felt a little bit in
school not from people who weren't Portuguese, but from people
who were Portuguese, I felt from second and third-generation Portuguese.
I once had, I will never forget this, I was 12 years old. I was at a
school in Visalia, Packwood school, it's an elementary school that no
longer exists actually. It was a little small rural school, and I was
there, and I was playing with a, we were having recess. And one of the
kids says, you can't come play over here, and I said, why not? My friend
is there. And he said, he's not your friend. And these are kids talking
obviously. I said, well yes he is. No he's not. I said, yeah he is. He's
Portuguese like me. Not like you. We're not like you. I'm Portuguese too.
I'm Portuguese. You're a port-a-gee. I said, well what does that mean?
Well, my father owns a dairy, your father milks the cows. You're not like
us. You weren't born in America. And so, I felt a little bit more of
that, you know, from kids, you know, being silly and maybe, you know, I
don't know, maybe something from the home, who knows. But anyway, I felt
a little bit more of that as I went through school than I felt. I mean I
recall this vividly, and I just told this story not too long ago. In high
school, I had one of the teachers, when I went to high school, I had one
of the teachers, one of the counselors ask me what do you want to be, you
know. The things that we all, that are still going on, now it's actually
done differently. And, you know, you think, and I said, you know, I think
I'd like to be a teacher. And I didn't know if I was going to make it or
not because my father when I--, I was already milking cows when I was 13
years old with him and going to school and it was tough for me. But, you
know, he, and he said, aren't you Portuguese, and I said, yes I am. And
he said, well you, you handle yourself quite well. You should consider
being a hay salesman. And this happened in 1970, whatever it was, you
know. So, I felt it a little bit more. I don't think my father
actually never felt that, basically because he lived in a very Portuguese
world in America.
Kelley McCoy: In what ways was life in the Azores different than the life
that you found here?
Diniz Borges: Well, life in the Azores for me as a child was much
different because it was, I knew everything. You know, I mean it was my,
I was in my natural habitat, and I had my grandparents, or my
grandmother, my grandfather passed. I had my grandmother, was very close,
was the woman hero in my family, and my wife knows this and my mother and
everybody else. And so, and I had, and I had a whole support system, and
of course, I had, you know, my friends from school, and it's who I was
going, you know, I never imagined myself anywhere else. So, so, you know,
it was a very safe place for me. And even for my parents. I, you know, I
tell my kids this all the time because they were, although they were
raised kind of Portuguese with us, my wife and I spoke all this
Portuguese with them, the language part, culturally not Portuguese,
culturally a mixture of everything, like we all are in America; however,
I used to tell my kids all the time, one of the toughest things was my
father and my mother wanted to protect me so much, because this was all
strange to them, that I was never allowed to, you know, go to kids'
birthday parties. I was never allow to stay over, you know. Sometimes I
would go, but very rarely, and he would go take me and go pick me up an
hour later, you know, and it was just this sense that we don't know
anybody, and you know, we're strangers in this land, other than when we
are at a Portuguese event, and so, and most of my friends were not
Portuguese, you know. They were different, you know, from school. Most of
my friends were different ethnicities. So, I basically, you know, how
shall I put it, I basically felt that my life had changed immensely. You
know, I can't do some of the things, I can't do the fun things. My dad
let me go to the beach by myself when I was nine years old, my friends
and I would go to the beach, and here I couldn't even leave the house. I
couldn't even go to a neighbor's house or something like that. In the
dairy I could, but you know, outside of there. So, there was this sense
of security that I lost and the sense of freedom.
Kelley McCoy: What traditions did your family retain after moving here?
Diniz Borges: Well, we still, we've become Americanized like everyone
else, and, you know, we celebrate the holidays we all celebrate in
America. I think we continue some family traditions mainly, to be honest
with you, more around food. You know, food is an important tradition in
all cultures. And mainly, you know, we still for Christmas, when
everybody does, you know, whatever people do for Christmas here in the
states, there's a wide variety of things, you know, but you know, we
still, we don't do the, we don't do the--for Thanksgiving, for example.
We don't do the turkey. We'll do Portuguese cuisine. You know, some of my
friends think it's, you know, it's anti-American or whatever you want to
call it, but we celebrate a lot still with Portuguese food. And for
Christmas, we do the traditional Portuguese codfish. You know, and my
kids actually do it. Both of my sons do it. So, we maintain a lot of the
traditions around food, you know, the foods around birthdays and holidays
and special events. I was raised a lot, like I said in the Portuguese
American community, so I went to all the Festas when I was a young man.
My sons were part of the Portuguese marching band in Tulare. We made sure
that they were part of the Portuguese folklore group as they were raised
up. They went to Portuguese school. I've been in Portuguese rganizations,
not really involved in a lot of the Holy Ghost Festas but in some of the
cultural organizations. And so, we've carried a lot of the traditions,
and a lot of the religious traditions as well, especially my mom and dad,
more than myself or my kids. But we've kept mainly around food and also
around the holidays.
Kelley McCoy: Why would you say that it has been important to you to
maintain these particular traditions and customs?
Diniz Borges: Well, when I was, when I was a teenager, I kind of didn't
want to be Portuguese. And part of, because, you know, my father didn't
let me do anything, you know, I mean, and didn't let me do anything for
security reasons, you know, because of what I've explained. So, I
thought, well, you know, the best thing is just don't be Portuguese.
There's enough Portuguese going on at home. So, whenever I leave I'm not
Portuguese. And, when I was basically going, you know, through my teenage
years, I kind of, you know, pushed away from that. There was a friend of
mine when I was 17 years old, I always read a lot in Portuguese. I
continued reading in Portuguese. I enjoyed reading, and I read a lot more
in Portuguese than I did in English, to be honest with you. And even with
my teenage years. My cousins were in the Azores, and they would send me
books, you know, that they would read, and they were very nice. And this
is before, of course, the internet and all that kind of stuff. And so we,
when I was 17, I had a friend of mine, a friend of my dad's actually, who
did a Portuguese radio program, who was a Portuguese broadcaster, parttime. He was in sales and he had a part-time, 1-hour a week, and he and
his wife were going to the Azores on vacation to see their family, there
was some family illness, and they were going for about three weeks. And
he asked me to do the program for him. And so, I started, I didn't, I
always liked radio, and I listened to it all the time. We listened to it
at home, and so I went to do the program. When I went to do the program,
I kind of took a really different turn toward the language and the
culture, especially towards the land, the beauty of the language. I never
thought it was beautiful. I just thought it was, you know, the language I
spoke with my mom and dad. But then once I knew English and I was
studying English and everything else, I took a little bit different turn.
And so, after that, I became involved in Portuguese radio. I became a
broadcaster, you know, part-time and then full-time, and then, and so, at
that particular time, and I was recently married, after that, and so we
made a decision to start using more Portuguese. My wife, you know, was
also, you know, she came over here as well, and so we started using a
little bit more Portuguese in the house with the boys. Actually, my
eldest son went to school as an EL student, like I did. He was five years
old. He didn't know how to speak a single word of English or maybe the
same 10 that I knew, but I had a nice argument with a teacher who wanted
to put him in the EL program, and I said no, he'll do fine, and he did.
Four months later, he was speaking English, and so he, and so we became
very involved in the Portuguese American community, because that return
debt to me happened in my late teens because of this man. And I think
it's, it's part of who I am. I can't really explain it, but I don't see
myself, you know, I teach Portuguese, as people know, for a living, and
I've taught it for a living for years, and I just, not just because I
teach it, I just can't imagine myself without the language and the
culture. It's part of who I am. But, I don't go to all the Festas. I
don't go to all the events. I don't go to all the different things, there
are some things in the Portuguese culture I don't partake in. I don't
partake in bull fights. I don't like them. I think they're anti-humane.
And so, there's some things in my culture that I'll criticize and
I don't like, but it's still who I am.
Kelley McCoy: How important is it to you, you mentioned your sons, how
important is it to you that your sons and your beautiful grandchildren
maintain a relatively strong sense of the Portuguese identity?
Diniz Borges: I don't know if it's that important to me. I would like
them to continue. I think it's a choice that they have to make. I think
we all become American, you know, within a couple generations. Both of my
boys don't even, don't live in this area. They've lived in the areas
that, one of them lives in the area, there are Portuguese but a few, and
the other one does not. And so, they still can speak the language, and
that is because it was their first language, not as well as they spoke
and read it, you know, when they were, you know, in their teens, but they
still, they still communicate, and my grandkids, I think, you know, we
tell them the stories. I think what's important for families is to tell
stories. And if you just tell those stories through your kids and your
grandkids, and they may think of them, some of them are really weird and
strange, and some of them are, but it then clicks in after, you know,
after a few years, and I think that, you know, I think that it is
important for me that they not just, you know, carry on the tradition
with food around the holidays and other special times of the year, but
also a sense of who you are. I have this plan to take my kids, my kids
went back, went back, they never went back, not back to them, they went
to the Azores with us twice, and it was important, especially the second
time because Mika was 15 and Steven was 17, and they kind of gave them a
sense of this is the place where it all began. And I think there is a
little bit of, it's important to know your roots, not that it's going to
make you, you know, not that I would want my kids or my grandkids to live
the same Portuguese life that I lived or certainly that my father
lived. They're Americans first and foremost. But it is good to have your
sense of roots because it gives you a sense of belonging. You know,
you're an American, but America is this. And I think that's, I think
that's important because I think it will make you a better American. I
think when you don't know the sense of your roots, whether they be
Portuguese or Scottish or African or Asian, I mean, it kind of, you know,
then there is nothing that can solidify some of the opinions that
sometimes you hear from other people who may be very nativist in thoughts
and not understand that there is no "nativism," you know, with the native
Americans in America, so I think it's important, and I would hope that my
grandkids would have this. I think one of the wonderful things in the
Portuguese American community that's happening now, especially in the
last ten years, is the interracial marriages. Because now we have the
symbiose of these cultures, and that's what, that's the truthness of
America. Because, you know, if you just live in a Portuguese home all
of your life and you don't absorb other cultures, then you won't
understand them. So, you'll be Portuguese all your life, and that to me
is a bad American. So, I think in order to be American you have to, you
know, understand your roots but know that the country itself is not
Portugal. I don't know if that makes any sense, but you can pick all this
out.
Kelley McCoy: Yes, it does. It absolutely does. You know, you mentioned
stories, and that was actually one of my next two questions. So just, you
know—
Diniz Borges: Okay, okay. What's—
Kelley McCoy: So, would you share one, is there a particular story that's
been defining for you that you've perhaps passed onto your sons. You
know, you said that you felt that it was important that you share with
them certain stories.
Diniz Borges: I shared, well, there's, you know, things that tie around,
you know, can I answer it [inaudible].
Kelley McCoy: Sure, you can [inaudible].
Diniz Borges: No, it’s just because I, it keeps going off and I don’t, I
don’t , but do you need something? Have some.
Kelley McCoy: No, I don’t. How is it going from your end? Is it working
all right?
Candace Egan: Yeah, it looks good.
Diniz Borges: It’s just –
Kelley McCoy: Is the pacing OK? Better with
the –
Diniz Borges: It’s just the phone was going on all the time.
Kelley McCoy: I’m sorry. I kind of get into the interview mode and I
forget.
Candace Egan: Yes. No, you’re fine.
Diniz Borges: I thought it was something important but it’s actually
[inaudible], so it’s not going to be that important.
Kelley McCoy: Well [inaudible], we’ve got to [inaudible].
Diniz Borges: I love Lucy, but it can’t be that important.
Kelley McCoy: OK.
Diniz Borges: So -Candace Egan: No, hang on. Everybody ready?
Kelley McCoy: OK.
Candace Egan: OK, go for it.
Diniz Borges: You know, there are always stories from, you know, folk
tales that all cultures have that, you know, you know, we have our own
version of Snow White and everything else. But, what I try to tell my
kids where some of the stories, some of the things that happened to me or
that were part of who I was when I was in Portugal when I was in the
Azores, and when I left. Immigration is not easy. When people think that,
you know, everybody wants to come to America or everybody wants to go to
Brazil or everybody wants to go wherever it might be. It is hard for one
to leave one's land. Even a poor land. Because it's what you know and how
you know and where you're from and who you are. And my father, and the
Azoreans are very religious in some ways but a very nontraditional
Catholic in other ways. Azorean men, for example, are very religious
but they're very anti-clerical. You know, so they're, you know, in
general, you know, making a generalization obviously, but especially my
grandfather's generation. My grandfather at the time was a man that had,
you know, a little bit of wealth, and so in the Catholic church, in the
Azores at the time, everybody stood up. You know, there were no seats.
There were some seats up front, chairs, that were paid for by people who
had some economic power. My grandfather did, and he had nine chairs, one
for his wife, and one for his eight daughters. He never stepped foot in
the church, never. And yet, when he was about to die, he wanted to make
confession. And the priest that went to my grandfather's confession at
his, about a day and a half before he passed, was just a visiting priest
from another village, from the village, our priest was ill as a matter
of fact. And he, the confession lasted one hour and 15 minutes. And the
priest came back and said, I have never heard a confession like this.
This man is not only super intelligent, but this man has a very different
view on religion that I've never heard. And so, in his own way he was.
And so, you know, these stories like this, I mean that I try to pass
onto my kids and to my grandkids is be whatever you want to be and don't
be conform, it would have been, my grandfather was seen as an outcast
for not going to church. He was, in the village where 99 percent of the
people went to church, but that's how he chose to live. And so, and
some of his stories that he told me about America, I've told my
grandchildren as well, how he came and how he, for example, he landed
in Ellis Island. He was lucky that he kept his name, because his name was
Manuel, so it's a name that people knew, and then he would, for years he
would tell me this, that he came from New York to California in what he
called the fire, the fire wagons. And I didn't know what the fire wagons
were, you know, I thought it was a fire truck, you know, because we had,
you know, some fire trucks in Portugal, we had a few, you know, like the,
you know, why would he, when I got here is when I saw a train, which I
had never seen in my life, and in the Azores we didn't have trains. And
it was the fire because of the smoke and the cold and everything else
that was done. And so these stories at immigration, I think, are stories
that you can tell, you know. And when sometimes, because as families,
with my sons, they're both very political, and part of it is my fault,
because we, every, you know, Friday night, we would have a family--we
ate dinner every night together just about. But, especially on Friday
nights, we would do kind of a family thing before they would go out with
their friends, things like that. And so, and we discussed politics.
Whether they agreed with me or disagreed, we discussed politics, and we
discussed a lot, and we discussed a lot about immigration, because of our
family heritage as well. And I tell them the story that, like I said, my
father came over and he had this, he had to pay his passageway, as I
explained earlier. And four years after we were here he decided to go
back to the Azores, because he had made promise to the Holy Ghost. That's
the reason why we had these Festas all over the Holy Ghost celebrations.
He had made a promise to the Holy Ghost, which is the third person in the
Trinity, and he had made a promise that if he, which is very important in
the Azores. The Holy Ghost in the Azores is a mythical figure, not just
divine but a mythical figure. It's not a third person in the Trinity.
It's a person that lives in your house, just like anybody else. There was
a lot of paganism mixed in, but it's, and so he made a promise that if
you would go, that if he was able to pay his passageway and collect some
money, the first thing he would do is to go back and have Festas because
Festas they are all done not by the halls as here because they're just
kind of re-creating that happened there, they're done by people in their
home. And so to re-create a Festa in his house and to give out alms, to
give out what in Portugal is called the Ismul [phonetic], those are
offerings, and the offering is a piece of meat, a bread, and a jug of
wine to every single person in the village or every single family in the
village I should say, in honor of the Holy Ghost. Because the idea of the
Holy Ghost is to share what you have. Okay. And so, and so we, so here's
this man that had come here to accumulate a little bit of wealth to go
back but felt the sense that at the end of four years I better go pay
this off because I have this debt to this entity. And of course to me it
was the best time of my life because I was there for five months and not
have to worry about school went April came back in like September, but
this, but how immigration marks a person, when we left the Azores the
first time, my dad didn't want to say goodbye to my mom, to his mom. So
we left in the middle of the night by ship, on a ship from one island to
another. So in the middle of the night, we had a taxi driver. In the
middle of night we left without anybody seeing us or anybody knowing that
we were leaving other than my aunts, but she didn't like, both my
grandmothers didn't know that they wanted to say goodbye, because they
were going to come back, you know, so why say goodbye. But then, my
grandmother was older when we went back four years later, and we said
goodbye, and I had this horrible image of leaving in a taxi and my
grandmother holding on from the taxi and saying don't go because I will
never be able to see you again. And I would, you know, and I, you guys
have been my life, here all my life, because lived with her. And so I had
this horrible image. So, immigration is not easy. So, when people leave
with whatever they left behind, whether it's even a poor place, there's
always a part of you that stays behind, and so that's what I tried, these
are some of the kind of live stories that I try to, you know, recreate
with my family when we get together for holidays. Because I think it's
important for them to have this sense of, you know, of what happened,
you know, with our family.
Kelley McCoy: So, you've continued to maintain close ties to the Azores
over the years?
Diniz Borges: I have.
Kelley McCoy: How often do you go back?
Diniz Borges: A lot. I mean I go back, for a vacation, not as often as
maybe I should, it's now a very nice place to go on vacation, but I go
back because of my professional life. So, ever since I was, even before I
was teaching, when I was in Portuguese broadcasting, we'd go there for
conferences or to do some special events, and then with my teaching,
because I, not just because of my teaching, but I maintain a biweekly
column in the Portuguese press it’s a newspapers there. So, so because
of my writing for them and collaboration with the press, I've been, you
know, tied to the Azores. And I have friends, some of my friends that
stayed behind and some others like me, you know, went onto the political
world, or, you know, in academia, and so I've maintained, you know, some
of these bonds. And then, between 1990 and 2002, I did this crazy thing
here in Tulare for 12 years. I did a literary symposium where we would
bring writers and musicians and artists from Portugal. It's kind of like
a retreat for them and to get to know the Portuguese communities because
I felt there was kind of a misconception. And so, they would be in Tulare
usually for four days, along with some academics here from the States
or Portuguese America, and it would be an event that we did with the
community as long as, with them amongst themselves, and so that kind of
made me continue my ties with Portugal. Yeah.
Kelley McCoy: Do you still have family there?
Diniz Borges: I do. I have cousins and one aunt.
Kelley McCoy: So, you received your Bachelor's degree from Chapman
University, your Master's from Cal State Dominguez Hills, and you've
been an educator for many years, you knew from the time you spoke with
that counselor, hmm, I think I want to be a teacher. What attracted you
to the field of education?
Diniz Borges: I always had a lot of respect for teachers. I loved
teachers when I was in Portugal. I didn't love them as much when
I was here the first couple years in the United States because of the,
because of the communication, you know, the barrier. But, I also did, you
know, I did have some great teachers. I had some great teachers in
Portugal, different than teachers here in the United States. I mean, I
was, I was, the teachers in Portugal were very demanding. The teachers in
the United States, I always felt, were much more understanding. When I
was nine years old, we used to have these, in the fourth grade, which was
our final year of education, elementary education, so we would have these
competitions. Like the spelling bees, but it would be anything from Matt,
which I was not good at, but I was pretty good in history. And so, we had
these competitions between the schools. And all the schools on the
island, all the schools in the island participated. I made it to the
semi-final, and then I made it to the final. And I lost on the last
question to another young man at the time. And when I left, instead of
the teacher saying good going, she slapped me. She literally slapped me,
twice. I mean and said to me, you know, which is totally uncalled for,
and said to me, you dummy, you knew the answer to that question. And so,
but I still had a lot of respect for, you know, and today I understand
what she was doing, you know. Here ways were not obviously cohesive in
today's world or any world, but that's the way it was. However, here I
had a lot of, I had a lot of respect for the teachers who, you know,
especially tried to help me with the language. So, it attracted me,
basically, I think it's a noble profession. I still think it's the
noblest of all professions, and as I grew up, I went into broadcast
journalism, as I said, in Portuguese obviously, and it was tough making a
living because it was a small community, but we did okay. And I got
involved in other aspects in business, but I always wanted to teach and
so that's why I went into that field after I was a few years in
broadcast, and I didn't want it to be. I was a social science major. I
was not a Portuguese major. Portuguese was the language of my life, and I
had taken courses, but I wasn't a Portuguese major. I was a social
science major, and I wanted to be a history teacher and actually thought
of even doing community college. However, the Portuguese teacher had been
here 19 years in Tulare, and she was my son's, my son was, at that time,
we knew her, and she called me, and she said I am going to retire, and I
want you to be the next Portuguese teacher. And so, I applied, and my
life changed after that. So, I became a Portuguese teacher, and then
when, of course, since a little more of that line work as far as. But I
think, you know, I think one time when I was teaching, I told, I was at a
seminar and I think that I, whether I taught Portuguese or social science
or, you know, English, whatever, I think a teacher is a teacher,
especially at, you know, at the elementary and secondary level. First
of all, you got to like kids, and second of all, you have to, you know,
you have to, you have to be passionate for the subject you teach, yes,
but at that, at those levels also, you just have to like being with
students and teaching because, you know, if you like the profession, now
I think you can teach anything, you can learn the subject.
Kelley McCoy: Right.
Portuguese American,
experiences, to what
you've moved through
personally?
Well, so to what extent do you believe that being
the sum of you Diniz including those immigrant
extent do you believe that has shaped the way that
this world, both professionally as well as
Diniz Borges: That's a loaded question. Well, I believe that, you know
after I started reaccepting who I was and to me it happened at the age
of 17, 18, you know, and some people it takes longer, you know, whatever,
I believe that, and I'm glad I had those rebellious, not rebellious in
the aspect, but rebellious in the aspect of my culture. I'm glad that at
the age of 13, 14, 15, etc., I wasn't, you know, as Portuguese or didn't
want to be as Portuguese as my father and my mother were, and I think
that was important because it also prepared me for the world that I
needed to live in. You know, the world I needed to live in needed to be
the American world. So, it prepared me for that a little bit
unconsciously obviously. It wasn't a conscious decision. But I think it
was important also, and it was important to acquire, to require, to
reacquaint yourself, you know, with that. And I think it was, and I think
part of it, because, you know, although I wanted to be American, and I
wanted, you know, not to be as Portuguese, I didn't want to talk, I
didn't want to talk Portuguese, it was kind of a, you know, there was a
paradox there, obviously, you know, a very big paradox, because I didn't
want to be Portuguese, you know, I didn't want to talk Portuguese when I
was at the bank with my father, you know, or everywhere else. No, you
know, I don’t want people to know I’m Portuguese. But by the same token,
at home I always spoke Portuguese, and most of the stuff I was reading
was Portuguese, you know. And so, and so there was this Paradox here.
However, I think it has shaped who I am because of my involvement in the
community, yes. I think, had I not been involved, had I gone into the
journalism or broadcast journalism at the beginning, had I not gone into
Portuguese radio, and had I not been involved in the Portuguese
organizations, and had I also, you know, in some of the cultural
organizations that still exist here in Tulare, I probably would have been
like some of my friends. I know friends who, one of my friends in the
fourth grade who don't speak Portuguese any longer, and then came, with
very broken Portuguese, and they came at the age of 10, like I did,
and their parents came, you know, without known English as well. But
their world became much more American and less Portuguese, and
they dropped that. My reacquaintance and my living both worlds side by
side, in the beginning it bothered me. In the beginning it bothered
me because I felt I was in the middle of a bridge and didn't belong to
this side or that side. You know, where in the heck do I go? You know,
but then, you know, as I started reading more and started, you know,
reading more Portuguese authors and reading a little bit more about
different diasporas, I began to feel that, you know, the world is
changing, and you don't have to be on side of the bridge or the other
side. You can actually, it's actually a good thing to be with both. But
that took a while. You know, it's a good thing to be with both. And
today, I can't imagine myself without the Portuguese language or
without, not just because of my professional life but also because of who
I am. I mean it's the language I write in. It's the language, you know,
it's the language, or if I write in English, I'm translating from
Portuguese to English. It's, you know, my world is basically those two
languages and those two cultures. I, there are things in the American
culture, you know, that this hodge podge of everything that I love, you
know, there are things in the Portuguese culture I detest. But I think
that you can embrace both of them, and I think it prepares you to be a
better American and actually a better citizen of the world.
Kelley McCoy: So, I have one last question for you. And you kind of
already talked a little bit about it, but I'm giving you an opportunity
to distill it for us. What does being Portuguese American mean to you?
Diniz Borges: It means, it means living with two cultures. It means being
a little bit more a citizen of the world, as I mentioned earlier. And
being open to other ways besides the American system, which is a great
system, you know, I'm not going to question that, but I think it's, I
think that's--well, let me put it this way. Me being a PortugueseAmerican is special just if I, is the same special, with the same degree
as if I was a Chinese-American or a Greek-American or an AfricanAmerican. I think that hyphen adds to it because I don't think, I think
everybody has something, whether is Native American or whatever, you
know, and I think that it adds to the American. I think having that
hyphen adds to who we are as people, not just me as Portuguese American.
I think America to me is an idea. It's not a country. And so, it is a
country obviously, it is a country like all other countries, but the
beauty about America is that you can be Portuguese, you can be Greek, you
can be African American, you can be whatever. You can be from many parts,
and you can mix in those, and we can grow from that. Yeah, there's been
lots of negative things and lots of horrible things that have happened
amongst these 250 years. But, you know, but we are also a paradoxical
country like all ideas are paradoxical. So, I think that, I think that by
me being a Portuguese American adds a little bit more to the American
that I'd like to be. I like being American this way, just like I think a
Chinese American like to be American that way. I don't see it as a, I
don't see it as a, as a handicap, but I don't see it also as from an
arrogant aspect of I'm better because I'm a Portuguese American, than a
Greek American, than an African American or than a Chinese American. I
think it just adds to who you are. It's part of my culture. I'm, you
know, Portugal has also a rich history. I'm glad that I was part of
that history, that my family was part of that history, with some horrific
things in as well, but that's with everybody. But, you know, in essence,
I think that it adds to the American flavor, and there are some things
that are, you know, may be anecdotal, but they add to who I am. I mean I
think that, you know, the Portuguese, as we all know from our elementary
history classes, you know, we're involved in the navigation, you know,
Henry the Navigator, we all know, remember Henry the Navigator. And I
think that a lot of times, my son tells me this all the time, and he's
probably right. He says, Dad, it must be something because I can find a
place pretty easy. You know, when my other friends can't. So, there must
be something in the gens with this navigation that passed on from Henry
to us, you know, 500 and some odd years later. So, I think that this rich
culture, what I'm most proud about the Portuguese part of my Portuguese
American is the bridging of cultures that the Portuguese did. Okay. We
did some horrific things. We were involved in the slave trade. We were
involved in some other things that are not, you know, that we need to
acknowledge and Portugal has acknowledged, and that we need to be
cognizant of, you know. But we did bridge some cultures. We did go to
different parts of the world and bring the world a little bit closer,
especially in our, you know, and our history is about 500 years ago. And
in our history as a country after we finally got rid of the monarchy has
been, you know, with the dictator ship in the middle of the 20th Century,
it has been a country of a lot of progress. Even though for conservative,
you know, very traditional Catholic country, it has been a country of a
lot of progress. You know, women were able to vote in Portugal before
they were able to vote in the United States. And the idea of my mother,
you know, not taking on her husband's name, and many other things. Okay.
So, I'm, I think being a Portuguese American adds to the American flavor
because of these things that, maybe I'm picking and choosing, yes, from
my culture, and from my history of my ethnicity. And maybe picking and
choosing, but I do choose to pick and those that I think add to how I
could be a better American citizen.
Candace Egan: So, I have a follow-up.
Diniz Borges: Yes, ma'am. Finally.
Candace Egan: I want you to, and probably not as long, but I want you to
answer that question in Portuguese.
Diniz Borges: Okay. That's a good idea. Okay. You guys will understand,
right? Para mim ser luso-americano, portanto ser Português na América, é
parte de quem eu sou. Através dos anos, porque vim de lá, dos Açores com
10 anos, tive como todos os jovens têm, em que há uma parte que quer ser
mais do país onde estamos, e menos do país de onde viemos, e isso
aconteceu comigo também, entre os 13, e 16 a 17 anos, mas eu penso que
ser de uma cultura milenar como é a cultura portuguesa, ser de um grupo
de ilhas que padeceu imenso através dos séculos, ser insular, vir de um
espaço que também teve uma grande ligação à América, através de vários
séculos, penso que permite-me ter uma outra visão, diferente das pessoas
que viveram nos Estados Unidos e não tiveram ou de nascerem num outro
país ou de serem criados numa outra cultura como foi o caso dos meus
filhos que nasceram aqui mas foram criados numa outra língua e outra
cultura, daí que ser português na América é uma vantagem e adiciona ao
espírito americano. That was a Reader's Digest version, as a friend of
mine would say, you know. I used to have a, I used to have a teacher,
a history professor, who would ask me sometimes, he was fascinated about
Portugal, and he would ask me things about Portugal, and he said just
give me the Readers' Digest version, please. [laughter]
Kelley McCoy: I have to tell you, I thought this was an excellent
interview.
Diniz Borges: Oh, thank you.