CAPE VERDEAN CONNECTIO Cape Verdean Kriolu in the United States

MANUEL DA LUZ GONQALVES

he Kriolu language in Cape Verde is is designated as the national language. Its use probably the oldest of the many differ­ in grassroots organizations, labor unions, and ent Creole languages still spoken children's programming in the media has today, distinct from yet related to them by grown, though hindered, in part, by its lack of shared linguistic and historical processes of standardization in both spoken and written development. It arose in the 15th century as a forms. For example, the Kriolu of S. Antao dif­ consequence of Portuguese slave trading on fers markedly from that of Brava, and factions the west coast of Africa. Initially, business was disagree about whether a back-tongued, conducted in a pidgin language based on unvoiced consonant should be represented as Portuguese. Africans taken by the Portuguese "k" or as "c." on the coast as slaves were brought to Cape In Massachusetts, the state in the United Verde for transshipment to the plantations of States to which Cape Verdeans first came, the New World. The work force for this trans­ institutions have had a fairly open policy shipment process included Africans who had toward cultural and linguistic difference. On been captured earlier and had learned pidgin. December 8, 1975, a little more than five Linguists theorize that the children of these months after Cape Verdean independence, a enslaved workers learned the early pidgin as group of concerned Cape Verdean parents their first language. As the children grew, proposed legislation before the Massachusetts their innate linguistic capacities expanded the State House of Representatives that addressed limited pidgin of their parents into a fully Cape Verdean language and culture and their formed language, a creole, useful in all areas relationship to the educational system. of human communication. The Kriolu of Cape Although the measures were not acted on by Verde is also enriched by concepts, structures, the House, their presentation before that body and cadences from the languages of the many resulted in the inclusion of Cape Verdean Africans who were brought there. Kriolu in the list of "living foreign languages." After the slave trade ended, Portuguese This attainment of institutional status had remained the language of empire, the official important and salutary effects. Because Kriolu language of state institutions of justice, educa­ now was recognized under the Transitional tion, taxation, and defense. In colonial culture, Bilingual Education Act of 1971, any school using Kriolu was a mark of social inferiority. district with 20 or more children whose native But among many workers and intellectuals, it language was Kriolu had to provide the chil­ became an element of cultural resistance to dren the opportunity to begin learning in their Portuguese colonialism. Poets wrote evoca­ mother tongue while they studied English as a tions of their native land and of the struggles of second language, until they reached such a its inhabitants in Kriolu, while for indepen­ level of proficiency that they could be main­ dence leaders like Amilcar Cabral the use of streamed. Before Kriolu was declared a living Kriolu became a mode of anticolonial struggle. language, the state had considered it a dialect After independence, Portuguese re­ of Portuguese, which it certainly is not, and mained the official language in Cape Verde, put small Cape Verdean children in the used in classrooms and news reportage. Kriolu impossible situation of first being compelled ERDEAN CONNECTION

Batuku KAOBERDIANO DAMBARA Nha fla-m, Nha Dunda, kus'e k'e batuku? Nteradu duzia duzia na labada, Nha nxina mininu kusa k'e ka sabe. mortadjadu sen sen na pedra-l sistensia, bendedu mil mil na Sul-a-Baxu, Nha fidju, batuku N ka se kusa. kemadu na laba di burkan, Nu nase nu atxa-l. korpu ta matadu, aima ta fika. Nu ta more nu ta dexa-l. A ima e forsa di batuku. E lonji sima seu, Na batuperiu-l fomi, fundu sima mar, MANUEL DA LUZ na sabi-l teremoti, rixu sima rotxa. na sodadi-l fidju lonji, GONCALVES E usu-l tera, sabi nos genti. batuku e nos aima. is a teacher, M6sias na terreru Xinti-l, nha fidju . researcher, tomu finkadu, txabeta rapikadu, Kenha ki kre-nu, kre batuku. community activist, Korpu ali N ta bai. Batuku e nos aima! N ka bai. Aima ki txoma-m. and poet. He has actively engaged the Tell me, Nha Dunda, what is batuku? There were dozens and dozens of people issues involving Teach the children what they don't know. buried in a common grave. Kriolu in the United Hundreds and hundreds of people buried in a My children, I don't know what batuku is. shroud of stone in the disaster of the States for more We were born and we found it here. Assistencia. * * than 20 years. We will die and we will leave it here. Thousands and thousands of Cape Verdeans It's off in the distance like the sky. forced to labor in Sao Tome, It's deep as the ocean, some were burned in the lava of the volcano. hard as rock. The body dies but the spirit stays. It is the ways of the land, The soul is the strength of the batuku, And it feels so fine, let me tell you. in the time of famine, Young girls on the dancing floor in the sharing of excitement, with their hips ready to dance in the longing for the son gone away, under the clapping of txabeta* batuku is our soul. the body ready to die, Feel it, my children, but I won't die. Those who love us, love batuku. The soul is calling me Batuku is our soul! to dance batuku. (translation by Manuel Da Luz Gonc;;alves)

* Txabeta (tchabeta) refers to the rapid, synchronized * * "Assistencia" was the popular name of the colonial hand clappmg with open palms against cushions held government's soup kitchen and welfare building in tightly between the knees while someone dances the Praia. The walls of the building were made of round batuku. boulders gathered on the beach and held together with very little cement. One day in the 1940s the building collapsed, crushing hundreds of people. The incident is a metaphor for colonial neglect in Cape Verde.

to learn Portuguese in order to learn English. Verde or far from it, in places such as the No wonder that in the mid-1960s a New Netherlands, the United States, Angola, Bedford Model Cities program found an inor­ Senegal, Brazil, France, and Portugal, Kriolu is dinate number of Cape Verdean immigrant the medium for sharing feelings of brother­ children assigned to special classes for the hood, hospitality, and nostalgia, which are emotionally disturbed or learning disabled. nurtured by this umbilical cord to the mother The institutional status of Kriolu also affects country. From California to Boston, Kriolu is Cape Verdean immigrants' experience with part of our identity, our way of knowing, but other governmental agencies, from the courts also often our access to the world through to the employment office. radio, television, and the educational system. For Cape Verdeans in the diaspora, Kriolu Cape Verdeans' struggle to legitimize their is an instrument of culture, a tool of transna­ language affects both Kriolu speakers them­ tionalism andre-encounter. Whether in Cape selves and the societies in which they live.