A digital bridge across a continental divide 

This is the third piece in a continuing series on Brazilian immigration and how it has transformed Martha’s Vineyard.

MANTENÓPOLIS, Brazil — High in the mountains of this coffee-growing region of Espírito Santo, off a dirt road twisting through eucalyptus trees, there is a farm with a modest cinderblock home. 

A woman emerges from an open doorway with a dog barking in the background, and she is told a message is being delivered from America. She is a mother, with her granddaughter by her side, and soon she is in tears as she hears the gift is a message from her son, who has been working on Martha’s Vineyard for the past four years. It’s a message of comfort from a son far away to his mother. It is the story of so many American immigrants about trying to find a connection with the families they leave behind, even when they are 4,000 miles apart.

The message was a soothing one, about how her son is keeping the faith as he endures a difficult time living in the U.S. at a time when immigrants are sometimes vilified, often vulnerable, and just about always overworked. 

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The messenger was Aluísio Ferreira de Sousa, the host of a show in Brazil that helps connect families across the immigrant divide.

While the scene unfolded this past spring, it symbolized a moment that Brazilian immigrant families have been navigating for decades.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the first wave of Brazilian immigrants on Martha’s Vineyard were part of this sometimes painful history, as they communicated with friends and family through handwritten letters carried by international post, expensive phone calls over scratchy landlines, and glitchy homemade VHS tapes. 

“They would mail tapes with their stories about having their feet burned from crossing the desert, scars from walking through thorny plants, hunger, thirst, and snakes on the way,” said Paulo de Tarso Lemos, a psychoanalyst and writer from Cuparaque, Minas Gerais; four of his eight siblings immigrated to the Island. 

Back then, neighbors would get together in the homes of the few people who owned a videocassette player to watch the videos. The tapes included the immigrants making barbecue and listening to Brazilian music, a sign of their success. “Families would cry when they saw they were safe and doing well,” said Lemos. 

In the past, it was hard to find news about Brazil, and people here relied on community newspapers such as the Brazilian Times, created in the Boston area in 1988. Now communication happens fast: Families and friends are connected by posting on social media or making video calls, using WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Brazilians on the Vineyard have Facebook groups, and hyper-local online news channels from back home. Brazilians can also now follow the news of the Island in The MV Times with an instantaneous translation of every article in Portuguese, thanks to generative AI. 

For three consecutive weeks, The MV Times has been publishing a series — in English and Portuguese — exploring Brazilian immigration on the Island. Beginning in 1987, when Lyndon Johnson Pereira, the first known Brazilian immigrant, started working here, the series follows the first Brazilian entrepreneurs, like Wilson Peres, and considers the situation for the present-day Brazilian community, now an estimated 20 percent of the year-round population of the Island, where Portuguese has become the second most spoken language after English. This community has gradually become united, through social media –– sharing relevant news, organizing to help one another, and advertising their services. Social media has also contributed to connecting Brazilians with their hometowns, and to helping report their successes. For news about home, the audience tunes in to ConectShow Notícias, an online news and entertainment channel streamed on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube, totaling more than 100,000 daily viewers. The Brazilian community on the Island also relies heavily on news updates on the “Brazukada” Facebook page, created by local community organizer Meiroka Nunes, here on the Vineyard. 

There is even a local show which is streamed on the internet, and helps to keep the communities in Brazil’s interior and the towns of Martha’s Vineyard connected across the 4,000 miles that divide them. Aluísio Ferreira de Sousa, known as Lu, created “ConectShow” in 2018, and has hosted it since then. He is considered a celebrity among Brazilians on the Island, and among their families back home. A reporter and anchor based in Mantenópolis, in the state of Espírito Santo, De Sousa has never set foot on the Vineyard, but knows about even the parties that happen here. “One day there was a party in Cuparaque, and I remember they had a large screen showing a concomitant party live on Martha’s Vineyard,” he said. 

De Sousa reports on current issues in 26 towns in the region — and 21 of them have a great part of the population living in the U.S. “It’s almost like a disease; the American dream is very present in this region,” he said, adding that out of 30 students from his high school class, he’s the only one who stayed in Mantenópolis: “For a long time, I was resentful at the U.S. for taking my friends away from me.” 

De Sousa’s studio is in the back of his store, where he sells home appliances and supplies — many of them not common in traditional Brazilian homes, but inspired by the common comforts of the American lifestyle. His wares include, for example, toasters, Stanley cups, and mops. 

About two years ago, one of his friends who lives on the Island suggested that he deliver gifts from Brazilians abroad who long to see their families but can’t. De Sousa has been delivering presents and reading messages to loved ones ever since. His video team records each delivery, and posts it on Instagram. These “tributes,” as he calls them, have totaled more than 1,500, and he estimates 60 percent are from the Island.

Last spring, I drove with De Sousa to deliver a present to a mother whose son had been working on the Island for four years. The son’s directions to the place were very informal, one of them being “Turn at the hard bend after a big eucalyptus tree.” We found the house in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by coffee and banana plantations. 

Cristina Reis cried listening to her son’s message, read by De Sousa, telling how her wisdom helped her son go through the difficulties of living far away. She herself had been an immigrant in Portugal for eight years, leaving her three sons with her mother. “He is there to achieve a better life,” she said. “One has to leave and see the world; the world is there for that. If you stay attached to your mom and your dad, you won’t have any story to tell.”

In the 1980s, VHS tapes and letters “contributed to create an image of the U.S., sharing key information about work, housing, and how to immigrate,” said Glaucia de Oliveira Assis, a professor at Vale do Rio Doce University (UNIVALE) in Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, who has researched immigrants’ letters. “Presents immigrants sent to families and the houses they built back home were a way to show they had succeeded.” 

Experts point to the rise of social media as a form of advertisement for migration. Social media has “made the world seem more accessible, including by showing people how to travel from one place to another, and also has underscored for people economic disparities and opportunities for better livelihoods,” according to the Migration Policy Institute.

But the story many immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard tell on social media usually only highlights the positive aspects of their lives on the Island, which ends up fueling others’ ambitions to pursue the American dream, according to organizer Nunes, who hosts the popular Facebook page “Brazukada.” She urges people to find out the true reality of life on the Island, including its downsides, which have increased in the past two years as the number of Brazilian immigrants has increased.

In general, most immigrants don’t achieve what they hoped for, according to Sueli Siqueira, a professor at UNIVALE, who has studied immigration since the early 2000s: “Many eat badly, live badly, are overworked, become sick physically and mentally, so in this sense immigration can be a frustration. To some, it’s the accomplishment of a dream, but to others, it’s not.

“Both the letters from the past and now Instagram talk about a need people have to say they are doing well, even when they are not doing well,” Siqueira said. “They are telling themselves that it was worth it.”

No issue illustrates this disparity between the dream and the reality more than housing. Nunes highlighted that the governor of Massachusetts has declared the housing situation for migrants a state of emergency. 

Nunes explained, “People want to come to the Island because they think the salary is higher, but they don’t factor in the cost of living and the rent. Currently, people can consider they found a low price if they are paying $1,500 to sleep on a bunk bed, sharing the room with three or four more people.” 

There are even some immigrants sleeping in their cars due to the housing shortage, said Nunes. Others are renting homes in New Bedford, Falmouth, or Mashpee because they can’t find places on the Island. “They wake up at 4 am, 5 am, to get the first ferry at 6 am to work the whole day, and then get on the ferry at 8 pm, 10 pm, to go back home. People are completely exhausted by this, but they have debts, need to work.” 

Nunes said that in the past, people were able to earn more money, but now there is a lot of competition, equalizing the earnings on the Island with other places because of all the costs. “In photos [online], people in Brazil see us wearing an Apple watch, driving a good car, [they] see our clothes, and they think it’s easy.”

Nunes leads a virtual helpline for people in need within the community with the “Brazukada” Facebook and WhatsApp groups she created, and recently was awarded for her work for the community. Her daily experience with people’s struggles guides the urgency of her words: “It’s important to raise awareness about the reality that people will find here, because they are bringing children with them … People need to understand the Island is not that paradise anymore.”

The author of this piece, Paula Moura, is a Brazilian journalist working in Massachusetts, and a regular contributor to The MV Times. She’s originally from Minas Gerais, but because the state is huge, it was her first time traveling to those towns and villages where so many immigrants to the Island come from. She said everyone there was very welcoming and, in traditional Minas Gerais fashion, offered coffee and cheese bread.