PBBI–Fresno State

In the brief span of thirty days, Novidades unfurled 144 news features, interviews, reports, and op-eds—a torrent of voices, a constellation of testimonies, a ceaseless observation of two archipelagos and their far-flung descendants. What we witness here is not simply the velocity of publication, but the heartbeat of a bridge—vibrant, tensile, luminous—linking the Azores and Madeira to the immense geography of the American West. For this is the work of the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute:
An academic organization not of nostalgia, but of continuing revelation; not of monuments to the past, but of windows to the living present. Novidades is the instrument through which the islands speak into the diaspora’s daily life—
not sporadically, not ceremonially, but constantly, as though the Atlantic itself had acquired a voice gentle enough to enter our homes, our screens, our routines.

The Numbers That Refuse Illusion

In California, more than 350,000 souls claim Portuguese ancestry, over 90% of them tied to the twin Atlantic gardens of the Azores and Madeira. Yet, in Hawai‘i, where over 80,000 trace their lineage to those same islands, barely 35,000 can still navigate the currents of the Portuguese language with fluency; fewer than 5% can summon the tongue that once carried their elders across oceans. The same erosion occurs in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and even upon the storied Atlantic shores of New England. The numbers do not lie. They whisper a sober truth: that without deliberate bridges, the homeland becomes a myth embalmed by distance— a culinary anecdote, a festival costume, a sepia-toned saudade incapable of speaking to today.

A New Saudade, Born of Recognition Rather Than Reminiscence

Novidades dares to forge another kind of longing: not the soft ache of the past, but the ardent curiosity of the present—
a new saudade, electric and unashamed, that seeks not only where we came from, but what the archipelagos are now, in their politics, their art, their daily struggles, their reinventions, their contradictions, their beauty.

Through 144 pieces in a month, a record for us, Novidades brought the Azores and Madeira not as museum relics, not as fragments of an immigrant childhood, but as breathing societies—places of debate, innovation, upheaval, tenderness, and unceasing cultural creation. It allows the diaspora to see the islands not as a distant inheritance but as a living interlocutor, a partner in thought and identity. It lets the islands see the diaspora not as a dispersal, but as a vast second shore, a western horizon of belonging.

The Labor of Love Behind the Bridge

These 144 publications do not materialize from air. They are sculpted through hours of reading, hours of translation, hours of listening deeply to what the Atlantic whispers, through their newspapers, websites, and other outlets, and then carrying it—faithfully—into English so that no one is left outside the room of conversation.

This work is exhausting, yes. But it is sacred. For we labor not only for ourselves, but for the diaspora we dream into being:
a diaspora that knows the islands not as a postcard or a memory, but as a daily presence, a dynamic partner, a homeland unfolding in real time. We express our gratitude to every writer, journalist, thinker, and collaborator whose words fuel this luminous enterprise; to FLAD, to Luso-Financial, and to all partners who steady this bridge with their trust; to all readers who open this portal and let the Atlantic wind move through their homes.

A Place Carved into the Heart of California

And before this narrative ascends to its final arc, we offer a quiet but profound acknowledgment: none of this luminous labor—
not Novidades, not its 144 signals, not the bridge stretching from lava fields to the San Joaquin Valley— would exist without the steadfast support the PBBI receives from the administration at Fresno State.

We are deeply grateful to the university’s leadership, who carved out a place— not merely for an institute, but for an entire cultural experience, for the Portuguese-American story as it unfolds in Central California, across the state, and throughout the western United States.

Their recognition allowed our community not to vanish into quiet assimilation, but to take root as a presence of dignity and intellect within the fabric of an American public university. They made this continuous dialogue, this luminous reciprocity, and this transatlantic corridor of meaning possible.

The Apotheosis of a Community in Motion

What rises from Novidades is not mere information. We believe it is also a renewal, a reclamation. It is the quiet but relentless insistence that the islands and their diaspora must not drift into mutual forgetfulness.

Novidades transforms distance into dialogue, heritage into relationship, memory into vision. Each article is a signal fire, each story a bridge beam, each translation an act of devotion. And when all these lights are gathered— 144 in a single month—the Atlantic no longer separates us. It illuminates us.

This is our apotheosis: a diaspora reawakening to its own breadth, its own intelligence, its own power to remain connected not by blood alone, but by the ceaseless flow of knowledge, culture, and imagination.

Novidades is that flow. And we—diaspora and islands alike—are the river it carries forward.