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GIOVANNA AND GIUSEPPE FACCHINETTI

Joanna: I was born on December 20, 1924, but my mother registered me in January. Joseph: Just so as not to be a year older, she registered on January 3, 1925. Joanna: Vallo della Lucania was not a very big city, but it was busy, it had plenty of places to work in agriculture. My father had a crop extension and sold it too. Joseph: It was a farm, it grew everything. Sold in the city. The city was in the middle and around it there are six small villages. The Sunday market and fair took place in Vallo. Joanna: The farm, the vineyard, as we called it, was almost adjacent to a cemetery in Vallo della Lucania. He had another property, with olive plants. I was going to harvest olives on the property. We had to harvest it to take it to the machinery that makes oil. Joseph: My father was Milanese. He was a cable car technician, like the ones in Campos do Jordão. Car mechanics too. Like the Rio de Janeiro tram, it had several options for lowering logs, coal, firewood, because at that time there was no gas. Joanna: Terrible, the war... I was 9 years old and it was in a field near my house, there were trees... They were bombing under the city, up to where I was, at the top, and I stayed in the ditch for a day, and the projectiles passed above me, he was still a child... Joseph: On the high seas, the navy was shooting towards land, so it was three or four days of suffering, hunger, blood... It was three or four terrible days. A train loaded with war ammunition was coming and the Germans blew it up. The luck is that where the train was stopped was a place where there were no houses. Joanna: Ah, the English... I was on the road [street] to go buy bread at the store, and then with a car they ran after me, and I was so scared I climbed on top of a wall and jumped to the other side, afraid that they would come and get me, because they did otherworldly things. And I, thank God, threw myself over the wall into a garden on the other side and saved myself from those too. Joseph: They committed atrocities. Joanna: Oh, the food was the worst, my lady. Joseph: Eighty grams of bread for each family. Joanna: I was queuing up to get some flour. And then, to try to eat more, whoever had the layette, sheets, household things, we exchanged with whoever had the wheat... Oh, how many things we went through, ma'am. Joseph: But, you know what? We were always happy, despite everything we suffered. Because there comes a time, in the early days, if you feel that fear, then you get used to it and the dead start falling next to you, you no longer care, you are out of control. Joanna: I get used to nothing. Joseph: I came to Brazil because there was a disease in the grape plantation that destroyed everything. Joanna: They all dried up. So he lost his patience. Joseph: I didn't even make wine for myself. With that wine, I bought food and paid taxes, year after year. The grape plants were drying. Joanna: Yes, everything was lost. Joseph: When we got married, what was it like? Joanna: It was very beautiful. Ah!, there was so much wine, relatives, acquaintances. He had made white wine, well done. He did it himself. He made those jugs of wine on purpose. Oh, it was a great party! Joseph: There was that white wine, like sparkling wine, almost like champagne. Joanna: It was delicious! Joseph: I had canvas bags, there were five of them. He put the grape in, stepped on it and the wine came out. I did fair for the wedding. All of them with a glass in their hand to drink that wine. And everyone took that wine home. Joanna: [Already about life remade in São Paulo] We went to my house, there was a big garage and we started making pasta, because in Tucuruvi it ​​wasn't possible to wash clothes for other people. We made gnhocce, tagliarini, ravioli, capeletti, me and my sister who died. Even now people are asking if we don't do it anymore. No, I don't even do it for myself anymore, that's enough! Joseph: When you make pasta, you don't have Saturday, Sunday, or holidays, because it's just at that time when it's sold. Joanna: The sauce? Ah, the sauce, how do I make it... They even asked me at the fair. I buy the ripest tomatoes. Then I cut them and cook them in a large pan, well cooked. I put it in a blender and then pass it through a sieve. And then I make a meat porpeta (...) or a brachola. Never made brachola?

EDOARDO COHEN
(from Rome)

Yes, I would like to [return to Italy], but that was it. My life is here, I am a citizen of a country that no longer exists, we immigrants are citizens of a country that no longer exists.

Many people didn't understand this, especially the Italian government didn't understand me. I wrote many times. Let's say: I'm in Italy... life is messy, day after day of the end of existence and I emigrate, what do I do, I open the drawer and put it... And I start rolling the tape from Brazil, from the country where I am living. (...) because Italy stayed when I left... When I go to Italy, I often go to Italy, which I speak, in the same language, in the idiomatic way, are things that are not used more. There are people who look at me and say: 'but where does that come from?, it came from some tomb, that was said 50 years ago'.
That's why we are citizens of a country that no longer exists and the government doesn't understand that. The Italians, the government, the consulate, the embassy think that the Italians who are here are the same as those in Italy. No, they are no longer, they are different, they are citizens of a country that no longer exists, because my Italy no longer exists.
Of course, if I go to Italy, I'll adapt again in a year. Now, here, I still think about Italy in 1946, 47, it's fossilized, it's crystallized, there's no point, I'm abandoning everything, nobody understands that.
Of course [I like Brazil], my life is here. I can see dirt, filth, these governments are stupid, but it's my land, there's no point, it's my land, sorry to say, it's my land, this is where I live, this is where I have my children, this is where I buried them my dead, here I will be buried, is my land.


ANTONIO MIDEA
(from Macchiagodena)

When I arrived here I started working on several things. I helped my father as a bricklayer, I didn't really like it. Then I entered a factory, a metallurgical factory, then I entered another factory, another factory, more factory.

But I was an enemy of the factory, the factory wasn't for me, I felt trapped. Then I came and went, always to earn more, never to earn less, always boss, foreman, it seems like there was a spirit that accompanied me that wanted to win in life.
Then, in 54, was the last factory. I left and started selling on the street, selling insecticides, selling sales, then I started selling dairy products, salami, ham, mortadella, cheese, etc., etc., and that's how I started my life, I started with the bag, I started with the bicycle , I started with taxis, bought a car, got my license in 56, bought my first Fiat, and that was how my life went until 60 and got married.
(...) I went back to Italy many times and each time I went back there I brought more news here to Brazil. I got into the concrete business, building houses too. Pipes, concrete, a lot of precast things. I brought a machine from there, yes, our facilities are all Italian. I manufacture concrete and we make pipes for Sabesp, today the pipes are ours, it is the second largest factory in Brazil, we supply the whole of Brazil, everything for Sabesp, sewage pipes, which is the Midea brand, my last name.


FRANCO LUPERI
(from Livorno)

During the war, my wife made her first communion with the Brazilians. They were the ones who threw the party, there were even Aymoré cookies. She met many of them there in Italy, during World War II. They were always very well received and accepted by families and everyone in general. I can say that they are brotherly peoples. Very different from other allies such as the English and Americans, who left absolutely no good impression or pleasant memories. Mainly the Americans, who went so far as to throw large pans of food down the sewer, in front of hungry children, and looking closely at them, who lived in types of tendopolis [slums], poor, malnourished and barefoot.
(...) At Embraer we helped build the Xavante, the MAC 308, and developed the part that refers to the optical measurement of the assembly of the first Bandeirante. The means of building the first airplane were rudimentary methods. I don't know, to this day, how he managed to fly. The knowledge was valid, the enthusiasm was contagious, but the resources available were quite scarce and primitive, as in Brazil there was no essential equipment for putting the plane's components into operation; were imported from Italy.
I translated the entire procedure from Italian to Portuguese. And on occasion, I had to do a whole study assembly of the first part of the Girl Scout. The industrial part of the plane is mine, not the project. How it should be done, the means of using the machines, the tools and the step-by-step description of assembly. So much so that, on the Bandeirante, the part of my responsibility, from the front to the cockpit, was the only one mounted standing up. It was a beautiful development that I am proud of. I enjoyed doing that.

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