Ashly Fagundes, a 15-year-old year sophomore at Yerba Buena High School, is this year's Portuguese Festa Queen, an honor that makes her parents very proud.
But at times, she would rather be an average teenager: one who enjoys spending free time chatting on the computer, hanging out with friends, and listening to her favorite rock bands, like the Killers, Papa Roach, and Linkin Park.
Ashly said she reluctantly accepted the role of Festa Queen because it meant so much to her father. She also pointed out that "my dad's the president" of San Jose's Five Wounds Portuguese National Church, the center of South Bay Portuguese life and the sponsor of the annual three-day festival that honors the community's heritage.
Ashly's parents, Joe and Irene Fagundes, both emigrated from the Portuguese island of Terceira in 1983. Both are passionate about their Portuguese culture and disappointed by their daughter's ambivalence toward portraying Queen Isabella, who was made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church because of her devotion to Portugal's poor and hungry during the early 14th century.
"Kids nowadays, I don't understand them," Irene Fagundes said. "They just don't want to do it."
Every year, Portuguese communities across the nation select their own queens for their own versions of festa. Five Wounds Church has been participating in this tradition for more than 92 years.
The daughter of the president is usually the recipient of honor. If the president does not have a daughter, a girl is chosen among the daughters of the church's 17 directors.
Ashly's yearlong duties and responsibilities as queen include attending fundraisers such as car washes and selling raffle tickets and homemade doughnuts for her church. She was crowned during a ceremonial Mass.
But her most important duty is joining other girls who have been selected as the queens for their various communities in parades. These parades are held every Sunday, and usually last about an hour and a half. Five Wounds Church held its parade last week. Afterward, a Mass was celebrated and thanks was given to the original Queen Isabella.
During the parades, Ashly wears an elaborate white dress and holds a scepter as maidens and escorts accompany her.
"It's hot," Ashly said of the gown. "You have to wear a lot and the parades are long."
While no true festa would be held without a queen, neither would it be complete without sopas, a hearty Portuguese soup.
Sopas are "served with soggy French bread and cut up with cabbage and meat," said Joe Meneses, a father of one of the maidens.
This year, Ashly's family paid for all of the food for the San Jose parade, including the slaughter and butchering of 10 cows, beef for the sopas.
The church typically gives the queen's family about $5,000 to buy the necessary decorations, period dresses and shoes. Everything the church didn't cover, however, the Fagundes had to pay for. But it doesn't matter to them.
"It's all worth it ... because we would like to keep tradition, like the old days," Irene Fagundes said. "So the old culture won't die."