Specials

The emigration is only in part explained by the famous pushing model created by the old historical analysis; in large part we have to explain it as an attraction exerted by an unknown destiny, which was in any case, better than the condition in which emigrants were living.

For these reasons, in the first gallery of exhibition you'll see on the coming left the internal structural causes of emigration and on the coming right the external cultural ones, explained through the ship companies' activities and emigration agent's propaganda.

In the second gallery there is not a particular interpretative line. We tried to describe what was happening from the moment the emigrant decided to leave until the moment he effectively left. So you can see the usurer's activities or the role of Italian American banks and labor bosses; you can see the ritual of leaving, the bags and bauli, the Sicilian horse cars, the trenino, the skares and concerns of the last formalities in Palermo and Messina ports,  until the ships were leaving.

In the third gallery we represented the impact emigrants had with America when they arrived to Ellis Island. The first life experience in the new country was in the Little Italies of American towns: New York, Chicago, Rochester and so on. Of course it was not possible to describe every place where Sicilians settled, but the ones we chose are, I think, the most representative. After that, it was important for us to make another choice in order to represent the life of Sicily's derived communities in United States. So we selected families scenes, works and jobs, marriages and other common events in every representation of Sicilian Americans.We believed that the best and most unusual way to represent these persons' life was through a collection of photos and documents (belonging to the network of Sicilian museums of Emigration) portraying the oldest Sicilian associations in the US, the so called Mutual Aid societies, or Benefit Mutual Aid societies.

This choice permits us an important historical consideration: not all Sicilian communities founded these solidarity associations. They were common in the communities of migrants coming from the costs of Sicily or  from the small islands surrounding the mainland, or especially from the eastern areas. While people coming from internal zones and large estate property zones didn't usually have them. The few we found are really an exception. Why this difference ? Which causes can explain this ? Maybe another element can help us in understanding this. If we look at the official statistics of emigration from Sicily, we come to realize that the emigration phenomenon started in the large estate zones, from where a mass of  people started leaving since the early '80s of XIX century.

This happened because in late XIX century the internal zones of large estate properties still had feudal costumes: the property was under control of a small number of persons (old Sicilian aristocracy) and mafia maintained a big power in defending the aristocracy privileges. In these zones the daily land workers were selected every morning, before sunup, on the church's square, by the Mafiosi rented aristocracy lands (today you, you and you will work,  the others at home).

In this society the workers did not have hope in the future and when the season of emigration started, they left soon. They brought with them the social culture of their poor zones: they did not have mutual aid societies in Sicily and they lacked in solidarity, so they did not create any of these associations in the NEW WORD. The culture of solidarity of Sicilian people coming from the eastern part of island, from islands and from all that zones where was prevalent the small property estate was absolutely different.  There the peasants, little owners, and daily land workers, still had some hope to enlarge their small properties or become owners. In these communities the mutual aid societies were founded since the early '60s of XIX century (Kingdom of Italy foundation) and when the emigration season begun people didn't leave soon. They started going away after the turn of century, following the American Dream. They brought with them their culture of solidarity on which they soon founded  the mutual aid societies.

I think that this relevant difference can contribute to explain why in many cases some Sicilians communities had better fortune in integrating their members in the New World societies, and others, instead, had many more difficulties.

* This text is the abstract of the paper presented by prof. Marcello Saija to the conference "Memories of the Future" (Palermo, 28-29 November 2008)