Mineola’s international ties are holding strong.
The village marked its one-year anniversary as a sister city to Portugal’s Estarreja, the hometown of current Mineola Mayor Paul Pereira, by raising the city’s flag at village hall while Estarreja flew Mineola’s halfway across the world earlier this month.
“We’ve committed to doing this flag raising every year on our anniversary,” Pereria said. “Many Sister City agreements just go dormant. We hope that this remains dynamic and that it actually remains something that is active, not just something that is written somewhere.”
Both Pereira and Estarreja Mayor Diamantino Sabina said their tie is much more than just a symbolic gesture. It marks a genuine commitment to cultural and knowledge sharing between the two municipalities.
“The great thing has been introducing another municipality across the ocean to the residents of Mineola, to open their minds, to open their horizons, to other cultures,” Pereira said. “Outside of the United States, there is a lot of news about what’s going on in Washington, D.C. It’s great for people to connect with Minneola at the local level, and realize that not all Americans, not all politicians, not all municipalities are like what you see on TV.”
The two have already held a firefighter exchange program, during which they learned lessons Pereira said were invaluable to the village’s safety.
“Although we’re kind of the same in size, Estarreja is very different because it has urban areas, suburban areas, farmland, industrial areas and waterfront,” Pereria said. “They have to train for forest fires, they have to train for chemical fires and they have to train for house fires. In the case of Mineola, I think, Estarreja learned from how densely populated we are, and how you train to prevent fire from spreading between dwellings.”
Pereira said he hoped to do a junior fire department exchange in the future, and the two municipalities were planning on school exchanges in their second year as sister cities.
“In a world where there are a lot of miscommunications, misunderstandings and stereotypes, this is the best way that I know to get rid of those things,” said Pereria, a high school teacher who has led roughly a dozen exchange programs. “When people talk to people, they see that there’s a lot more that binds them, that brings them together, than that separates them. My personal experience is that these exchanges have been extraordinarily successful in accomplishing that.”
In a unique coincidence, Pereira, who moved to Mineola from Estarreja at 10, said he initiated the relationship with Estarreja Mayor Diamantino Sabina, who moved from Yonkers to Estarreja around the same age.
“It’s interesting, the dichotomy of an American coming to Portugal to become the mayor of a Portuguese city, and a Portuguese person coming to America to become the mayor of an American village,” Pereira said. “I’m from the city where he is the mayor, and he was born in New York. Mineola has the largest concentration of Portuguese Americans. We just thought that it was a natural fit, rather than having a sister city agreement with a city that you have no cultural connection to.”
Sabina said he was grateful Pereira initiated the relationship by stopping in to Estarreja’s city hall around two years ago.
“Our story is a very pretty story,” Sabina said. “It’s a good thing that Paul Pereira came to city hall in Estarreja. We have an institutional and friendly relationship. It’s very positive.”
Pereira and Sabina credited their municipalities’ positive and productive relationship to their strong friendship and genuine ties, both saying they hope the sister-city relationship outlives their tenure as mayors.
“We hope this thing will outlive us and that it will continue to be beneficial to both municipalities in cultural and economic exchanges,” Pereira said. “It’s important that it’s not just a piece of paper and a handshake and a photo op, which does tend to happen.”
The pair recently attended a FLAD Sister Cities Mayoral Summit in the Azores together to learn best practices for maintaining a strong relationship.
We have really committed to making something long-lasting and something that will outlast us,” he continued. “I hope that it will, and I think that it will, because, like a house built on a strong foundation, it’s likely to weather time and change.”
