Fishing and the mullet festival in the making of an Azorean identity

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of the mullet fish’s Festival and its traditional fishing for the invention and development of the concept of Azorean culture. Through the concepts of tradition and customs we saw that the Azorean tradition of the Santa Catarina’s coast was built with a discourse coming from the mid-twentieth century, in order to “rescue” the coast population from the secondary position they occupied in relation to residents of the Itajaí Valley, of German descent – who were seen as dynamic and successful workers.