Understanding Italy’s Great Emigration Through "La Paura di Verbicaro"

Photo top: As charming as many rural villages in Southern Italy appear, potable water systems, in the form of village wells and single-source supplies, were, and still are, at risk of contamination, hence the fear of common water pollutants and cholera. Likewise, one of the important components of municipal governments is water management.  Even today, especially after wars and violent natural disasters, protecting the water supplies and preventing cholera is of primary concern.

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Un popolo senza memoria non ha futuro!  I Verbicaresi nel mondo hanno bisogno de “memoria”

(A people without memory does not have a future! The Verbicaresi abroad need “memory”.)  [d’accordo Felice!] -Con affetto, Felice Spingola

(A personal dedication to me in the book jacket)

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This research paper is dedicated to the memory of two friends: long-time journalist for the Italo-Americano, ”Maria Gloria” Rando, and Alessandro Baccari, photographer, businessman, and an unofficial “Dean” of Italian American history.  Both of them did not just “walk the talk”, rather they “ran the talk” in their promotion of all things pertaining to Italianita! I met both of them initially through the publishing of my cookbook, Flavors From A Calabrese Kitchen, but we remained lifelong friends and collaborators.  In many ways, too, they were an important part of how and why this paper was written. — Ken Borelli  •

Introduction and Background

In 1988, I published a copyrighted cookbook entitled Flavors From A Calabrese Kitchen. Several revisions and editions later, the book now has a life of its own.  It has also been an influence on many aspects of my life, especially as I connected to my readership. I was motivated to write the book as a sort of chronicle, not just of food preparation, but as a way of life that was integrated into the seasons, fresh foods, and extensive home preparation, way before today’s trends and fads.

This legacy from my immigrant heritage is rapidly changing, so I wanted to capture some of these experiences before they pass from the scene. This was especially so among my parents and grandparents’ generation, immigrants from Calabria, a region in Southern Italy.  Many of these migrants can trace their family histories to a part of the “Great migration of the 1890s through 1924, when American immigration laws severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Growing up in a family with roots on both sides of my family, from Verbicaro, Provincia Cosenza, Calabria, my cookbook began as a compilation of the regional home fare of my childhood.  It was little known or appreciated unless you grew up with the foods, since it was never really associated with restaurant fare at all.

Flavors From A Calabrese Kitchen became an early celebration of  “Calabrese Cooking” and had a certain distinction of being an early proponent, from an Italian American perspective. There may be some books out there that claim to be a first, but if it’s not written before 1988, it really, at best, represents a sloppy survey of the literature, and at worst, well, just fill in the blanks.

As with all immigrant communities in general, small settlements developed and consequently serve as informal neighborhoods within the greater whole.  And so it was with many of the Calabrese immigrants, even drilling down to local hamlets in Italy, such as Verbicaro, migrating to specific areas within the San Francisco Bay Area.

From those “old” neighborhoods sprung business institutions, clubs, churches, and fraternal organizations. Some of these social clubs survive to this very day, while others have passed away with the founding generation. their raison d’etre, completed. (1) There was even a Verbicaro Day Picnic, in September 1992, in Vallejo, that was partially based on the connections via the network established by the book. The “lingua franca” of course, is a sense of shared culinary experiences, family networks, and connections to the community of origin.

One unanticipated phenomenon of the book was being the recipient of literally thousands of letters across the nation, in the process of ordering the collection. It was a profound collective statement of the extent of the Calabrese diaspora. This was not just a community-specific phenomenon, and it impacted whole hamlets, villages, and towns throughout Italy.  Among Italian American organizations, the common refrain to this day is “Where are you from?”  The response sets off a whole series of coded messages and memories.

Adding to this perspective, the book was also reviewed by La Regione Calabria-Emigrazione—Supplemento 4/ Giugno,1994, (An international journal out of Catanzaro, Calabria), later renamed “I Calabresi nel Mondo” I received a “Diploma per meriti culturali” from the editorial staff of the journal.  Consequently, the article expanded my scope of connections to primarily Australia, Canada, Argentina, and other parts of South America, which reaffirmed the actual extent of the dynamics of the Calabrese diaspora.

Interesting too, rarely did I receive a simple order when I took out a targeted ad in an Italian American newspaper. (Thanks to Maria Gloria’s journalistic connections and for sharing her national network of media leads) I received many amazing personal letters and notes about similar experiences, suggested additions to the collection, and even reconnecting with distant relatives.  I  responded to as many letters as possible, and had a pretty extensive pen pal network going  (All, thank god, before the internet!).

I even came across a fascinating Turkish/Calabrese “Horatio Alger story about a Calabrese youth, Giovanni Dionigi Galene from La Castella, Calabria, captured by Muslim raiders, made a galley slave, and later converted to Islam and somehow rose through the ranks, from slavery to become Uluc Ali Reis, the grand admiral of the Ottoman Navy!

I was pretty satisfied that I did a good “due diligence” exploration of my roots. I even considered applying for dual citizenship based on my paternal grandparents, both Italian nationals, until I saw all the paperwork required!  Even so, in gathering the original birth certificates and ship records it set in motion an additional recognition of the dates my family immigrated to the USA-from approximately 1904 to 1913. And those dates became very significant to La Paura di Verbicaro.

Over the early years of the cookbook, I learned much about immigration from Italy, Calabria, and Verbicaro, augmented by visits to Verbicaro and cousins who gifted me history and local cookbooks. Suffice to say, I had developed a fairly extensive knowledge base to draw upon pertaining to Southern Italian immigration to the USA.  I even toyed with the idea of simply writing and editing a sequel to my book based on the heartfelt letters I received. That project is not going to be, at least from me; however, those letters served as a groundspring of thought which is never far from my consciousness, as hopefully this research paper demonstrates.

As previously noted, Flavors From A Calabrese Kitchen had a life of its own, perhaps even a routine. There were seven printings and four revisions in response to feedback from my readership. That was how the matter stood until the proverbial “one day” in 1994, I received a letter and book order from a Lorraine Spingola, who mentioned that her cousin, Felice Spingola, had just completed a book entitled La Paura di Verbicaro, or translated as “The Fear of Verbicaro” about cholera riots in 1911. The subject did not resonate with me until I received a copy of Felice’s book.   The title raised all sorts of questions, especially “Why or how could a small rural community in the hill country, not even close to a major metropolitan area. invoke fear in anyone or any place? What was going on?

An Untold Story Emerges 

Adding to the matter was the expanded subtitle of the book, “Storia di una rivolta nel sud” (History of a revolt in the south). Through Lorraine, I was able to get in touch with the author to learn more about his research, and also able to secure a copy of his work. I even put a small acknowledgment in my 1999 Millennium edition.  Ironically,  among some source materials about the history of Veribaro, small references were made about the cholera epidemic in 1911. However, I never really understood the full extent of the dynamics until I read his book.

Felice’s in-depth research was a “game changer” in appreciating the social dynamics of Verbicarese society in 1911, very much in proximity to when my family joined the great migration. The causes of the revolt started with a severe cholera epidemic that took the lives of over seventy people in  Verbicaro.  Moreso, the local, provincial, and national governments were not able to demonstrate any competency in providing an appropriate response (shades of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans).

Meanwhile, at the national level, Italy was embroiled in a costly colonial war with Turkey (Italo-Turkish War 1911-12) to expand a fledgling colonial empire in North and East Africa.  For the most part, especially for the contadini class, this was not a popular war, nor was conscription, and the direction of the national government in diverting precious revenue from much-needed societal infrastructure investments to become a player on the world stage with an emerging colonial empire.

From Italian unification in 1860 to an emerging colonial empire by the 1900s is quite a leap.    From a political science perspective, there is a helpful theory and set of constructs regarding rising expectations among the citizenry to frame this observation. The point where these expectations can not or will not be realized is a key nexus point. Based on this theory, the cholera epidemic encapsulated this gap between expectations and realities. That expectation gap then becomes an optimal time, or ground zero,  for revolt and violent dissent.

As so it was with the lack of response, or perception thereof, including rumors that the neglect was intentional, that started the revolt in 1911, in the form of riots, the burning of city hall,  and violent attacks against the governing class. Troops were called into Verbicaro, even diverting resources from the  Italo-Turkish War, and occupied the city for approximately three years (1911-1913), just in time for even a greater conflict—WWI (1915-1918).

As part of a sense of “rising expectations,” an emerging societally class struggle between “i contadini“ (country folk, or peasants) and “i galantuomini’ (genteel) class became a prominent turn of the century characteristic of village life.  At the time of the cholera epidemic, Italy was well into 50 years of unification and a widening gap between progressive expectations and reality.

There was also a sense that cholera was no longer considered part of the natural order of things; rather, its cause was either by neglect or priority in effect, something society could resolve.  (Fast forward to today— thinking, too, of the debates in the USA  over the COVID-19 epidemic and even reactions to vaccines and other standard health practices. Same old human nature at play, less one thinks it was only in those times that such an event could occur!

While the riots and rebellion may have started in Verbicaro, this was not perceived by the national authorities as just an isolated protest and could have been replicated among villages and communities throughout the Mezzogiorno.

Among the power structure of the time, “Una paura” or “fear” of a regional conflagration was very much on their minds. A document in Spingola’s book highlights a telegram from Rome, in the process of ordering troops to restore order, it notes( my translation from a photocopy of the telegram, in an unnumbered page in La Paura:  “ [The riots]  are a shame for Italy. Proceed with energy and vigor. We have to make an example for Italy.”

If you can trace your ancestry to the time period of the great immigration 1880-1924), over four million Italian nationals migrated to the USA, (A demographic game changer for many areas of both countries), not to mention the internal migration to other parts of Italy.

This phenomenon occurred after Italian reunification, in 1861, and not before*.(2)  The other reality was that the contadini were marching with their feet. And importantly for those who decided to stay, an emerging class struggle became a factor of Italian Political life up to post-World War II. Even today, the trend of population migration from rural areas that was set in motion in those times has left many villages struggling to survive.  While for Italian Americans, there is a major disconnect” over this class struggle and very little identification with that reality. We will visit some of the reasons for this later in this paper.   

Some of the more fascinating parts of La Paura di Verbicaro are the supporting documents found in the book such as including the ensuing riot trials and military law for three years until a potable water source was built. Also, when I finally got around to sharing the book with my  historian friend  Alessandro Baccari, he scanned its contents and simply and profoundly stated, “You have to translate this book!”

My response was just to groan. and grudgingly give a very weak nod. As I noted in my dedication to Alessandro, “He did not just walk the talk, he ran the talk!”   I, on the other hand, can appreciate those sentiments, but in truth, I was nodding to in agreement that the book and the phenomenon needed to be better understood, but I was not going to translate it at all, so this paper is a weak and somewhat guilty compromise to call attention to the book. Still, I think this is also the right time to focus on La Paura di Verbicaro, as I will conclude later in this paper.

It was interesting too,  Alessandro’s  “A-ha moment” in scanning the book was similar to mine.  And that was when we reviewed the names of the arrested individuals. Many of the surnames were a list of prominent Verbicarese family names in the San Francisco Bay Area today. Some of these surnames were also the same family names of friends and direct relatives. Likewise, for Alessandro, those family surnames represented many social and business contacts for him in the Italian community of  San Francisco and the area called North Beach.

From the sentencing records, to give you an idea of the surnames, some of the family names included: Arieta, Agnone, Accurso, Basuino, Crudo, Carlomagno, Casella, Celia, Conte, Caracciolo, Cosentino, D’Amante, De Renzi, De Baise, Fazio, Felice, Guaragna, Gamba, Iuliano, LoFrano, Mancuso, Olivieri, Papa, Russo, Ruggiero, Spingola, Riccetti, Sarro, Sarubbi, Silvestri, Tufo, and Zita.  The ages and occupations were also included in the arrest files, and of interest to me, as well as to the event, was the arrest of Francesco Ruggiero, Priest.  Also, the Cosentino, Fazio, and Riccetti names were prominent in my ancestry. Sadly, since all of that generation has passed on, I am left with questions and curiosity on how it all was connected, not to mention so many names associated with my readership.

Lest We Forget

What makes La Paura di Verbicaro the incident so riveting for me is how it impacted the lives of the community of my ancestral roots.  It is fortunate, too, that the book and research exist.  The cholera epidemic killed about 79 people in this small community of approximately 5000 people. It added additional stress and disruptions to an already complicated world with a colonial war between Italy and Turkey over control of Libya(3).  The perception of a better life for the vast majority of “contidini” after unification just did not materialize.

In Dr. Giovanni Cava’s book Verbicaro, which is part of a two-volume series, Vol. 1 by Dr. Cava,  he noted: In 1911, while Italy was in the midst of celebrating the 50th year of unification and boasting of its conquest of Libya, this community was in the midst of a horrific cholera epidemic. In that same observation, Dr. Cava noted the reality of the situation was, “Verbicaro in effect, continued to live in the margins of history, as did so many other communities in ‘Italia meridionale’, p 94.   These observations go a long way in understanding not only the extreme frustration of the contadini in daily living, but also the desperation felt to choose to immigrate.

In the documents in Spingnola’s work, there was another interesting observation and surprise at the number of women who were arrested in the riots and demonstrations. About a third or so of the demonstrators who were sentenced (Paura, p 125) were women.  These observations were also corroborated with a relevant remark in a Middle School History Paper about Verbicaro (Anno Scolastico 1985/86, coordinated by Caterina Pietropaolo, Maria Molinaro, and Maria Ordine, unpublished), shared with me by my cousins in Verbicaro. On p.4 in a short paragraph on the riots, “..alla rivolta partecipare molte donne..”

It is also an interesting observation about the turn of the 19th century image of genteel, Victorian woman and their role in society, and how these constructs never filtered down to “i contadini“ and immigrant women in general.  As is even the case today, the immigrant class, regardless of country, the moment they settled in the USA, were/are expected to work, whether in the garment district sweatshops,  food processing plants and canneries, or even field work.   Likewise, for many families, they were expected to pay their sponsors for the cost of the voyage to America, so they were already in debt the moment they set foot in America.

From all the reports I reviewed, this revolt was quite spontaneous. I think too, it surprised the authorities, used to a more passive and resigned people.  Yet “rising expectations” were in the air, and the great migration was in full swing. So were new ideas and concepts. It is often overlooked just how life-changing a letter from America could be, for example, and could start a whole set of hopes and dreams. Likewise, it could also contribute to quite a combustible moment, with much historic tinder.  While the political movements of the day in Europe may have been slow to impact rural Italian village life, change was definitely in the air.

The “Y” Divergence

A term I find helpful in explaining why there are two basic interpretations of a similar common event. The actual consequences of an event can have many interpretations, but in the case of matters pertaining to “Italianita”, the divergences between an Italian perspective and an Italian American experience are varied and distinct based on the dynamics of so many life experiences.  La Paura di Verbicaro is a good example of this dichotomy.

The consequences of the cholera epidemic in Calabria are a part of the region’s history. It is integrated within the chronicles and is a part of over 1000 years of history. Constantly evolving, even today, there has been a recent plaque remembering the experience.(4) And as of this writing, the current mayor of Verbicaro is Felice Spingola, the author of the book. It is not really possible to expand on this part of the divergence, but for Italian Americans, especially those with roots in the region, the same event will have a different significance, if it was even known at all.

Personally, as an Italian American,  I had no idea about the severity and impact of the cholera epidemic on the history of the community and its consequences for the families whose lives were impacted by the event.  It was also strange that not one word of this situation was ever talked about in any general conversation about the “old country”. On one level, I can understand not dwelling on the matter, and as history marched onward, a couple of years later, the region was once again engulfed in national wars, this time World War I.  Any sort of oral history transference, at least from my experience, was just found lacking. The same about the riots, arrests, and sentencing of family members.

Those revelations and even the book itself La Paura di Verbicaro came as quite the surprise.  In some respects, too, it was equivalent to reading Lawrence Di Stasi’s groundbreaking book La Storia Segreta, about the internments of Italian nationals and restrictions on Italian Americans during World War II. Even now, there are many Italian Americans who still have no awareness of those restrictions and their trauma for families who had to endure them. For those with a historical bent and wanting to learn about their roots, these are critical elements towards understanding the setting for personal family dynamics.(5)

Also, these revelations tend to add flesh and bones to the images of “stick figure” immigrants (4 million of them)  who are pretty much painted with the same stereotypes, if even one bothers to move beyond cliches, such as “they immigrated for a better life”. Personally, it also helped me understand how my grandmother, Theresa Giordano, at age 16,  illiterate, left Verbicaro in 1910, embarked on her own, through the rough and tumble port of Napoli to NYC, in steerage,  and then a train trip across the USA to San Francisco.  All this was done through a complex set of family arrangements, letters, and support on both sides of the Atlantic, not to mention how to negotiate the cost and sacrifices to make the event happen.  Tragically and ironically, too, several years later, she had to register as an enemy alien during WW II, and had a difficult time visiting her son, “Baggio” Bill, at a military hospital. He was wounded for life fighting with the US Army in the Aleutian Islands.

On another level, there are two Italian cultural constructs that worked perfectly among the immigrant community to make sure these experiences lapsed into distant memory.  The internalized concept of “una vergogna” or “it’s a shame”. It’s a weak term in English; however, amongst the Italian immigrant community of the early turn of the century, it was quite an obsessive internalized form of social control. When “una vergogna” was combined with the concept, “fare una bella figura” or keeping up appearances, it is quite understandable how a whole set of tales and family dramas went by the way side.

“How Zio Francesco, for example, got arrested in a cholera epidemic riot in Verbicaro, and why he then decided to leave and join his family in America” just would not be a story that would have been a proper tale to pass on to future generations. Perhaps the current generation on both sides of the Atlantic will see an end to these social constructs thanks to the electronic media’s literal assault on privacy, and by the current generation’s tendency to share aspects of their life online.    

In addition, there is also a more practical side to these and other similar omissions. That relates to US immigration restrictions, and the concept of “moral turpitude, and “radical political activities” being grounds for exclusion from emigrating to the US.  Then, too, from 1924 on, a series of immigration legislation, called the National Origins Quota System,  literally limited formal immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to a trickle.

That in itself created some interesting “workarounds” such as arranged marriages, marriages of convenience to a US Citizen, fraudulent and illegal entries from a third country, and some other quite creative schemes to migrate to the USA.   While there is a near hysteria over migration today, not just in the USA, but throughout the world, including even in Italy, a nation that exported about 10 million of its citizens across the globe, there seems to be a critical disconnect between its own migrating past and today’s realities.

Understanding some of these historical experiences will not solve any of today’s current problems, but it may go a long way in tempering the anti-immigrant rhetoric in today’s political arena, which itself becomes a boon in order to work on rational solutions to the matter.  The common spectacle of a third or fourth-generation American with some identification with their Italian heritage, spouting anti-immigrant rhetoric, simply reflects a total lack of understanding of the conditions and reasons a direct descendant made the decision to immigrate.

It also goes a long way in helping to explain a phenomenon, while not necessarily unique to Italian Americans, but still quite special to Italian Americans, is the connection between the descendants of those immigrants and their towns of origin. In my family, for example, among so many others, there was no way I was not going to know about “Verbicaro”. A recent example, too, occurred when, during an improvement drive by an Italian American organization I am involved with, my friend Maria Gloria, in recognition of the town in Basilicata where her father was from, had plaques put on 5 or 6 chairs dedicated to Pomarico, the ancestral town of her grandparents.

This identification was never so much about a question of Italian patriotism or even regional pride as a question of making sure we were connected to the families they were uprooted from. Those traumas were blended into both a conscious and unconscious mentality of the large numbers of people immigrating.  Many of the immigrants had their own personal trauma, leaving a parent, sibling, losing a language, and on and on. One can almost label this a “collective post-traumatic stress reaction.” From my experience, as well as the content of so many letters to me, it is really a little-understood phenomenon among students of immigration and migration.

This is also one of the characteristics of Italian immigration. The passing on of the remembrances of their hometown life.   Even today, part of that legacy is in the clubs and fraternal organizations that celebrate those villages today, in the United States.  The “Y” factor still kicks in because the fraternal organizations definitely never catch up with the reality of modern Italian life. And this makes for some interesting personal experiences when the two worlds collide, in social mores and modern cultural and political life.

Interesting too, as with many immigrants from the era of the great migration, their identity was very much focused on their hometown (paese), their families, and (paisanos). For many immigrants of that time period. It was here in the USA that an Italian identity, contributing to what we now observe as an Italian American Heritage. And as nothing remains static today, the assimilation process continues into a more generic Italian American root with a very conscious decision regarding how one identifies (or not) with their assimilated multi-ethnic heritage or even Hollywood stereotypical “shortcuts”.

Conclusion

This paper has pretty much come full circle.(6) When I wrote Flavors from A Calabrese Kitchen in 1988, it represented several years of collecting and prepping.  Even though it was infused with semi-autobiographical reminiscences, what became a game-changer for me was being exposed to Felice Spingola’s  La Paura di Verbicaro.  I was very much raised in a Calabrese household, yet I never heard a word about a cholera epidemic, nor, for that matter, the Italo-Turkish war. The World War II internment issues my family had to deal with were also very vaguely touched upon until Lawrence Di Stasi’s seminal work La Storia Segretta.(7) 

Antidotes and stories about how hard life was in Verbicaro and the steerage journey to America were common, but pretty much that was the extent of the migration issue. I had little understanding of the depth of suffering many of these immigrants endured before the decision to immigrate was made. Doing research about this epoch and historical times just further increased my sense of awe and respect for what they achieved in their adoptive new land. Their personal odysseys, simply put, were heroic.

Likewise, the statistical analysis of those times really doesn’t prepare you to grasp the complexities of what you may find in your own family search. While numbers and demographics are important, so is the human element. Moving from a “stick figure” stereotypical analysis of millions of immigrants to a more personal example relevant to your family is a very grounding experience. For one thing, it makes it very difficult to buy into the bigotry and misinformation about immigrants in general, and not just the real lives of those humble paesani of yore.

For the record and in the interest of full disclosure, being born into a family of immigrants, the issues that immigrants faced were never far from my awareness. In a sense, then, it became a part of my own life experience and interest, including my Undergraduate thesis at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, entitled, United States Immigration Policy With Particular Reference to the Reactions of the San Francisco Italian American Community (housed in the archival collection of the college library).  Some of the original documents were donated to the San Francisco Main Library’s Italian American archives and collection.

Likewise, regarding my career as a social worker. It was a very easy leap; it connected me to direct work with refugees (from around the globe), immigrants, and families with immigration concerns. As a social worker, I also co-authored Federal Legislation on Unaccompanied Minors (Special Immigrant Juvenile Status). In support thereof, providing outreach services, university-level and non-profit trainings and coursework in Immigration and Child Welfare Services, and relevant publications. One of my early specialty caseloads was working with elderly Italians in Santa Clara County and Cuban Refugee Resettlement in Contra Costa County.   

My respect goes out to those in the helping professions who are trying to work in this challenging field today. In a sense, this paper is an attempt to put in focus bring a rational perspective and assessment to the situation based upon this very personal journey, from Flavors from a Calabrese Kitchen⁵ to La Paura di Verbicaro.  The bottom line is, I certainly hope for better times. In the meantime, to conclude this  paper, I have a couple of questions:

1) Are you aware of your immigrant heritage? (Do you consider this as part of your heritage?)

2) For those who can trace their roots to the “Great Migration of 1880-1924”(8), what relevance do you think it has in understanding today’s immigration issues?

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Footnotes

(1) Being associated with Italian American organizations for most of my life, one observation is, the broader the scope of the organization, the healthier and more sustainable the operation.  The range or focus of an  Italian American organization can be very specific, from a given town or region to an all-encompassing and welcoming foundation, which can include native born Italians, the mixed generations, and Italophiles, with some roots in the “boot”, by association, or even through travel,  cultural, and culinary appreciation.   

(2) This paper can not begin to tackle the subject of Italian immigration; however generally speaking before Italian unification, migration to the USA as well as to Argentina centered around the maritime areas of Italy including Genova (Liguria) and Sicily, and followed commerce related trade routes, with the Ligurian merchant ships trading along the Eastern US seaboard and the cotton plantations out of the port of New Orleans, which also attracted early Sicilian immigrants. Around the 1840’s and struggle for a unified Italy, Northern Italian revolutionaries fled Austrian, Papal State, and French persecution, and many of these immigrants found themselves as 49ers in the California Gold Country. In addition, from around 1857 to before World War II, another 3.5 million Italians immigrated to Argentina. By 1924, Italian immigration to the USA  was severely limited, so Argentina, and to a lesser extent Brazil, became a viable option, adding to an 8 to 9 million people exodus.

(3) While the Libyan war is not part of the scope of this report, it is important to acknowledge the historical nature of North Africa’s impact upon Southern Italy before the Turkish-Italian War of 1911. Current political correctness aside about the dynamics of colonialism, Southern Italy was for centuries under the yoke of Muslim invasion, colonialism, slave raids, and hostage taking from the Barbary Coast, of which Libya was definitely a part. Even the USA had a small role in this saga by sending a raiding party of Marines to attack Tripoli for pirating and looting its young nation’s merchant marine fleet. (“...to the shores of Tripoli,” as the Marine hymn includes in its lyrics).  Shades, too, of today’s Yemeni pirates of East Africa.  This is not new stuff, but has never ever been discussed in dealing with the colonial equation, especially by the aficionados of the politically biased historians Howard Zinn et. al.

(4) The memorial photo was shared with me by my friend Madeline Damiano, taken on a visit to Anzano di Puglia, while exploring her roots.  It is significant that although the cholera epidemics were in the 18th century, the memorial was erected in 2010, such was the sense of memory regarding the impact of the experience upon a community. Recently, too, a memorial was raised regarding the 1911 experience in Verbicaro.

(5) The exclusionary 1924 National Origins Quota System are one of those pieces of legislation that really are little studied in American History,(lucky it gets a sentence in a high school or college class) yet it had major significance in the social fabric of the times, as well as impact upon other countries, and the resurgence of isolationism in pre World War II  America as well as today.

(6) Cookbooks are relatively straightforward ventures. But sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally, they can provide some amazing historical insight, or even a wallop. Definitely Flavors from a Calabrese Kitchen was an unintentional journey that I readily undertook. But journeys continue. Just recently, at a book sale, I came across a cookbook that intrigued me,  Encarnacion’s Kitchen, translated and introduced by Dan Strehl, but originally published by Encarnacion Pineda in 1898 in Spanish, called El Cocinero Español. I thought it would be a nice insight into early California colonial cuisine. Also, she was related to the prominent SF Bay Area Berryessa clan of early California-Hispanic prominence.

However, as I read the English translation and Dan Strehl’s introduction,I was introduced to the world of Spanish California, and the brutality of some of the characters in the Bear Flag Revolt, including Kit Carson, John Fremont, and particularly the personal tragedies of the Berryessa Family.  Once again, I am a history buff, but like La Paura di Verbicaro, it really changed my perception and understanding of what really occurred.  Very little of this is accounted for in the general surveys of California history. Yes, I know much history is written by the victors, still if history is a true science and not myth-making, it’s critical to understand the complexities of a historical analysis. Perhaps it doesn’t always feel good, and perhaps these observations will never make it into a state educational curriculum, but the truth of these matters still finds a way to come out, even if it is just by reading a cookbook!

(7) Yours truly presenting at a forum in 1994 regarding La Storia Segreta, showing the fishing boat carved by my uncle Girolamo Cantatore, who, as an enemy alien, was under “house arrest” for a good part of the war years. Another part of the “Y” equation is that most Italians knew/know very little of the situation of their families in the USA  during the war years. Their traumas were more than enough!

(8) Post World War II migration and, for that matter, current immigration from Italy differ greatly from the historical characteristic of the Great Migration. While it is not part of the scope of this paper, it is yet one more component of the Y factor, noted in this analysis. •