Miguel Osiris Sanchez Parada
Casting A Wider Net: A Community Oral History Project
Casting a Wider Net is a community oral history project developed to collect and share the stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran members of the commercial fishing industry. The project provided ethnographic training for 9 individuals from those communities who led the documentation effort, conducting 14 interviews in English, Spanish, Kriolu, and Vietnamese.
Casting a Wider Net is funded in part by a Wicked Cool Places grant from New Bedford Creative, a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and an Expanding Massachusetts Stories grant from Mass Humanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Betsy Montes
In this interview, Miguel Sanchez explores his experience in the fishing industry, beginning with his journey of jumping ship from a Cuban fishing boat into a Canadian boat while he was a young law student to escape political dictatorship. He then speaks about living in Nova Scotia for years without his family before immigrating to America to work in the netting and rigging department of Reidar’s Trawl-Scallop Gear and Marine Supply in New Bedford, MA. Miguel describes net making as an art that is progressively being lost amongst the new generation of fish industry workers, and he speaks about his passion for teaching his younger co-workers how to make nets. Additionally, Miguel reflects on his family in Cuba, his new community in New Bedford, and his love for cooking seafood.
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