The Success Story
There has been a small Portuguese population in Cambridge since the turn of the century, when a factory that made fishing nets began to bring in Portuguese workers from sea-side villages.
But the population did not begin to grow until a volcano erupted on the Azorian island of Faiail in 1957, says Joseph A. Cerqueira, a Cambridge resident who arrived from Portugal in 1970.
Due to the volcano, the American government opened immigration up to the Portuguese, Cerqueira says.
Like the Irish before them, the Portuguese--fleeing natural disaster--chose to settle in East Cambridge, joining the relatives who had come decades before to work in the fishing-net factories.
Poor and struggling with English, the Portuguese immigrants found factory jobs in Cambridge and Boston.
"They just took whatever work they could find," says Claudia Lobo, director of social services for the Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS).
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