On a Tuesday in early June, the international terminal at Boston’s Logan Airport is a sea of blue Cape Verde soccer jerseys. Dozens of people have gathered here in hopes of catching a glimpse of the country’s national team arriving in the United States for the World Cup. As travelers pushing large carts of luggage maneuver around them, the fans huddle for selfies, wave flags, and livestream their joy with selfie sticks.
For Cape Verde fans, this is a historic moment. It is the first time their country has qualified to compete on soccer’s biggest stage. And, with a population of about 600,000 people, the 10-island West African nation is the third-smallest ever to make it to a World Cup tournament, after Iceland in 2018, and Curaçao, which will also compete this year.
“Growing up, we were voting for other teams. We had to wear other jerseys,” says Diva Neves-Palavra, whose family immigrated to the U.S. from Cape Verde more than 30 years ago, as she waits in the terminal. “Now we get to wear our own.”
Why We Wrote This
The World Cup is a moment of national pride for many soccer fans. That is especially true for Cape Verdeans, many of whom live far from their home country.
Pride in that achievement runs particularly deep here. More Cape Verdeans live outside the country than within its borders, and New England hosts one of the largest diaspora communities in the world. As their nation’s first match on June 15 approaches, Cape Verdeans here are preparing for a summer marked by celebrations of their country’s culture – a unifying moment for its global diaspora.
‘The second most important day in our history’
The Sunday before the tournament begins, Centreville Bank Stadium in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is packed with Cape Verde fans waiting to greet the Blue Sharks, as the national team is known.
As the players – many holding hands with their children or spouses – walk onto the field, the crowd erupts in thunderous applause.
Among those attending is Jorge Monteiro. He has come to the event wrapped in two different Cape Verdean flags. Off of his right shoulder hangs the first flag the country adopted after gaining independence from Portugal in 1975. Off his left is the current blue, red, and white flag that the country has been flying since 1992.
The day Cape Verde qualified for the World Cup last year “is the second most important day in our history, after getting our independence,” says Mr. Monteiro, who was born in Cape Verde and came to the U.S. more than 30 years ago.
The Cape Verdean diaspora is made up of as many 2 million people, including the descendants of recent migrants. The largest group resides in the U.S., and is concentrated in New England, where roughly 87,000 people report Cape Verdean ancestry, according to census data.
Cape Verdeans first arrived in Massachusetts and Rhode Island as whalers in the 18th and 19th centuries, says Aminah Pilgrim, an associate professor of Africana studies at Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee. She has studied the Cape Verdean diaspora for more than 20 years.
Many Cape Verdeans joined Portuguese whaling crews in order to escape the famine and drought that gripped the archipelago at the time. Those crews took them to southeastern New England, the epicenter of the whaling industry.
A second wave came in the second half of the 20th century, as the U.S. loosened immigration rules and economic hardship on the archipelago pushed many Cape Verdeans to leave in search of work.
“The roots that Cape Verdeans have put down in New England are really strong,” says Dr. Pilgrim, herself a fourth-generation Cape Verdean whose great-grandfather arrived in the region as a whaler. “We have contributed to the fabric of New England itself.”
That diaspora has been out in full force in recent days. In addition to the crowds at the airport and the sendoff in Pawtucket, many turned out to watch the Cape Verdean team this week march in a parade in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, which has a large Cape Verdean population. While none of the team’s three scheduled matches are happening in New England, many Cape Verdeans living in the region have already bought tickets to see games in cities far afield.
“I have to say, this summer is going to be expensive for Cape Verdeans,” says Ms. Neves-Palavra as she waits for the team at the Boston airport. She and her family plan to attend the team’s debut game against Spain in Atlanta, and a later match against Saudi Arabia in Houston.
“It’s going to be worth it,” says her sister Denise Neves Lopes.
Putting Cape Verde ‘on the map’
Like their fans in New England, many of the Blue Sharks were born outside of Cape Verde or have spent a large portion of their lives away from their home country. The team’s 26 members have played professional soccer in more than 14 countries, including the U.S., Portugal, Turkey, and Russia.
Among them is defender Kelvin Pires, who plays in Finland’s top league. As his cousin Elizabete Varela watches him take the field in Pawtucket, tears flow down her cheeks. “It means a lot to see him out here,” says Ms. Varela, whose own life also straddles two countries, as she moved from Cape Verde to the U.S. as a child in the 1990s.
Medara Udoekong/The Christian Science Monitor
The team’s far-flung players pulled off a surprise upset last October, when a 3-0 victory over Eswatini pushed them ahead of African powerhouse Cameroon in their World Cup qualifying group. That secured their place in the tournament for the first time.
Long before that moment, however, soccer was already a core part of Cape Verdean culture, Dr. Pilgrim says. That, too, is clear in Pawtucket. On the afternoon of the Blue Sharks’ visit, local Cape Verdean teams work out on a nearby field. As the teams warm up, zigzagging along the field and practicing penalty kicks, the driving beat of Cape Verdean music pulses in the background.
For many Cape Verdeans, the true triumph of the Blue Sharks in making it to the World Cup is the opportunity to showcase their country and culture to the biggest sporting audience in the world.
“A lot of people until this day don’t even know what Cape Verde is,” says Ben Baz, who grew up in Pawtucket, after his family emigrated from Cape Verde in the 1990s. “We’re a little country, but we’re fierce. We’re on the map now.”