In Reviewing A Legacy - Part I

I grew up in St. Louis and from its beginning the city has been known as a cultural hub. It was once one of the greatest interior ports on the Mississippi River. Long before it became politically correct, this city was saturated with cultural diversity. Then between 1870 and 1913 occurred the biggest influx of immigrants to the United States. Czechs, Polish, Italians, Sicilians, Greeks and Irish were the bulk of people immigrating. Records show that forty million Europeans emigrated overseas during that period with nearly two-thirds of that number coming to the United States. Most of them were seeking a mythical fortune to be found in America. Many of these hopeful immigrants made their way to St. Louis known for its wealth as an large trade center and opportunities for enterprise. Each of these ethnic groups brought with them the essence of their homelands and settled in little neighborhoods developing ethnic communities within this great city and when growing up these area neighborhoods were still known for their ethnic influences.

The Boring but Necessary Exposition

But lets talk heritage. My Sicilian heritage… Through out much of its history, Sicily has been considered a ripe location mostly because of its Mediterranean trade routes. It was throughout history a cultural crossroads. Sicily’s culture was influenced by many different cultures - Iberia, Tunisia, Northern Africa, Italy, and of course Greece. Although Sicily is a region of Italy today, until the Italian Unification after World War I, it was its own country known as the Kingdom of Sicily with the capital being in Palermo. The kingdom originally ruled over the island itself, some of southern Italy, and also Malta. To this day Sicilian people tend to most closely associate themselves not with the Italian but with the other cultures with which they share the most common history especially Greece since the centuries of Greek influence during the Greek colonization.

By the 1850’s Sicily had fallen to complete disorder and by the time of the Italian Unification, Sicily suffered one revolt after another causing the collapse of its economy that was followed by an unprecedented wave of emigration. There are many reasons why people decide to leave their homelands. Historically these reasons have been political, persecution, overcrowding, and/or poverty. In my estimation, the last reason, the collapse of the economy and subsequent widespread poverty, are no doubt the main reasons for the great "Italian diaspora”.

Needless to say, Sicily must have been a harsh place to live in the late 1800s and early 1900's. As with many hardships and prevalence of poverty, it seems there always comes alternative solutions for survival. And so, the Sicilian Mafia "Mafioso" evolved and served as a power structure made up of familial groups active not only in several illegal fields, but also tending to exercise sovereignty functions over specific jurisdictions that normally belonged to public authorities. The Mafioso became very much a part of Sicily’s economy and way of life.

Sicily was strongly Catholic, but in a strongly tribal sense rather than in an intellectual or theological sense, and many viewed the new Italian government, the Pope and papacy with suspicion. The friction between the Sicilian Catholics and the new Italian State of Unification gave peasants and townspeople reason to believe that cooperating with this new way was an anti-Catholic activity. Largely, Sicilians did not regard the Mafioso families as criminals but as role models and protectors, given that the government was suspect, the Pope issued mandates that were not traditional with their sense of Catholicism and neither the Pope or the new state of government appeared to offer grace or protection for the poor and weak. And like it or not, this attitude and value system came along with the Sicilians as they came to America.

Whether it was or is a prejudice or whether it was a barrier caused by language, even as late as the 1960's when I grew up in St. Louis, the northern Italians did not commingle with the Sicilians. The Sicilians, proud of their heritage, preferred to be referred to as Sicilianos and settled in the north part of St. Louis.

Although most Sicilians in Sicily now speak Italian as well as Sicilian, at the time of the great emigration to America most Sicilians spoke only Sicilian which is and still is an entirely separate language. While Sicilian is considered a romance language, contrary to what one might think it is not derived from Italian but rather a language developed by way of the many cultural influences Sicily experienced. It is comprised of Greek, Latin, Catalan, Spanish and Arabic. The Greek language influence remains strongly visible while the others less noticible. Please note the distinct differences in the language:

English – My heart is the victim, my breast is the altar
Italian – Il mio cuore è la vittima, il mio seno è l’altara
French - Mon coeur est la victime mon sein est l'autel
Sicilian - sacrifiziu lu cori, ara stu pettu.

(sourced directly from Arba Sicula Volume II, 1980)

Next will be The Gucciones come to America