Closing Remarks – XLIX Conference on Education and Culture of the Luso-American Education Foundation
Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute, California State University, Fresno
October 4, 2025
Global Village: Portugal’s Diaspora as a Fountain of Culture, Memory, Connectivity, and Innovation

We have reached the final tide of this gathering — three luminous days of words that crossed oceans, ideas that built bridges, and hearts that rediscovered one another across the distances of time and space. As we close the forty-ninth chapter of this remarkable conference, we do not end a conversation; we extend it — carrying it forward in our classrooms, in our communities, in the silent work of those who know that culture and education are never finished monuments, but ever-evolving dialogues.

Over the past few days, we have spoken of memory as a map and of innovation as the wind that keeps our sails full. We have listened to voices born in small villages and reborn in distant cities — to poets who translate saudade into belonging, to educators who keep the language alive not only through grammar and syntax, but through affection and curiosity. We have seen how technology, when guided by humanity, can connect rather than divide; how the digital can become a new kind of Atlantic — vast, open, and shared.

We have honored those who came before us — visionaries who believed that a conference like this could transform generations. And we have turned our gaze toward those who will follow — the young teachers, writers, leaders, and dreamers who will shape the fiftieth and the fiftieth-after years of this journey. They will inherit not only our successes, but our unfinished questions: how to preserve while transforming, how to remember while imagining, how to stay rooted while daring to fly.

Yes, the challenges remain — the erosion of language in a world of noise, the loneliness of dispersed communities, the fatigue that sometimes shadows cultural work. Yet as we have witnessed, the Portuguese diaspora is not a fading echo; it is a living current, a network of souls who refuse to forget. We have learned again that saudade is not a wound but a form of wisdom; that identity, when shared, does not diminish — it multiplies; that across the oceans, we are not separated by water but united by it.

Tonight, above all, we pause in gratitude.
To the more than thirty-five panelists and presenters who filled these days with intellect and imagination — to the poets, scholars, artists, educators, and community leaders who gave us their time, their vision, and their heart — obrigado. Your presence transformed this conference into a living classroom without borders.

To the thousands who joined us online — from California to New England, from the Azores to Brazil, from Toronto to Lisbon — thank you for accompanying this odyssey of ideas and belonging. Through your listening, your comments, and your participation, you have reminded us that a virtual village can still be deeply human.

To the Directors and Members of the Luso-American Education Foundation, whose faith and commitment over nearly fifty years have sustained this great endeavor, we extend our gratitude for your leadership, collaboration, and unwavering belief that education and culture remain the most enduring investments in our shared future.

And to my colleague and friend, José Luis da Silva, co-chair of this conference, whose dedication, creativity, and serene guidance have been a compass through these days — muito obrigado. Your partnership embodies the spirit of this gathering: one grounded in respect and dialogue, carried by friendship.

And so, as we leave this aldeia global, may we carry the same light that first brought us here: the belief that education heals ignorance, that art resists despair, that language — any language — is a bridge when spoken with empathy. Let us continue to build this global village, not with walls of nostalgia, but with windows of connection. Let us remain curious, courageous, and kind.

May the voices of these days — the poets, the teachers, the thinkers, the dreamers — continue to echo in us like the sea against basalt: steady, luminous, and eternal.
And may the next conference, our golden fiftieth, find us not only older but wiser — still daring to imagine a world where memory is a compass and the future, an open horizon.

Obrigado. Thank you.
May the Atlantic always remind us: we are one shore, seen from many directions.

Diniz Borges

The conference was co-chaired by Diniz Borges and José Luís da Silva.