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Photo-exibition "Padulesi abroad"
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Italians were the first to know America, but only after the Unification of the Country , they had a real mass-emigration. After the campaign of Giuseppe Garibaldi and the “Thousand” (1860), southern regions become part of the rest of the peninsula and what used to be the kingdom of Naples becomes a set of provinces belonging to the new Italian kingdom. The Italian government had to face an old phenomenon, which in some regions was a mass phenomenon: the brigandage. Also Padula met this event: the brigand Masino, author of many raids, was killed n our village. Nowadays is still remembered the strophe related to his capture: “The tall and fast Maria Rosa trough herself out of the window”. The
first phase of the mass-emigration was a “colossal poverty and
underdevelopment phenomenon for everyone who had no rights but the one to
leave: the only alternative to misery, the way out from the present
dilemma: or brigand or emigrant”. Lots of the scholars of this
phenomenon agree with that: they agree that the principal element that
determined the long travel across the ocean and towards America was misery
only. Not all the time the motivation which, in such groovy time, pushed
to leave, was this one, also people choose to go through the see in order
to get a social promotion; they would face such a difficult journey
because they knew once landed life would start again and everybody had to
express all potentials in order to consolidate a position, sometimes to
become important building contractor, others to become rich goldsmith or
owners of good restaurants. At this regard we can remember Don Miguel
Ferrigno, who in 1860 founded in Mexico the “Bodegas Vinicolas de
Coahuila, still in function, probably taken on from his descendants, and
you can also visit it on the web. After
the “chain of recall” groups of families, entire quarters of small and
big villages left their homes in order to look for job in the
constructions and mines, so becoming part of the urban growing of the host
country. Certainly the relatives’ and friends’ recall has partly
contributed to make emigration flow bigger and bigger; having a relative
or a friend in America meant, for the aspiring-emigrant, to have a base or
somebody to rely on. Beside, observing the emigration flow from most
southern villages, you can easily note how people who decide to leave
choose the places where others from the same villages made fortune. This
Italians –who felt not much of nationalism- discovered “italianity”
once they met abroad: “they were not from Calabria or from Veneto any
longer, from Naples of from Milan, they were from Italy” Main
attraction centres were Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay, Brazil, and United
States (only in previous times people would move to Venezuela, Canada and
central/northern Europe). Few were those who moved to Mexico, Peru,
Ecuador, Guatemala and Bolivia. In
the last 20 years of the XIX century, a consistent mass of people moved
from southern Italy and the boarding lists of the boats left for the long
journey from Naples and Genoa are proves of how big this phenomenon was.
Initially a lot of them, and above all men, used to leave by themselves
and after a few years they would be joint by their family or friends who
remained in the village (often paying them the ticket, with the money they
made working hard). The
long lists of names taken from the registers of Ellis Island certificate
that , trough the indication of their origin, the presence of several
groups also from Padula (see Giasi-Lentino table for details). Familiar
surnames follow one an other in an endless game of circularity in which
the friend calls the friend so that a community which at the beginning of
the XX century had one of the higher number of population in Vallo di
Diano, is soon halved because of the uncontrollable impulse of pursuing
the American dream. Is the best friend who, in a nostalgic letter says bye
to her daily companion, in the uncertain possibility to meet again
sometimes: “If I only think about our joyful laughs, about our jokes,
I cry for our separation…would you so across the ocean, yes!
Across it happily with your parents. I have to quit writing as my eyes are
reining a world of tears and being my hart so painful can’t say anything
but farewell”. It’s
so that correspondence among emigrants becomes very important. In the
villages every occasion becomes the opportunity to talk about their
success and about the place where the fellow-countryman in now living and,
for the recall, an instrument of communication now takes place and will
last for years. The exhibition of photographs, documents, correspondence,
shows the strong link which keeps the two extremities very well bounded in
a long distance dialogue which goes on with daily life images, that relies
on photos in order to give evidence instead of relying on the ephemeral
memory of the words, it seams that the emigrants send images to preserve a
sort of virtual union and communion with the place of origin. Power of
talent, creativity, sufferance, work, hope and the planning of whoever
looked for his path for the future somewhere else, strongly emerge from
those images and seam still be willing to communicate their dreams and
their hopes. Arms
used to work hard cross with the individual story of everyone and trace
the lines of an expansive growing that finds in the urban development one
of the principal opportunity of our creativity in the world. Evidence of
this is Venezuela in the first ’50 when urbanization receive an incisive
contribution from the work of thousand Italian emigrants, of whom a lot
from Padula as the photos portraying groups of workers in building sites,
show. Others,
perhaps only left search of the collective myth of the hope, of the
unlimited horizon, of a huge continent in which new and modern life style
model would take place, like the young dr. Marsilia (he took his degree in
medicine at University of Naples IN 1896) who half a century earlier was
leaving his country in order to exercise his profession in South America.
The effort, the abnegation, solidarity
with the Americans, assistance given to the less lucky ones, were worth
the admiration of that people that, after his death, dedicated him a
statue as symbol of their gratitude, crystallizing for ever his memory in
that land. The stories of individuals across with the destiny of many whom we only are given to know traces, the beginning of a story which goes on for centuries, embracing lives of entire groups of people; brief notes of lives, unique stories which all flow into a common destiny to which this exhibition intend to keep memory, being it still part of the our community’s story. Comitato Padula Centro Storico |
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