This document discusses the history of citizenship and diversity in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It describes how the town transitioned from Yankee dominance in the 1700s-1890s, to Portuguese hegemony 1890s-1980s, to LGBTQ pluralism 1980s-present. The first wave of Portuguese immigrants in the late 19th century were drawn from diverse locales like the Azores and Cape Verde islands. Over time, the Portuguese community grew to become the majority in Provincetown. More recently, Provincetown has struggled with questions around incorporating new groups and balancing individual rights with social responsibility as the population has shifted to being mostly gay. The document argues for a form of radical, democratic citizenship that can

1. Brazilian Roundtable
Diversity, Citizenship, and
Community
April 13, 2007
Sandra Faiman-Silva, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology
Bridgwater State College
Bridgwater, MA 02325

2. Provincetown History in the
[present] tense/tension[s]…
1700s-1890s “Old” Yankee dominance
1890s-1980s Portuguese hegemony
1980s-2007 LGBT-Q-S pluralism
2007- ? New International workers of color

3. First wave Portuguese ethnics:
an amalgamated community
“Portuguese ethnics brought a unique history and
heritage to New England generally and Cape Cod
specifically. Drawn form diverse locales—the Azorean
islands of Horta, Pico, and Fayal; the island community
of Mederia….and the Cape Verdean island of Brava….In
the early 19th Century Portuguese and Cape Verdeans
settled throughout Massachusetts, including the coastal
towns of Falmouth and Harwich, where they worked in
the seasonal cranberry and strawberry industries.
Fishermen picked up from the Azores, Madeira, and the
Cape Verde Islands crewed on Yankee schooners that
fished the rich waters of the Grand Banks.”
Faiman-Silva, p. 35-36

4. Commercial St @ Standish, 1902
showing railroad heading toward
MacMillan Wharf, to right

5. Portuguese ethnics and dominant
constructions of race
• Portuguese ethnics in New England entered a society entrenched in
Old World notions of racial differences and organized into a well-established
racial, social, and cultural hierarchy, with old New
Englanders at the apex and newcomers ranked by color and class
below. Northern and western Europeans, especially English and
Germans, were superior to the Irish, who ranked above Italians,
Poles, and other southern and eastern Europeans, with Jews and
African Americans at the base.
• Jews, Italians, Poles, and Portuguese brought different languages
cultural traditions, and religious backgrounds to the area, and the
existing society adjusted with unease to the influx of Irish Catholics
and later Jews. These new immigrants, differentiated by language,
religion, social class, and appearance, challenged old New
Englander notions of racial and religious homogeneity and privilege.
Most were rural folk, illiterate and unskilled….They were, as Karen
Brodkin (1998) notes, “not quite white.”

6. Portuguese Hegemony—
Cape Cod’s new majority
Provincetown’s interethnic relations between Portuguese and old New
Englanders were framed within this racial and social hierarchy, albeit in a
democratic small-town milieu. In geographically bounded and isolated rural
settings, citizens had to overcome cultural and social differences to forge
local community life.
Writing in the early 20th Century, Mary Heaton Vorse reported, “The
interwoven strand of the Portuguese and New England culture is so close
you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends….Their customs have
been intermingled with ours. Deep Portuguese speech is everywhere on the
wharves, in the streets. The same boy who shouted to his father in
Portuguese will talk in the most unadulterated New England accent about
the ‘habbor’ the next minute. They are so much a part of the town that today
one could not imagine Provincetown without them….” In in environment of
religious liberalism and social acceptance, racial amalgamation became
common, and Portuguese, Yankees, and Nova Scotians intermarried freely,
noted Vorse. “There are several families who are [Cape Verdean] Bravas
but do not admit it. They have ‘passed.’”

7. Provincetown:
Portuguese fishing
village
L. 1900s-2000s

8. How did Provincetown become so Queer
and what can it tell us about US inter-ethnic
relations?
As each new immigrant group entered Provincetown’s
social scene—Portuguese in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries and gay men and lesbians at 20th century’s
close, each vied for full citizenship status and in so doing
displaced an earlier majority class. Since the late 19th
century Provincetowners have struggled to preserve the
integrity of their imagined community and yet incorporate
newcomers as citizens not only politically but also
socially and culturally. Such dilemmas of citizenship—
essentially about inclusion and exclusion, argues Bart
van Steenbergen (1994:4)—continue to dog
Provincetown as they do many communities globally.

9. Early 21st C
street theatre

10. Women’s Week Prom,
2001

11. Citizenship, ‘others,’ and
crossing social divides
• T.H. Marshall (1950) defined citizenship along
three axes: political, civil, and social. “The civil
element is composed of the rights necessary for
individual freedom—liberty of the person,
freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to
own property…and the right to justice…rights
protected in the courts; the political aspects of
citizenship consist in ‘the right to participate in
the exercise of political power….Aspects of
citizenship defined as social are subject to
educational institutions and social-service
arrangements….”

12. Day of Portugal Festival
Youth on Commercial Street
On a quiet spring afternoon

13. Provincetown ‘street theatre’

14. Radical democratic citizenship and the politics
of “others”
According to Pakulski (1997) cultural citizenship rights “are
the rights to unhindered and dignified representation, as
well as the maintenance and propagation of distinct
cultural identities and lifestyles.”
Cultural citizenship is a radical form of cultural democracy
predicated on a universal politics of recognition, which is
rooted in tolerance for diverse identities.
The imperative of full cultural citizenship, then, is
acceptance of diversity and inclusiveness. This ‘moment
of citizenship’…is achieved through “recognition and
respect for alternative ways of being” (Weeks 1999).

15. The ethics of citizenship
• A truly ethical citizenship, or what Gorman (2000)
calls a politics of conciliation, mandates a “political
community that is able to accommodate the fact of
otherness and diversity.”
• Provincetown is an important site where boundaries
of citizenship generally and sexual citizenship in
particular can usefully be queried….The pressing
problem of citizenship…rests in this tension
between individual liberty and social responsibility—
or in other words, between public good and private
rights. “We cannot say: here end my duties as a
citizen and begins my freedom as an individual…..
(Mouffe 1992)

16. Bishop Sean O’Malley
blesses Provincetown fleet,
1997
Provincetown fishermen carry
Statue of St. Peter to St. Peter’s
Church for Fleet Blessing
prayer service, 1997

18. Dilemmas of citizenship in plural
communities
• Conflicts in Provincetown render citizenship
problematic on two ways. First, which sexual
minorities will citizens tolerate, and to what
extent will they do so? Will Provincetown permit
discrete sexual trysts among gay men or nudity
in theatrical performances, the arts, and adult
entertainment? Second, as Provincetown shifts
from mostly straight to mostly gay, how will the
community accommodate to this new sexual
culture?

19. ‘Others’:
dominant constructions ~ intersecting
realities
Although straights dominate
Provincetown’s mainstream ritual life,
as for example the Veteran’s Day
Celebration (above), GLBTS participate
as spectators (right).

20. Boundaries of citizenship
• These questions, in this instance framed as issues of
sexual citizenship, have wider implications for citizenship
generally. For example, minorities of color are
embraced only as long as these individuals behave as
“good black citizens.” Jamaican dreadlocks, street
speech, and rap music peppered with profanities are
unacceptable.
• Sexual minorities, too, query how far community
members are willing to go to allow them full citizenship
status. Can a community such as Provincetown
embrace democratic citizenship principles to include
others whose lifestyles do not accord with mainstream,
heteronormative, white social and cultural standards and
norms? This is the dilemma of democratic pluralistic
citizenship for all communities, not just Provincetown.

21. New immigrants;
New cultural realities;
New challenges

22. radical—and ethical—democratic
citizenship, conclusion
• “a collectivity of strangers sharing equal regard” (Stein
2001)
• a “concept of the city as a political community that is able
to accommodate to the fact of otherness and diversity”
• “The citizen exists not only for the other, but also for the
Other’s sake, taking an interest in his or her aspirations,
projects and possibilities” (Gorman 2000)
• A truly ethical citizenship…mandates a ‘political
community that is able to accommodate the fact of
otherness and diversity. (Gorman 2000)