AZOREANS IN RIO DE JANEIRO

In Rio de Janeiro, where Antero de Quental has a square named after him, and Vitorino Nemésio founded the Casa dos Açores (House of the Azores), the Azorean immigrants are mainly from the island of Terceira, especially from the parish of Ribeirinha, where six Brotherhoods of the Divine Holy Spirit have been active for 100 years. As if that weren’t enough, there’s also the Church of Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres, built by Azoreans in the 19th century in the Bairro do Santo Cristo in the old fishing area of Rio de Janeiro.

The preferred destination for emigrants from Terceira to Brazil, the “wonderful city” of Rio de Janeiro has more than six million inhabitants in more than one million square kilometers. It is the second largest Brazilian city, after São Paulo, and the second city with the largest Portuguese population in the world, after Lisbon (around 1% of its inhabitants registered in the 2000 census were in Portugal).

Founded 450 years ago, it welcomed the Portuguese Royal Family in 1808 and was the Brazilian capital after Salvador and before Brasília. It is the largest international tourism route in Brazil, Latin America, and the entire Southern Hemisphere. UNESCO partially classified it as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 2012.

The first heritage mark of the Azorean presence in Rio de Janeiro seems to date back to 1850 when immigrants from the island of Terceira brought an image of Ecce Homo to Brazil. A small chapel was built on the seafront in the city’s fishing area, the Brotherhood of Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres was formed, and construction began on a new church, which was elevated to the status of parish church in 1901. In Santo Cristo Square, on Rua do Santo Cristo, in the Santo Cristo neighborhood, the church reactivated the popular festival in honor of Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres in 2014.

The celebration of the Divine Holy Spirit in the Brotherhoods of Outeiro and Praça Sete, founded and maintained by Azoreans and their descendants, is also centuries old. Olinda, Encantado, and Catumbi are other Brotherhoods of the Divine in the “wonderful city,” which also coexists with a sixth festival, the Brotherhood of Engenhoca, in the neighboring city of Niteroi.

They all have the annual ritual of the “seven Sundays” for saying the rosary, the coronation mass in the neighborhood church, the procession of the Crown and Flag, and, in some cases, even the popular sharing of Soups of the Holy Spirit. These brotherhoods have even taken part in the coronation organized by the House of the Azores in the church of St. Francis Xavier since 1957.

The Church of Santo Cristo and the Brotherhoods of the Divine bear witness to the past or present presence of Azorean immigration in Rio de Janeiro.

He is not popularly associated with the Azores here, perhaps not even with Portugal, but our greatest poet also has a large square named after him in the “chic neighborhood” of Leblon. The “Praça Antero de Quental” was recognized as a public area and so named in 1942, on the centenary of his birth “in Ponta Delgada, Azores”, as a discreetly located biographical plaque mentions.

At least one more Azorean is enshrined in the important toponymy of Rio de Janeiro—the “Rua Professor (Francisco) Ferreira da Rosa” was inaugurated in 1956 in the Bairro da Tijuca, to honor the honorary lieutenant colonel who was born in Angra do Heroísmo in 1864, taught Portuguese at the Military College of Rio de Janeiro, and died here in 1952.

It was in 1952 that the most notorious and dynamic sign of the Azorean presence in the marvelous city was born – the Casa dos Açores do Rio de Janeiro, at a founding meeting held on July 17 at the Centro Transmontano, on the initiative of Azorean professor Vitoriano Nemésio, who was passing through Brazil.

The following month, the second meeting mobilized two hundred Azoreans, approved the provisional statutes, and elected the first Board of Directors, chaired by João Soares de Medeiros. Founder and benefactor of the House of the Azores, this Commander of the Portuguese Republic was born in Angra do Heroísmo in 1905 and died in Rio de Janeiro in 1988. He presided over the institution for the first twenty years.

In September 1952, João Soares de Medeiros and Bernardino Cardoso Mendes bought the building next to the Transmontano Center on Avenida Melo Matos to set up Casa dos Açores in its own headquarters, which was inaugurated on July 17, 1954. At the beginning of the following decade, they acquired the neighboring building to significantly expand their facilities.

With its growing activity, the institution was to undergo a second refurbishment project, which was started in 1986 by João Bosco Mota Amaral, inaugurated in 1996 by Alberto Romão Madruga da Costa and visited in 2003 by Carlos César —the first three presidents of the Government of the Azores.

_____

José Andrade is the Regional Director for Communities of the Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores

Based on a text from his book Açores no Mundo (2017)

Translated by Diniz Borges

We thank the Luso-American Education Foundation for supporting PBBI-Fresno State.