My ancestors' life

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My life's timeline

Italy, the place where my ancestors used to lived

I have chosen this video because it remembered to my family, because some of them had come from Italy a lot of years ago looking for a better place to live. They had came to Argentina with some people who had to migrate to this place as a consequence of the War. When I saw this video, i think in all their poor lives that they had left behind, how family members they had lost and how many time they had suffered thinking about that situation.I supposed that It was so sad left their country, their family, their culture and had to start from the beginning in a different and strange place full of new religions and cultures that they had to integrate in order to survive and subsist.

Letter from my grandfather to his mother

                  October, 20th 1925 Buenos Aires, Argentina

Dear mother,

I hope you and my brothers were well. It is going to be a year since I left, and I have missed you a lot, specially your food! Anyway Argentinian’s food is not too different from ours, I like it.

When I arrived here uncle Carlos was waiting with a coat in his hands for me, because when I left home the weather was hot and here they were in winter and was freezing, he always was a very kind person…

My work is ok, my boss is satisfied with me, at least that is what he told to Uncle Carlos. My time table is from 7 to 7 so when I finished I’m exhausted. Sunday is my free day, but I have not had one since September because there is a lot of work.

In my free days I’m with a friend I met in the ship. His name is Tobias; he is 15 and is Italian too. We play football or we go for a riding in our bikes .He came with his father and they are leaving in a house of relative of them. I don’t know exactly what happened that they had to leave Italy, some kind of problem with the army but they are so polite and friendly….

On Sundays Tibia’s father makes a delicious barbecue, and they invite me to have lunch with them.

They work in a shoemaking, because that’s was their job in Italy, and mom, if you see the nice shoes they do you would love them so when you come I’ll  buy to you the ones you choose .They had gave me one pair as a birthday present too.

 I thank god for their company, if it wasn’t for it I would be alone and sad missing all of you.

Tobias’s father told me to leave that tenement but I don’t want to leave Uncle Carlos alone. Later when you we will go to a nice house I promise.

hope to hear from you soon .

Roberto.

Narrative

This narration is about the first person of my family who in 1924 came to Argentina looking for a better future for him and for his mother and brothers.

My grandfather was born in Italy in 1911. He lived with their parents and his brothers in a little village called Turin.

There, his father had a carpentry where he built furniture to sell it in the city. He didn’t earn too much money, because the wood was so expensive that the profit he got was just enough for the every day’s food for his children and wife   as he couldn’t put higher prices to his products because in those years the economic situation wasn’t the best.

When he was about forty he started with serious health problems as a result of interminable hours of hard work .He felt terrible pain in his joints but he continued working, until one day he could not walk anymore and he was confined to bed.

He fell in such a deep depression because of his condition that some weeks later he died.

His mother couldn’t find a job, because women weren’t accepted, but sometimes she washed others people clothes for some little money that wasn’t almost anything  for feeding four children.

In those times my grandfather was 13, and he had to left school to help his mother. Fortunately his father had taught him his office, so he started to do some furniture to sell it and get money for his house, but the wood price increased abruptly so people couldn’t afford furniture despite it weren’t expensive. Everything was worst and worst, he and his brothers were almost ill because sometimes they didn’t eat for days, until one day he received a letter from his beloved uncle, in which he told my grandfather about how well was going everything in Argentina, that he had found job in a big carpentry where ships were built and there were needed more employees. He offered, too, a place to live and with the letter he sent him the the money to buy the ticket to go with him. My grandmother wasn’t sure about whether let   her son left to an unknown place with only 14 years old and maybe didn’t see him anymore or give him the opportunity of a better future which later would permit him to help his brothers. But he was so anxious and besides he wouldn’t be alone, so she gave him permission to leave.

They agreed on that when he had saved money he would send

it to her so she and his brothers could travel to Argentina too and live all together again.

He left Italy in 1924 .When he arrived to our country he met his uncle and next day he was working in this big carpentry in Buenos Aires .At the beginning he felt so strange but when he realized that most of the employees  were immigrants he was  more comfortable.

The first months he lived where his uncle was living, a tenement, (tenements   were big houses divided into lots of bedrooms that were owned by rich families which had abandoned them because of the yellow fever plague, and then with the arrival of the immigrants they saw an excellent opportunity to make money by renting them). The place was dirty and was no water to have a bath, but was the only place he could afford.

Later he rented a house outside the city and he sent money to his family as soon as he could, so each brother was coming one by one, but when it was his mother’s turn it was too late because she had died.

In 1931 he met my grandmother in his boss’s birthday party and they married in 1932.

Thy formed a warm family in a very nice house in Lanus and they had two daughters Elva and Zulma (my mother).

My grandfather died in 1970 of a sickness and my grandmother dedicated to look after her grandchildren until her death, in 1980.