FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC: A STUDY OF PORTUGUESE-AMERICANS IN BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND (AZOREANS, PARADES, FESTIVALS, NEW ENGLAND, ASSIMILATION)

The Portuguese have been settling in Bristol, Rhode Island, a coastal town on Narragansett Bay, since the middle of the nineteenth century. While a few have emigrated from continental Portugal, and some from the Cape Verde Islands, the majority have been Micaelense from the island of Sao Miguel in the Azorean archipelago. There have been three principal periods of immigration to Bristol: following the industrialization of the town in the 1870s, between approximately 1900 and 1920, and from the 1970s to the present. Until the most recent period, assimilation into the host culture, defined in this study as Yankee, has been the goal and dominant adaptation process for immigrants. Among the descendants of assimilated immigrants, an ethnic identity as Portuguese-Americans began to develop in the late 1970s, marked by a vigorous interest in Portuguese language, customs, and history. Why and how this process occurred is the subject of this study. The conclusion describes and analyzes the Fourth of July celebration in Bristol as the cultural performance that has facilitated both the process of assimilation and of differentiation.