12 - Promised Land in Latin America

Venezuela was considered an Eden by Italian immigrants after World War II

One can already touch Latin America at the Miami Airport. Spanish mixes with English in speech and bilingual signs, and bars sell more empanadas and tortillas than sandwiches.
Caracas is over there, beyond the Caribbean Sea with its Mediterranean colours. This city is wrapped in a milky light that blends with the green of the tropical vegetation; loud as an Arab suq; and sunny, not just because it is almost on the Equator, but because the Spanish conquistadores imported the Latin temperament. The graft took on without rejection on Indios and Creoles, with their slender, bronze-coloured bodies and their burning eyes.
"Some of the most profitable activities here," says Antonio Romani, originally from the Region of Marche, gerente general of Voce d'Italia, the Italian daily published in Caracas, "are the beauty schools: they are attended by beautiful Venezuelan girls, especially Creoles, who learn how to dress, walk, apply makeup in order to participate in various national and international beauty pageants. It is not by chance that Venezuela has produced so many Miss Universe; think of Alicia Machado, for instance, or Irene Saenz Conde. Beautiful women but with smarts and temperament, many of whom went far beyond the catwalk. For example, Irene Saenz Conde, who was elected Mayor of Caracas twice in a row and then became the governor of the Stato of Nueva Esparta, where the famous Margarita tourist island is located. In 1998 she even ran for president, although Hugo Chavez won easily."
Between the late Forties and the early Fifties, this country, with its immense natural resources and its year-long summer, attracted a sizeable chunk of the Italian migratory flow.
The war had recently ended and reconstruction was difficult, although the change was occurring at a constantly accelerating rate. The economic boom was not there yet; it was around the corner, but few could see it. And few, especially in Southern Italy, would ever see it. Many primary needs (a job, a house, healthcare, education) still lacked concrete and believable solutions, therefore, hundreds of thousands of Italians decided to leave. They did not follow the traditional pathways of emigration. This was due to political and practical reasons.
After the war, the United States had rigorously enforced the Quota Act, the system of quotas for immigrants introduced in the Twenties, and with few exceptions the quota for Italy was set to 6,000 people per year. Argentina had also passed measures to discourage immigration, and even stiffened them after the fall of Juan Domingo Perón. But what really slowed Italian arrivals was a severe recession and heavy inflation that wrecked the country from the Fifties to the Sixties. So the ships sailing from Naples, Palermo and Genoa stopped setting their course for the mouth of the Rio de la Plata.
At that point in time, three new countries appeared within the horizon of Italian emigrants: Canada, Australia, and Venezuela. Before the war these countries had received negligible numbers in comparison with the U.S.A. and Argentina. From the Fifties, however, the number of Italian immigrants who came to Canada surpassed that of the U.S.A., and the same happened for Venezuela compared to Argentina.
"When the Italians arrived in Venezuela, they fell in love with the country," says Enzo Gandin, a Friulian entrepreneur from Gonars (Udine). "The climate, the goodwill of the people, the Latin culture, attracted thousands and thousands of those among us who couldn't stand the environmental conditions of the Anglo-Saxon countries where a lot of other Italians went."
That choice also had practical reasons. Thirty years earlier oil had been discovered in Venezuela's belly, in large quantities and excellent quality, but the decision to pump it massively was taken after the war; important iron deposits had recently been discovered as well, and that gave further impulse to the mining industry. A lot of skilled labour was needed to bring those riches to the surface, and there wasn't enough of it locally, therefore the country opened the gates to foreigners, Italians first and foremost.
"The real boost to our immigration," explains Amoreno Martellini, who studies the great migratory movements, "was the impetuous modernization process that began in this country from the early Fifties. In those years, a massive policy of public works and a rapid industrialization attracted technicians from North America and Europe."
Italian companies like Fiat, Petrolchimica, and Fibrocementi won important bids; and Banca Commerciale Italiana extended its corporate presence to Venezuela. Following the technicians and skilled workers who had come with these and other companies, a parallel flow of little and big businesspeople and craftspeople came to Caracas and integrated successfully in the constantly expanding service industry.
Over 250,000 Italians came to Venezuela during the Fifties. Their number would eventually decline due to the political spasms that turned this Caribbean Eden in a borderland.
Nowadays, Italian-Venezuelans are over one million, including three generations. They assemble in some 40 clubs all over Venezuela (the largest is in Caracas, with a membership of 4,000 families) and in regional associations that link, like elsewhere, the various clubs. They succeeded in trade, industry and construction. Their children and grandchildren went even further; they hold degrees and specializations obtained not only in Venezuela, but also in the United States and in Italy, and they have reached top positions in economy, politics and culture.
Like in Britain and the U.S.A., here the virtual figures of Italian presence must consider that the real numbers are much higher. This is the usual problem with the consular lists, often neglected by our fellow nationals. And yet those lists identify the voters. Consular data list 134,678 Italians living in Venezuela: 116,753 in the registrar of the Consulate General in Caracas, and 17,925 in that of the Consulate in Maracaibo.
The battle for voting abroad was one of the standards of Voce d'Italia. Marisa Bafile, assistant editor of the newspaper, says "We wrote hundreds of articles and as many interviews trying to understand and help people understand. Our position is very simple: with the recognition of the vote, an important principle of equality between Italians who stayed in Italy and those who left was established. But in this country, this can also hide risks."
Which ones? "The risk that the campaign," Bafile replies, "can somehow hamper the development of political and economic relations between Italy and Venezuela, also because many Italian politicians still regard this country as the Cinderella of Latin America. We are also worried that the easily foreseeable divisions on which coalition to vote for can fracture the Italian community and favour the emergence of the 'professionals of emigration', who always cared only for their own interests, here or anywhere else."

Publication Date: 2002-10-13
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1870