After public outcry, New Bedford’s Casa da Saudade to remain open

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NEW BEDFORD — The nation’s only Portuguese-language-focused public library will remain open after a public outcry prompted city officials to rethink its decision earlier this month to shutter the facility.

Mayor Jon Mitchell announced in a press release Tuesday that Casa da Saudade would remain open but at reduced hours. The move came after the mayor’s July 11 announcement of plans to close the library prompted widespread backlash. 

“While the City continues to face acute budgetary constraints, and Casa itself has experienced a decline in circulation and attendance, it is important that we strive to be responsive to those who have expressed a strong desire for the facility to remain open,” Mitchell said in the release. “Based on the recommendation of Library Director Olivia Melo, we took a creative approach to enable Casa da Saudade to remain open.”

According to the press release, the Casa da Saudade library will reduce its weekly hours from 32 to 24. Other library branches — Howland-Green, Lawler, and Wilkes — will adjust operating hours to meet the $114,215 in library system reductions authorized by the City Council as part of a $10.2 million package of cuts approved at a meeting in June.

“Casa da Saudade has always been more than just a library to many in New Bedford — myself included,” said Melo, who is from the Azores, in the press release. “It’s where I first learned to read English as a child. The decision to close it was not made lightly, but was driven by budget cuts, consistently low attendance and circulation compared to other branches in the City’s library system. 

“Thanks to Mayor Mitchell’s leadership and the passionate advocacy from so many residents who voiced how much Casa means to them, it will now enter a new chapter,” she continued. “Not only remaining a library, but also serving as a center for research and archival work focused on the Portuguese-American experience in New Bedford.”

City Council President Shane Burgo applauded the mayor’s decision.

“I’m glad the Mayor has come around and realized there’s no need to close Casa da Saudade,” he wrote in a text message to The Light. “It’s clear that public pressure and the Council’s pushback made a difference.”

He called the threat to close the library a “scare tactic” and said he hopes for services to increase in the future. 

“While this is a step in the right direction, I’ll continue working to ensure all of our library branches have their full hours fully restored,” Burgo said. “Our community deserves stability.”

State Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral, a Democrat whose district includes the library, said the decision reflected a balance between finances and culture.

“I believe the Mayor struck the right balance between budget considerations and the importance of Casa da Saudade as a unique cultural institution, one that I have long championed,” Cabral, an immigrant from the Azorean island of Pico, said in the press release. “I am optimistic about Casa’s next chapter.”

Community reacts

Melo said the library is still of great use to the Portuguese-speaking community and it was powerful to see the community’s reaction to the proposed closure.

“The community coming together to save a cultural institution warmed my heart,” she told The Light on Tuesday, adding that her first library job was at Casa da Saudade. “It showed me the magic of what libraries are. I’m as deeply impacted by this as anybody else who has experienced the magic of what Casa is.”

Various sectors of the Portuguese community offered mixed reactions after the announcement.

“Congratualations community! The mayor marched back his decision to close Casa da Saudade,” said Ricardo Farias, a local Portuguese-language journalist and correspondent with Rádio e Televisão de Portugal Internacional, the Portuguese national broadcaster, in a post on Facebook in Portuguese. “The only Portuguese public library in the United States will keep its doors open to the community.”

The Friends of the New Bedford Free Public Library issued a statement, saying the news was unexpected.

“[We] are pleasantly surprised by Mitchell’s change of heart,” said Kari Felisberto, the group’s president and a Luso-American, in an email to The Light. “We remain steadfast in our pursuit of free access to knowledge for all people. We are excited for the potential future of Casa da Saudade.”

Jorge Morais, general manager of 97.3FM WJFD, the nation’s largest Portuguese language radio station, based in Howland Place, said the outcome is not what he would have wished for in the most optimum of circumstances.

“It’s better a little than nothing, no?” he told The Light in Portuguese. “There are always lessons to be learned and we have to learn them as the situations come our way.”

Paula Noversa, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth specializing in the Portuguese-American community, said she is still worried for the library’s future.

“I’m glad he decided not to close it,” said Noversa, who is also the former director of the school’s Center for Portuguese Studies. “I don’t think this is a good long-term solution. A good long-term solution would be to maintain Casa at a minimum at the hours it currently has and to better use the library.”

She added that the space used to host dignitaries from Lusophone countries and that it still holds a lot of cultural capital for New Bedford. She added it is especially true in a city where the descendants of Cabo Verdean and Portuguese immigrants such as whalers, fishermen, and factory workers make up over 40% of the population.

“That’s the people that are working in the city. These are the taxpayers of New Bedford,” she said. “It is a big part of the base. Why would you even consider eliminating an institution that was created to celebrate Portuguese culture?”

“I can’t imagine why anyone who was elected would want in any way to alienate themselves from the near majority of the voting base.”

She also questioned the efforts to digitize the Portuguese collection mentioned in the press release, calling it nonsensical.

“I don’t understand how on the one hand you’re talking about reducing the budget and on the other hand taking on a rather costly project,” she said. “Digitization is expensive. The platform is expensive. The tools are expensive. And you need to pay someone to do the work.”

Melo said the digitization process is meant to modernize the library as older generations age.

“Everybody keeps talking about what it was in the past and how it’s served the community,” she said. “Let’s talk about what it’s going to be moving forward.”

Morais said it is now up to the Lusophone community to avoid such a scenario coming to fruition.

“As Portuguese, Cabo Verdeans, and Brazilians,” he said, “we have to show the city why it is important to keep the library open.”

Melo echoed those sentiments, noting that Casa da Saudade was on the lower-end of the use spectrum, but still well used.

“I’m as deeply impacted by this as anybody else who has experienced the magic of what Casa is,” she said. “It’s time for the community to understand the unique resource they have and they have to do that by attending events and checking out materials.”

History

Casa da Saudade opened in 1971 at a small storefront on Rivet Street in the city’s South End as the nation’s only Portuguese-language centered public library, a title it still holds.

It moved to its current location at the Sister Aurora Avelar Community Center on Crapo Street in 1975, downstairs from the Immigrants’ Assistance Center. The library’s collection includes 24,276 volumes of literature and 92 newspaper subscriptions as well as magazines, audiovisual media, and other items in Portuguese, Kriolu, and English.

Melo said about 50% of the collection at the library is in Portuguese and 50% in English, with the Kriolu material being aggregated in the Portuguese numbers. She added that 10% of books that circulate out of the library are from its Portuguese collection.

When Mitchell first announced his intentions to close the library, community reaction was immediate.

“Casa da Saudade is more than a branch library. It is a cultural institution,” state Rep. Cabral said. “The library is a symbol of New Bedford’s deep Portuguese roots, and [is] a bridge between cultures. We should be proud of Casa da Saudade because there is nothing like it across the entire country.”

97.3 FM WJFD, the Portuguese-language radio station, is almost as old as Casa da Saudade. Management there said they began to to receive a spate of calls from listeners concerned about the library’s fate soon after the proposed closure was announced.

“We have to keep it going,” said Paulina Arruda, the station’s vice president. “We’re talking about a whole building, a whole space, dedicated to our language.”

Casa da Saudade’s operating hours will be Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to 8 p.m. and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Its Monday hours will be eliminated.

Melo said the reduced operating hours for the Howland-Green, Lawler, and Wilkes branch libraries are not yet decided. The three branches are currently open six days a week, Monday through Saturday.

Email Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org