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June 03, 2004
Luigi Barzini And the Golden Age of Immigration
I have just been reading
O America, When You and I Were Young, by Luigi
Barzini, (1908-84) the Italian
journalist and historian, about his experiences in
America before the Second World War.
His father,
Luigi Barzini the Elder, was a famous Italian
journalist who tried to establish an Italian-language
newspaper in New York City. It failed, partly because of
the Depression, partly because of the
1924 immigration act, which cut off the influx of
Italian readers, and partly because Italian immigrants
of that era were largely illiterate in Italian.
As a result of the
Depression, which made it hard to find work in
America, Barzini Sr. and Jr. did something that seems
almost incredible today: they went home.
Barzini Jr. moved back to Italy and
did his military service in the
Bersaglieri, but got out in time to not have to
fight in the war on the side of the Axis. (He was
slightly anti-Fascist. Mussolini kept him confined to a
small village, where he couldn't do much harm.)
He was able to greet the American
troops in English when they liberated Rome in 1945.
You can contrast this with today's
immigration, where almost nobody goes home—because,
whatever the economic downturn, the government will
always support you—where immigrant businessmen get
government grants and loans, and where the schools
are now attempting to make foreigners
literate in Spanish, so that they can read the
Spanish language press.
Some vignettes:
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The cook and maid that the
Barzinis brought from Italy deserted them within a few
weeks in America, the maid to marry a wealthy
Italian-American widower, the cook seduced by the much
better
wages offered by an American housewife. |
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At one point, Barzini Jr. found a
colony of
Irpinians living in shacks they'd constructed in a
garbage dump, furnishing their shacks with discarded
American furniture and raising vegetables in what
seemed to them to be incredibly rich soil. Their main
worry was this: where was the landlord? Were they
going to be evicted, or what? He explained to them
that they were technically illegal squatters, but that
this was the American way, since it was how American
had acquired Texas, Florida, et cetera. There are
Mexicans who think this way today. |
Barzini had saved the life of a
young Mafiosi named Mike. He used this debt to get an
interview with a Sicilian Mafioso living in
Brooklyn, claiming that he wanted to explain to the
American public about the culture of Sicily, and how it
had evolved into the Mafia. The Mafioso, Don Turi, spoke
to him:
"Mike
says you want to defend the Sicilians'
name from defamation, explain to the American public
what laws we obey, and how we help each other like
brothers in this strange, difficult, and hostile
country." [This was the explanation Barzini had
given; actually he was contemplating an exposé.]
"It is
a noble wish, we commend you. But I'm afraid the moment
is not opportune. We're at war. We Sicilians in American
must think of ourselves like the Jews in Egypt before
the Exodus. Everybody around us is our enemy and our
oppressor. We have to be very prudent."
After a few more words in which the
Don gently hinted that if Barzini were
contemplating an exposé, it would be bad for his general
health, Barzini left.
Not too long after he returned to
Italy. He was to spend much of his later career
crusading against the
Mafia in its native Italy, where it belongs.
Everyone knows that Italians and
Sicilians have
Americanized to an intense degree, in part exactly
because the 1920s cut-off strengthened the assimilative
process, and are extremely patriotic. But now, the
post-1965 immigration disaster has brought a huge number
of
different groups to America.
Which of them thinks that they're
"at war?"
Which of them thinks that all
Americans are their "enemy and [their]
oppressor?"
You tell me. And then ask yourself
if America needs more of that. |
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