From an unexpected encounter with an Azorean-American border officer to the formalization of the Azores Diaspora Media Alliance at Fresno State, journalist Susana Garcia chronicles a journey through the Portuguese presence in California—where family memories, historical archives, radio stations, agricultural enterprises and cultural institutions reveal an Azorean world that continues to flourish thousands of miles from its origins.
Sometimes a journey begins long before we reach our destination. It begins with a name, an accent, a remembered village, or an unexpected question that suddenly dissolves the distance between two continents. For generations of Azoreans, California has represented a geography of possibility, a place where the hardships of departure were transformed into opportunities, where unfamiliar landscapes gradually became home, and where the islands continued to live in the language of families, the traditions of communities and the determination of those who carried their homeland across the Atlantic. To travel through this California is to discover that emigration does not necessarily mean leaving a place behind. Sometimes it means giving that place another life.
For journalist Susana Garcia, the discovery began almost immediately upon arriving in the United States. Approaching immigration control, she and her fellow travelers handed their passports to an officer who unexpectedly addressed them in Portuguese, although with an unmistakably American accent. His question was simple: “Are you from Faial?”
The officer’s identification badge read Silva. Born in the United States, he was the son of an Azorean father from Praia do Almoxarife, on Faial, and a mother from Pico. His father had emigrated during the 1960s to escape the Portuguese Colonial War. Silva himself was married to a Brazilian woman, adding another dimension to a family history shaped by migration and the Portuguese-speaking world.
The conversation lasted only a few minutes, but it offered an introduction to everything that would follow. Before the travelers had even entered California, the Azores were already waiting for them.
It was a moment that captured the extraordinary persistence of cultural inheritance. The officer belonged to a generation born far from the islands, yet his family origins remained sufficiently meaningful for him to recognize and acknowledge a connection with travelers arriving from the archipelago. His story also recalled the complex circumstances that shaped Portuguese emigration during the twentieth century, when economic hardship, military conscription and the desire for greater opportunity encouraged thousands to seek new lives abroad.
The journey would reveal this inheritance in many other forms.
San Francisco provided the first destination, with its steep streets, spectacular urban geography and familiar cinematic landmarks. The Golden Gate Bridge stretched across the bay, while Alcatraz stood in the distance, recalling images made famous by American cinema, including The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. For visitors accustomed to seeing these places on screens, their physical presence offered an encounter with the immense scale and visual character of the American landscape.
Yet the purpose of the visit extended beyond sightseeing. A reception at the residence of Portugal’s Consul General, Filipe Ramalheira, provided an occasion for diplomatic and community engagement, reflecting the continuing institutional relationships between Portugal and its descendants in California.
The following morning brought the delegation to San José and the studios of KSQQ, a radio station operating since 1990 under the ownership of Azorean-born businessman and community figure Batista Vieira. Members of the visiting delegation participated in a live broadcast directed toward Portuguese-speaking audiences.
The experience illustrated the continuing importance of radio within the Portuguese-American community. Long before digital platforms made instantaneous communication commonplace, Portuguese-language broadcasting offered immigrants an essential connection with their homeland and with one another. Radio programs carried news, music, interviews, announcements and familiar voices into homes and workplaces, helping communities maintain a sense of continuity across generations.
Even today, these stations preserve a distinctive role. Their broadcasts are not simply vehicles for information; they are part of the cultural soundscape of Portuguese California, where the language of the islands continues to be heard amid the rhythms of American life.
From San José, the travelers continued to Modesto, where another dimension of the immigrant experience awaited them: the historical archives of the Portuguese fraternal societies.
At the museum administered by the Portuguese Fraternal Society of America (PFSA), the history of Portuguese migration is preserved through documents, photographs, books, newspapers and objects that testify to the organizational life of immigrant communities.
Among the institution’s important resources is the J. A. Freitas Library, established in 1964 and named the following year in honor of Joseph A. Freitas, an Oakland-born Portuguese-American whose parents came from the island of Flores. A former president of U.P.E.C. and a figure associated with California’s Portuguese-language press, Freitas represents the generations of community leaders who recognized the importance of preserving the written record of Portuguese life in North America.
The library contains approximately 12,000 works devoted to the Portuguese presence throughout the world, including a substantial collection related to the Azores.
Such collections are indispensable to understanding the history of emigration. They preserve not merely the achievements of prominent individuals but also the institutional, cultural and social experiences through which immigrant communities established themselves. Newspapers, association records and personal documents reveal how people organized their lives, maintained relationships with Portugal and contributed to the development of their adopted country.
During the visit, Garcia encountered another unexpected connection with her native island: Jerry Escobar, originally from Cedros, on Faial. Their conversation led to an interview intended for the newspaper feature Faialenses pelo Mundo—People from Faial Around the World.
The encounter reinforced a recurring theme of the journey. Across California, the islands emerged not only through institutions and historical records but also through individual lives, family histories and conversations that transformed unfamiliar places into extensions of a shared cultural geography.
The delegation then continued toward Fresno, traveling through the vast agricultural landscapes of California’s San Joaquin Valley. The approximately two-and-a-half-hour journey unfolded along seemingly endless highways bordered by almond and pistachio orchards, isolated houses, barns and agricultural properties stretching toward the horizon.
The immense scale of the landscape made a particular impression upon the visitors. Roads appeared to continue indefinitely, railway lines accompanied stretches of highway, and distant residences were sometimes identifiable only by mailboxes beside the road and narrow entrances leading into agricultural properties.
It was the America familiar from cinema, yet experienced in dimensions that no screen could adequately convey.
For Azorean visitors, these agricultural landscapes also possessed a deeper significance. California’s Central Valley has long been associated with the economic and social achievements of Portuguese immigrants, particularly those of Azorean origin, whose contributions to dairy farming, agriculture and related industries form an important chapter of the region’s history.
The next morning, the delegation arrived at California State University, Fresno, where they were received by University President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval. The campus itself inspired astonishment. Its extensive buildings, gardens, roads, parking areas and athletic facilities gave the impression of a city within a city. For visitors from Faial, the scale seemed almost unimaginable, with the areas traversed appearing larger than Horta itself.
Fresno State provided the setting for the Fourth Meeting of Media Directors from the Azores and North America, an event dedicated to strengthening relationships among journalists and media organizations serving the archipelago and its diaspora.
The gathering also marked the formalization of the Azores Diaspora Media Alliance (ADMA), an initiative intended to encourage cooperation between media institutions on both sides of the Atlantic.
The significance of this development extended beyond the signing of an agreement. For generations, the Portuguese-language press, radio and television in North America have helped preserve the experiences of emigrants, communicate news from the islands and document the cultural life of communities whose identities remain connected to the Azores.
Today, these institutions confront new challenges involving financial sustainability, technological change and the need to engage younger generations. Cooperation offers possibilities for sharing information, developing joint initiatives and ensuring that the stories of the diaspora remain part of the broader Azorean public conversation.
The involvement of Fresno State, through its Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute, reflects the potential for academic institutions to contribute to these relationships through research, historical preservation, educational initiatives and collaboration with media professionals.
The delegation also visited the university’s Journalism Department, gaining an additional perspective on the educational environment in which future generations of communication professionals are being trained.
The final day of the organized program returned the visitors to California’s agricultural heartland.
Along the journey, an unexpected encounter at a small roadside establishment offered a glimpse of the everyday realities of agricultural production. After purchasing almonds, the travelers were offered three watermelons that did not meet commercial market specifications and therefore would not be sold.
The gesture was simple, but it revealed something about the agricultural economy surrounding them: a world of immense production, precise market requirements and occasional moments of generosity amid the practical demands of farming.
A stop at radio station KLBS provided another opportunity for members of the delegation to participate in a live Portuguese-language broadcast, reinforcing the role of community media as an enduring link between the islands and their descendants.
The journey then continued to Gustine, where the visitors encountered one of the most striking examples of Azorean-American agricultural enterprise.
At Pires Dairy Farms, owned by João Pires, an emigrant from Terceira, the scale of the operation proved difficult to comprehend. According to the account, the property encompasses approximately 213 hectares of agricultural land and livestock facilities, an area comparable to nearly 300 soccer fields.
The operation houses approximately 12,000 cows and incorporates sophisticated technology into its dairy production.
Particularly impressive was an automated milking system using fourteen robotic units. The cows enter the equipment independently, where cleaning, disinfection and milking procedures are carried out. The technology identifies individual animals and records information concerning milk production, feeding and schedules.
According to Pires, each robotic unit represents an investment of approximately half a million dollars. This part of the operation is managed by his son, Hélder Pires, illustrating the continuity of family involvement in an enterprise that has embraced modern agricultural innovation.
For the visiting journalists, the experience offered a revealing contrast between the rural origins of many Azorean emigrants and the technological sophistication of contemporary California agriculture.
Generations ago, immigrants arrived from islands where agricultural life was frequently defined by small holdings, demanding physical labor and limited economic opportunities. In California, some established enterprises of extraordinary scale, combining inherited knowledge of farming and animal husbandry with technological advances and new approaches to production.
The story is not simply one of economic achievement. It also reflects the transmission of experience across generations and the capacity of immigrant families to adapt to changing agricultural conditions.
Following a lunch offered by Eduardo Vieira, the delegation visited the remarkable cowbell collection of António Nunes, originally from Terceira.
Described as the second-largest collection of its kind in the world, it contains more than 3,000 cowbells of different sizes, meticulously arranged across a room that also preserves agricultural implements and other objects associated with rural life.
The collection offered a particularly evocative encounter with cultural memory.
Cowbells belong to the soundscape of traditional Azorean agriculture. Their distinctive tones recall pastures, livestock, rural pathways and the everyday practices of generations who lived close to the land. Preserved in California, they become more than agricultural artifacts. They represent an attempt to protect the material and emotional inheritance of a world carried across the ocean.
The journey continued to Hilmar, where the delegation visited the new headquarters of the Casa dos Açores da Califórnia, then approaching completion, with inauguration anticipated the following year.
The institution represents another expression of the organized cultural life of the Azorean diaspora, providing a framework through which community identity, cultural activities and relationships with the archipelago can be maintained.
The final professional visit brought the delegation to A.V. Thomas Produce, the agricultural enterprise associated with Manuel Eduardo Vieira, a native of Silveira, on Pico, who emigrated in 1962 at the age of seventeen.
His company has become a significant producer of organic sweet potatoes, serving markets in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Once again, the visitors were struck by the enormous dimensions of the operation. Refrigerated warehouses contained wooden crates stacked almost to the ceiling, with different varieties of sweet potatoes organized in seemingly endless corridors. The enterprise provided another example of how Azorean emigrants participated in the transformation of California’s agricultural economy, establishing businesses whose reach extends far beyond the communities in which their founders first settled.
Yet the importance of these visits was not confined to the impressive scale of agricultural production. They also revealed the human histories behind the enterprises: young emigrants who left the islands with uncertain futures, families who worked to establish themselves in unfamiliar surroundings, and subsequent generations who inherited both the opportunities and responsibilities created by those earlier journeys.
The connection between the Azores and California has therefore never been exclusively sentimental. It has also been economic, institutional and cultural, shaped by people who contributed to the development of their adopted communities while maintaining meaningful relationships with their ancestral homeland.
The journey concluded in an atmosphere of hospitality and reunion. At the residence of Manuel Eduardo Vieira, the Casa dos Açores da Califórnia hosted a dinner bringing together the visiting delegation and members of the Azorean community.
After days of travel through immense landscapes, university facilities, historical archives, radio studios and agricultural enterprises, the final gathering returned the experience to its most fundamental dimension: human relationships. The visitors had encountered a California of extraordinary geographical and economic scale, yet throughout their journey they repeatedly discovered familiar names, places of origin, cultural traditions and personal histories connecting the American landscape to the islands.
The experience began with a border officer named Silva asking whether the travelers were from Faial. It ended among Azoreans and their descendants, gathered around a table thousands of miles from the archipelago.
Between those two moments unfolded a portrait of a diaspora whose significance cannot be measured solely through population figures or economic accomplishments. Its deeper meaning resides in the continuity of belonging. The Azorean presence in California survives through institutions that preserve historical memory, media organizations that maintain communication, businesses that embody generations of labor, and families whose stories continue to connect the Atlantic’s opposite shores. It is a presence that has evolved through successive generations, adapting to American society while retaining elements of the cultural inheritance brought by earlier emigrants.
For Susana Garcia and her fellow travelers, the journey offered an opportunity to witness this reality firsthand. The landscapes were different, the distances immense and the scale of American life frequently astonishing. Yet beneath those differences remained a recognizable world of family origins, shared memories and enduring cultural connections.
Perhaps that is one of the most remarkable dimensions of the Azorean experience abroad: the ability of a relatively small archipelago to remain present in places separated from it by thousands of miles and generations of history.
The islands have traveled through their people. They have crossed the Atlantic in family names, religious celebrations, newspapers, radio broadcasts, agricultural knowledge, musical traditions and the stories told around dinner tables. They have taken root in the fertile fields of California without entirely losing the memory of volcanic landscapes and Atlantic shores.
And they continue to find new expressions in the lives of descendants who may never have inhabited the islands but nevertheless recognize them as part of their own history. The journey through California thus becomes more than a travel narrative. It is an encounter with the extraordinary geography of emigration, where the meaning of homeland expands beyond physical territory and becomes part of a shared cultural inheritance.
For the Azores are not confined to the nine islands scattered across the Atlantic. They also live wherever their people have carried their language, their memories, their traditions and their capacity to build new futures. And sometimes, after crossing an ocean and traveling thousands of miles through an unfamiliar continent, we discover that the most surprising part of the journey is not how far we have traveled from home, but how often home has been waiting for us along the way.
Source and credits: Based on the travel report “Califórnia, os Açores no outro lado do Atlântico” (California, the Azores on the Other Side of the Atlantic) by journalist Susana Garcia in the newspaper tribuna das Ilhas. Adapted and expanded into an English-language feature, preserving the principal events, individuals, institutions and observations documented in the original account. Historical and cultural reflections are editorial additions. The Photos are from Novidades-Bruma Publications-PBBI, Fresno State.
