Cape Verdean Immigrants Set to Compete in US Open Soccer Cup
When the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup kicks off next week, familiar names from the lower levels of American professional soccer, like the Richmond Kickers and Portland Timbers, will begin play. This year, alongside those perennial participants, the aptly named Emigrantes das Ilhas have improbably secured their own place in the first round of what is recognized as the national championship tournament for American clubs.
The team is based in Massachusetts, and as their name indicates in Portuguese, is comprised mainly of immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. The Emigrantes das Ilhas represent the United States Amateur Soccer Association, a confederation of amateur teams which hosts regional playoffs to send a handful of teams to the US Open Cup. There, teams are matched in the first round with professional squads from the lower divisions of the American soccer pyramid.
The Emigrantes das Ilhas won the spot from the northeast region for this year’s single elimination tournament. The club was originally founded years ago, to provide a place for Cape Verdeans in the community to practice their favorite sport, explains team president Carlos Amado, who is also a defender for the squad.
///AMADO ACT///
“Back in ’87 the club was founded, mostly by Cape Verdean immigrants. At that time players were arriving here from the islands, who were obviously playing back in the islands, and needed a team here to play. And it was actually the first Cape Verdean team around at that time. Now we have eighteen teams, we have actually got a league - a whole league of Cape Verdean teams here in the States in the Brockton area.”
///END ACT///
Amado says the club is strictly amateur, and no one is paid to play. He says the team depends on businesses in the local Cape Verdean community in Massachusetts to sponsor its activities. About five hundred thousand people of Cape Verdean descent are estimated to live in the United States, most of them in the greater Boston area.
The Emigrantes das Ilhas are mainly first generation immigrants from Cape Verde, with a handful of American-born players of Cape Verdean descent, Amado says. Eddie Lopes is a squad member who arrived almost four years ago from the Cape Verdean island of Sao Vicente.
///LOPES ACT IN PORTUGUESE FADED UNDER///
Lopes says he played soccer professionally in Cape Verde for Batuque FC before coming to the United States. He says he arrived alone, but soon found companions on the soccer field, and joined up with the Emigrantes das Ilhas after playing against them in a tournament of Cape Verdean teams.
Now Lopes, like his teammates, dreams of a good result in the US Open Cup, and the publicity and rewards that would come with it. The last amateur team remaining in the tournament receives a cash prize of ten thousand dollars from the United States Soccer Federation.
Amado says the team could use that money since, unable to afford a bus, they currently take a fleet of cars to matches. He says the team scrapes by on contributions from the Cape Verdean community and income from the broad assortment of jobs the team members hold down.
///AMADO ACT #2///
“We all have jobs. We have social workers, we have bankers, we have players who work in factories, there is a range, delivering furniture. Obviously we all have full time jobs. We only train twice a week. It is going to be difficult playing the professional teams. These are guys that get paid to play. But we are confident that we can beat them.”
///END ACT///
Amado says an even greater prize would be a potential match with the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer, the United States’ top league. If they can manage to win in the first two rounds against lower level professional teams, the Emigrantes das Ihlas would line up against the Revolution at Boston’s Gillette Stadium, a field with the capacity for over 68,000 spectators.
///AMADO ACT #3///
“Even now, back and forth to games we are taking four or five, six, cars, as opposed to – we can not afford the bus, or anything like that. To have that opportunity, to even think about the possibility of playing the Revolution at Gillette Stadium, it would be a dream for most of our players. So that is our goal. Our goal is to get that far. If we could get that far, we will be happy.”
///END ACT///
The Emigrantes das Ilhas begin tournament play on June 9th against the Western Mass Pioneers of USL-2, the United States third division of professional soccer. The game will take place at Lusitano Stadium in Ludlow, Massachusetts.
The Lamar Hunt US Open Cup is an annual tournament sponsored by the United States Soccer Federation to crown a national champion. The tournament, which was contested for the first time in 1914, has been dominated by Major League Soccer teams since the league’s founding in 1996.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Cape Verde's Largest Island Struggles to Balance Tourism, Development
Cape Verde's Largest Island Struggles to Balance Tourism, Development
By Brent Latham
Dakar
04 June 2009
tamarind, Cape Verde
Tamarind, Cape Verde
With a growing tourist industry sweeping the islands of Cape Verde, the nation faces a quandary over how to preserve its tradition and culture while maximizing the potential windfall from the spectacular natural beauty of the remote African archipelago.
Guide Joao Monteiro steps lightly amidst the ruins of a 16th century fort, on a hill overlooking the town of Cidade Velha on the southern coast of the Cape Verdean island of Santiago. The impressive stone walls of the structure, he explains, have recently been rebuilt with financial support from the Spanish government, with the hopes of bringing more tourists to the town.
Cidade Velha, founded by the Portuguese in 1462, is the oldest European settlement in the tropics. But on this day at the fort, painstakingly reconstructed stone by stone by Spanish archaeologists with the help of the local population, few visitors are to be found. Monteiro says tourism on Santiago is not growing at the rate of other Cape Verdean islands.
tamarind, Cape Verde
tamarind, Cape Verde
Monteiro says Cape Verde's northern islands of Sal and Boavista have more spectacular beaches, which attract foreign tourists. The Cape Verdean government has taken steps in recent years to promote foreign investment in tourism infrastructure, resulting in large scale development on a few of the 10 principal islands.
But Santiago, the largest of the nation's islands, and home to the capital, Praia, still mostly lacks the new, large hotels that have attracted European vacationers in growing numbers to Sal and Boavista. Cidade Velha resident Abel Sanchez, who owns a small bed and breakfast, one of the few options for lodging in the historic town, says a renewed focus on development of tourism would be good for the local economy.
Sanchez says many things could be done to promote tourism on Santiago. He says the island, with so much history and natural scenery, would benefit from its own large hotels like those being constructed elsewhere in Cape Verde.
But that model of touristic development has failed to convince some. Sibylle Schellman, a native of Germany, runs a small restaurant overlooking the ocean in the coastal town of Calheta on Santiago's northeast coast.
"The government right now and the ministers of tourism, they only have in mind these big hotels. And they think, cause there was a study once, which said that all included tourism is the best thing for a third world country, and so they said, well, that is what they want, and they want to have a water source, and they want to have golf, and a marina," she said.
Schellman says she came to Cape Verde for the first time years ago, after hearing a performance by Cape Verdean folk singer Cesaria Evora. She and her husband decided, after a number of return visits, to make the island their permanent home, opening their restaurant, as well as a tour agency aimed at bringing visitors from Europe to experience local Cape Verdean culture.
Cape Verde offers much more than just beautiful scenery and nice beaches, Schellman says, adding that she feels the experience of tourists can be enriched far past that offered by the all-inclusive beach resorts, where foreign tourists are sequestered from the local population. Schellman says, besides missing out on much of the beauty of Cape Verdean culture, all-inclusive resorts do not benefit the Cape Verdean population.
"On Sal and Boavista Islands is that the big tour operators are coming, and they are building these all-included hotels. So for the locals it is very hard to start a business there. Even if they make a little restaurant or little tour agency, nobody comes because it is all-included, people already paid everything so it is no use for them to go outside for a dinner or lunch or whatever," she said.
Despite its poverty relative to the European Union, Cape Verde has developed significantly in recent decades. The island population is estimated by the UN at over half a million, with an equal number of Cape Verdeans living abroad. Foreign remittances from the diaspora now account for almost 20 percent of GDP by some estimates, and new cars frequent the streets of the capital.
Cape Verde graduated from the United Nations' list of least developed countries in 2007, and joined the World Trade Organization last year. Along with growth in GDP, foreign tourism has increased substantially this decade, including a 6.5 percent increase in visitors last year, according to the government. The government also noted a 5.5 percent increase in the supply of hotel rooms last year, largely the result of continued development of beachfront resorts on the northern islands.
By Brent Latham
Dakar
04 June 2009
tamarind, Cape Verde
Tamarind, Cape Verde
With a growing tourist industry sweeping the islands of Cape Verde, the nation faces a quandary over how to preserve its tradition and culture while maximizing the potential windfall from the spectacular natural beauty of the remote African archipelago.
Guide Joao Monteiro steps lightly amidst the ruins of a 16th century fort, on a hill overlooking the town of Cidade Velha on the southern coast of the Cape Verdean island of Santiago. The impressive stone walls of the structure, he explains, have recently been rebuilt with financial support from the Spanish government, with the hopes of bringing more tourists to the town.
Cidade Velha, founded by the Portuguese in 1462, is the oldest European settlement in the tropics. But on this day at the fort, painstakingly reconstructed stone by stone by Spanish archaeologists with the help of the local population, few visitors are to be found. Monteiro says tourism on Santiago is not growing at the rate of other Cape Verdean islands.
tamarind, Cape Verde
tamarind, Cape Verde
Monteiro says Cape Verde's northern islands of Sal and Boavista have more spectacular beaches, which attract foreign tourists. The Cape Verdean government has taken steps in recent years to promote foreign investment in tourism infrastructure, resulting in large scale development on a few of the 10 principal islands.
But Santiago, the largest of the nation's islands, and home to the capital, Praia, still mostly lacks the new, large hotels that have attracted European vacationers in growing numbers to Sal and Boavista. Cidade Velha resident Abel Sanchez, who owns a small bed and breakfast, one of the few options for lodging in the historic town, says a renewed focus on development of tourism would be good for the local economy.
Sanchez says many things could be done to promote tourism on Santiago. He says the island, with so much history and natural scenery, would benefit from its own large hotels like those being constructed elsewhere in Cape Verde.
But that model of touristic development has failed to convince some. Sibylle Schellman, a native of Germany, runs a small restaurant overlooking the ocean in the coastal town of Calheta on Santiago's northeast coast.
"The government right now and the ministers of tourism, they only have in mind these big hotels. And they think, cause there was a study once, which said that all included tourism is the best thing for a third world country, and so they said, well, that is what they want, and they want to have a water source, and they want to have golf, and a marina," she said.
Schellman says she came to Cape Verde for the first time years ago, after hearing a performance by Cape Verdean folk singer Cesaria Evora. She and her husband decided, after a number of return visits, to make the island their permanent home, opening their restaurant, as well as a tour agency aimed at bringing visitors from Europe to experience local Cape Verdean culture.
Cape Verde offers much more than just beautiful scenery and nice beaches, Schellman says, adding that she feels the experience of tourists can be enriched far past that offered by the all-inclusive beach resorts, where foreign tourists are sequestered from the local population. Schellman says, besides missing out on much of the beauty of Cape Verdean culture, all-inclusive resorts do not benefit the Cape Verdean population.
"On Sal and Boavista Islands is that the big tour operators are coming, and they are building these all-included hotels. So for the locals it is very hard to start a business there. Even if they make a little restaurant or little tour agency, nobody comes because it is all-included, people already paid everything so it is no use for them to go outside for a dinner or lunch or whatever," she said.
Despite its poverty relative to the European Union, Cape Verde has developed significantly in recent decades. The island population is estimated by the UN at over half a million, with an equal number of Cape Verdeans living abroad. Foreign remittances from the diaspora now account for almost 20 percent of GDP by some estimates, and new cars frequent the streets of the capital.
Cape Verde graduated from the United Nations' list of least developed countries in 2007, and joined the World Trade Organization last year. Along with growth in GDP, foreign tourism has increased substantially this decade, including a 6.5 percent increase in visitors last year, according to the government. The government also noted a 5.5 percent increase in the supply of hotel rooms last year, largely the result of continued development of beachfront resorts on the northern islands.
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