The Migrantes exhibition attracted considerable interest in Bagnacavallo
Migrantes, the exhibition curated by Donatella Guerrini and Anna Maria Versari, closes tomorrow in the Mutual Aid Society room in via Mazzini in Bagnacavallo. A black and white story, wrote the curators, who presented the hopeful journeys of many people in the 1950s, in particular towards Argentina and Australia, with some references to current events.
The idea came from Mrs. Donatella Guerrini, a dentist from Alfonsine, with a hobby of photography, who found some negatives among the objects belonging to her deceased father: he had spent two years in Australia, and upon his return he showed some images, preserving jealously many other memories, which she now shares with those who look respectfully and attentively at the past of which he is a child, real and metaphorical.
The collaboration of Wilma Guerrini was fundamental and precious, as she coordinated the various steps that led to talking about the migration phenomenon this year. The municipality of Bagnacavallo suggests a direction every year and on this topic the material and immaterial sources are sought to be exhibited on the occasion of the feast of San Michele, tomorrow, 29 September.
Mrs. Donatella’s father spent two years in Australia, from 1952 to 1954, the period of Mrs. Anna Maria’s father was longer, 17 years in Argentina, truck driver, worker in a brickyard, for a certain time employed by an entrepreneur from Faenza, Lusa, who owned a brick factory in Chapadmalal. She was born there, near Mar del Plata, in 1961. She says of her father, Claro: “…the nostalgia he felt for those places, for his friends, for that solidarity he had experienced, I only understood in 2014 when I went to visit the places he described to me and I was able to meet the people who had known my father and mother and who kept fond memories of them.” Yes, because Argentina encouraged family reunions and paid for the travel of girls who went to marry emigrants. Anna Maria’s mother knew her future husband, they had also been engaged, but they hadn’t seen each other for five years. The marriage proposal came to her by letter and the ceremony took place by proxy on 22 December 1955. Only in June 1956 were the two spouses able to meet again, after a trip on Barco by the girl, who had the company of other peers who were also married by proxy, but with men they didn’t even know.
The vessel, which left Genoa and arrived in Buenos Aires, carried half goods and half passengers, divided into three levels. Claro had boarded the ship Auriga of the Grimaldi fleet and after many stops in various ports he had arrived in Buenos Aires after 40 days at sea.
He had had to pay for the trip, his uncle Nanì had lent him the money, full of fear that his nephew would choose the mines of Belgium: Argentina seemed to him to be a better destination. The trip had given rise to friendships which then strengthened, including that with Diego Tabanelli di Russi, Giacinto Guerra of Villa San Martino, Livio Conti di Fusignano and many others, some of whom he worked and shared feelings with. He said that the reactions to emigration were not univocal, in some people resignation prevailed, in others enthusiasm for the new phase of life.
Mrs. Donatella also recovered books, testimonies of a phenomenon that affected the years from the end of the 19th century to 1975, with a movement that involved approximately 25 -30 million people.
Part of the exhibition is dedicated to today’s migrants, with stories and articles that have laboriously come to life. It is not easy to talk about the difficulties in arriving in Europe, there is a sort of modesty for certain experiences which is what Donatella’s father felt when he hid the negatives in an envelope, which is the one of someone who has been in a concentration camp, which he was at war. Talking about yourself means having accepted a very harsh reality, an experience that you almost always just want to put aside, just forget.
But it is right to spread a difficult path, so that the methods capable of improving the human condition on a global level are activated. Here is the message of this exhibition, which has great depth beyond the testimony: it is significant to create a large container in which the struggles, hopes and disappointments of those forced to make radical and difficult choices find a place and inspire reflections. , such as leaving one’s homeland.
Claro Versari used to say about migrants: We need to welcome them, if they were happy at home, they wouldn’t come looking for anything. A summary that sums up his life, to which our respect and gratitude go
