Roque-Rodrigues USA

This page covers the period of the Roque-Rodrigues family in North America, after the violent Soviet communist expulsion of the whites who built Angola for 500 years since the 15th century, and specifically, the Lubango area in the previous century, 4 generations earlier. The expulsion occured by the Soviet-funded terrorists, mostly Cubans needing foreign cash to sustain their failing economy, but who lost 10,000 of their own ('Cuba's Vietnam') in the subsequent civil war.

After slavery was abolished in the 19th century, many Madeirans, fleeing religious persecution by the Catholic church in Madeira, as well as grape diseases, were lured to 'jobs' in Trinidad, but found they were to cut sugar cane, which the freed slaves had previously worked, one of the hardest of all physical labors. Thousands moved on and settled in Illinois, supported by Protestant churches there. Others of Madeiran origin moved to North America after the expulsions from Angola of 1975, or went to South Africa where reportedly 500,000 lived at one point.

The first settlers to the Lubango area in Southern Angola had come from the Portuguese island of Madeira in 1885, followed by several waves, and were expected to give strenght to Portuguese claims in the 19th century to the unpopulated south of Angola to keep Germans from (then German) South-West Africa at bay (aka 'Namibia' since independence in 1989 from South Africa). 1886 was when the Treaty of Berlin had been signed by colonial powers, establishing demarcations, and pledging to eliminate the 1000 year-old Islamic and black slave trade and restore Africa to greatness. Contrary to the wishes of the Portuguese government, far away, the Madeirans preferred trading to farming, and were taught by the South African Boers (farmers) also present in Southern Angola, how to build transport wagons and run businesses. See the Angola page for the complete history of this region. This is the brief story of their new life in pictures

5) Roque Rodrigues family, post-Angola pictures, United States after 1975