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May 04,2008 - May 11,2008 |
14 - Minds in the USA but hearts in Italy
Italian emigrants find success in Venezuela despite political and economic hardships
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-10-27
This country has a great future behind it," smiles ruefully a disillusioned Enzo Gandin, a Friulian from Gonars (near Udine), squinting his eyes in the Venezuelan sun. "When I arrived, in 1951, I fell in love with it at once. The climate was splendid and jobs were aplenty. It was like Switzerland on the Caribbean. Then, after the fall of dictator Marcos Perez Imenez, came a great crisis, and Venezuela has yet to recover from it. However, this country has immense natural resources. Think of oil, for instance.Rivers of it are underground. But those resources have not become public patrimony."
What about today? "Today, the climate is still splendid. And we have a lot of regrets." He hates regrets, so he spends much of his time in Udine. He can afford it because, after retiring, he splits his life between Venezuela and Friuli, i.e. between his daughters Claudia (architect in Caracas) and Sandra (designer in Udine). Two years ago, the latter chose to return to the place her father left 50 years earlier. Gandin is the president of the Fogolar Furlan of Caracas.
Gandin's story is one of unusual entrepreneurship, out of the traditional patterns of agriculture, construction and trade. With his brother-in-law, Domenico Detto, an Apulian from Canosa, he was the first to introduce continuous forms to Venezuelan banks and traders, and the first in South America to manufacture chemical copy paper.
"But before making it to the presses," he says, "I worked as an accountant in the workshop of an uncle of mine who had called me here. A quiet and profitable job, but as I told you, after the fall of Marcos Perez Imenez, recession struck. My uncle soon understood that the wind was changing and went back to Friuli. He was right, but I lost my job. Not one to lose heart, I took up a job with Nestlé, in a cocoa-processing plant in El Tocujo, deep in the interior. After a while, my brother-in-law and I embarked in the adventure of making forms and copy paper. We worked hard, but succeeded, I have to say."
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