A country drained of men and women, as if in a slow escape. In an old photo from the 1950s, the photo of a Racalmutese family, with seven children, who landed in the United States. What has changed?
When the Tirone family portrayed in this photo left in search of fortune – the “luck” for example of being able to feed one’s children under one roof -, Racalmuto was a town (of a region, of a nation) that was unable to guarantee to everyone that human space of decorum and dignity called work. Even today, unfortunately, music hasn’t changed much and often has the same refrain of suffering. At that time, a few years after the war, need was still knocking at the door with an additional touch of cruelty; he grabbed by the throat, like an assassin. And from the Matrix to the Carmel floor, from the Fountain to Saint Nicholas it was all a sad catalog of hopeless families. Often, escaping from poverty was and is not an easy option either. Because even fugitives need money. Indeed, especially them.
Ours is a “Republic founded on work”. But we are still waiting, especially in these latitudes, for Article 1 of the Constitution to be fully implemented. And in the meantime? Escape, when you can. And without even making the news. Now, as then, poverty denies dreams, material needs, the demands of progress and that right to happiness that the American Declaration of Independence recognizes in every individual.
With certainty “the pursuit of happiness” pushed the Tirone family (mother, father and seven children) to embark on the America on one of those transatlantic liners with aristocratic names and plebeian comforts. At the end of the long, torturously rolling journey, they were thrown, along with hundreds of others emigrated, probably on a dock at Ellis Island, New York City, on a cold morning, so it seems from the clothes they are wrapped in. And then, after having completed the formalities of recognition, they move to Buffalo, in the state of New York, even if the newspaper attributes the city to the geography of New Jersey. The small and frightened patrol of Racalmutes was intercepted by a smart photographer from some American news agency looking for curious and picturesque news, suitable for the magazine public.
And here it is, the shot. In Racalmuto many people talked about this photograph, much talked about and rarely seen. We captured it from a newspaper clipping that came up during the periodic dredging of “Racalmute things” on search engines specialized in magazines, books, photographs, postcards. Looking at the beaten and tired faces, from which a reporter will have extorted a pose and the hint of a smile, causes a sinking feeling in the heart and an instinctive sympathy towards them. From what we managed to gather, the photo was probably published in an issue of Italian Illustrationa very widespread magazine throughout the mid-twentieth century, dated between 1948 and 1952. But perhaps it can also be Courier Sunday.
Look at them, they are lined up from left to right from the youngest to the head of the family, Giuseppe Tirone, who seems serene, almost bold and confident. His wife, Giuseppina, appears lost and apprehensive. She is scared like her, her gaze haunted, lost but attentive; she holds back her dismay, keeps her guard up, is suspicious. Her features drawn on her round and white face, her thoughts turned to the many unknowns of the future. Poor woman. A difficult task awaited her in a foreign land. It fell to her to raise that platoon of seven children: the youngest, 2 years old, Salvatore, Agnese, 6, Caterina, 4, Mario, 11, Rosa, 13 – already a young lady – and Stefano, the eldest, tall, handsome, strong, the hope of that small clan that from Racalmuto faced the unknown in search of happiness. They, like many others whose stories and events are now unknown, dead, buried. And maybe instead they deserved to be passed down, they were “narratable”, perhaps as compelling as a novel. And, who knows, maybe one day they will emerge from the furthest oblivion. The country – ours, but like all the others – was deprived of its youngest and strongest forces, emptied of a future. But if before emigration had something epic about it, a tragic stature one might say, today it has become an invisible process and no less painful than the one which has sucked the blood of half of Italy since the beginning of the twentieth century. What still forces women and men to say goodbye to all this – to everything that is wrong, to everything that never goes as it should – and to rely on the winds of destiny, which are not always magnanimous. Without even meeting a photographer who tells you paisa, keep smiling. You smile.
From “Despite everything” (special edition) – July 2020
