Since the 19th century, this region has been populated by successive waves of immigrants from different continents, countries, and islands who call ‘their’ Portuguese home, their community, and most importantly, their identity. This language thus incorporates heritages that are not always known and easily communicated with each other as they expand various modes of time and space in the linguistic landscape of New England. Despite this strong presence of Portuguese heritage learners in the region, the teaching model of this language is predominately as a foreign language in two standard variants: Brazilian and European. It is an abstract representation as both national global, in which several countries fit, among some dominate with rivaling language policies. In this paper we to aim draw attention to the mismatch between these heritage learners and the performance of teachers in Portuguese teaching spaces. Part of this mismatch are the materials used, beginning from a global representation of the language, associated with reified and mythified representations of 'Lusophone cultures' while ignoring language variants and cultures of the communities of Portuguese-speaking places where the majority of these students reside. From the analysis of one of these materials and interviews with students, we surmise that these paradigms in the hegemonic depiction of Portuguese, sanitized of its current, local realities, qualitatively isolates and silent certain heritage learners.

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