The Emigrant Post-“Colonia” in Contemporary Immigrant Italy

Abstract

T he opening verses of the emigration song “Merica Merica” illustrate the condition of deprivation that Italian emigrants to Brazil found themselves in after a long voyage across the Atlantic. Composed in the nineteenth century in Venetan 3 dialect, this popular song depicts the struggles of northern peasants in an inhospitable country but in the end celebrates their eventual contribution to its growth. Similarly, the less well-known song “Ricordarsi dei nostri bisnonni” (1963) memorializes the achievements of the many Italian emigrants to Brazil who, by building “beautiful colonies,” have given their descendants the chance “to have everything.” The rags-to-riches trajectory of the two songs is interestingly framed within a “colonial” building enterprise that listeners are asked to interpret as a successful emigration project. In stark contrast to the images conveyed by these songs, today numerous Brazilians of Italian descent travel in the opposite direction of these colony builders, driven by economic and safety needs, as well as a spirit of adventure or the search for family roots. 4 In the process, they set on a sui generis postcolonial route. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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