AZOREANS IN SANTA CATARINA

The island of Santa Catarina was God’s best way to make southern Brazil a little less distant from the Azores and a lot more like its paternal archipelago. After almost 10,000 kilometers and nearly 300 years, we are still here as we are, with Azorean blood in a Brazilian accent.

Official emigration to southern Brazil ceased two centuries ago, but more than two million descendants have recovered and valued the Azorean cultural heritage, especially since the Historical and Geographical Institute of Santa Catarina organized the bicentenary congress of the Azorean settlement in 1948.

The Azorean cultural heritage is widespread on the mainland coast of southern Brazil and concentrated on the island of Santa Catarina, especially in municipalities such as Santo António de Lisboa, Ribeirão da Ilha, and Pântano do Sul.

Mostly located on the island but also extending to the mainland coast, Florianópolis is the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, which has almost seven million inhabitants in almost one hundred thousand square kilometers.

This state capital, founded by Azoreans, has more than 460,000 inhabitants and an area of 670 square kilometers. It is considered the Brazilian city with the best quality of life, basing its economic development on information technology and tourism. The Azorean cultural heritage is officially assumed as an attraction of its tourist development.

Institutionally, Florianópolis has the Irmandade do Divino Espírito Santo founded in 1773, the Núcleo de Estudos Açorianos at the Federal University of Santa Catarina created in 1984, the Casa dos Açores de Santa Catarina organized in 1999 – as well as others that were or are run by descendants of Azoreans, such as the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de Santa Catarina, the Academia Catarinense de Letras, the Fundação Municipal Franklin Cascaes.

Officially, Florianópolis celebrates the “State Day of Manezinho” on January 7, the “Municipal Day of the Divine Festivities” on Pentecost, the “Municipal Day of Manezinho da Ilha” on the second Saturday in June, the “Municipal Day of Azoreanness” on August 31, the “Municipal Day of the Rendeira” on October 21 and, more recently, the “Municipal Week of Azorean Culture”, also in August.

Externally, Florianópolis is twinned with three of the six Azorean cities: Angra do Heroísmo since 1995, Ponta Delgada since 2003, and Praia da Vitória since 2010.

Fourteen Divine Holy Spirit festivals in as many municipalities on the island of Santa Catarina bear witness to the resilience and representativeness of the Azorean cultural heritage that marks the entire coastline of southern Brazil. From the Great Festivities of Florianópolis, inspired by those of sister city Ponta Delgada, to the genuine popular celebrations of ancient, small, and distant communities, such as Ribeirão da Ilha or Pântano do Sul, the paths of the Divine Spirit cover more than 275 years of transatlantic complicity…

The Brotherhood of the Divine Holy Spirit of Florianópolis, founded in 1773 and today with 800 brothers and sisters, is one of the reasons for the pride of successive generations of descendants of the Azorean settlers of the island of Santa Catarina, in the south of Brazil. It was born next to the metropolitan cathedral of the state capital, on what was then known as “Rua do Espírito Santo”, and has the Church of the Divine Holy Spirit, built in 1930, where it holds its biggest festival every year.

The feast of Pentecost begins with a triduum involving the participation of the 14 Brotherhoods of the Divine, still active on the island of Santa Catarina. It culminates on Sunday with a mass for more than a thousand people, presided over by the metropolitan archbishop of Florianópolis, where a teenager is crowned as a symbolic representation of the Emperor.

The contiguous cities of Florianópolis and S. José, which share the insular and continental shores of Santa Catarina, today total more than 700,000 inhabitants in a common urban fabric started by the Azorean settlers in 18th century southern Brazil.

The map of the population recorded on the Santa Catarina coast in 1750, archived in the Overseas Historical Archives, is proof of the decisive contribution made by the Azorean settlers to the establishment of the first communities in Greater Florianópolis: in Nossa Senhora do Desterro, today’s city of Florianópolis and the state capital of Santa Catarina, there were 1,300 children of the islands and 1,000 children of the land; in S. José da Terra Firme, today’s city of S. José, there were 230 children of the islands and 80 children of the land.

This official recognition is publicly and permanently recorded in the “Monument to the 250th Anniversary of the Azorean Settlement,” inaugurated in 2002. The monument lists the Azoreans who founded the city of S. José: 211 from Pico, 207 from Terceira, 142 from S. Jorge, 130 from Faial, 39 from Graciosa, 24 from S. Miguel, and 6 from Santa Maria.

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

Based on a creative non-fiction piece from his book Açores no Mundo (2017)

Translated by Diniz Borges