Universities from Italy and Argentina work together to make an audiovisual file by compiling stories of people who arrived to the country coming from Europe. By interviews, the researchers rescue italian traditions that survive in Argentina but that in Italy no longer exist.
Italy is a country of emmigrants. Through centuries they spread all around the world. However only in Italy and Argentina they are the most of the population.
From 1870 to 1960 more than 2 million italian citizens settled in Argentina, and in a time they were a half of the population. Nowadays a 90% of argentinian inhabitants are linked with some inhabitant of Italy.
In this context and having just few records, a group of universities from both countries are running a project to make an audiovisual file with storytelling of italian immigrants in Argentina.
Argentina, through the years, acquaried a strong assimilation of italian culture and some of their characteristics were passed from generation to generation to argentinian sons and grandsons.
At the end of the XIX century Argentina was a new nation without a defined identity, and the massiveness of that european immigration influenced the construction of our national being.
At the eyes of Italy all those sons of italians, biologicals or adopted are italian citizens. It means, to the italian law, an argentinian son, wo is born in Italy is not an italian citizen, but a son of an italian who is born in Argentina do is an italian citizen.
The countries from the old continent have huge problems to construct a collective identity to shape a nation because of the arising of regionalisms.
An anthropologist of the University of Rome said: In Argentina, Salta y Buenos Aires are separated by more than 1800 kilometres, however their inhabitants fell to be argentinians; we are very much closer, but from Milan to the south cultures completely different coexist; in fact, we still have a party with many votes, that fights for the northern independency and does not recognize to the people from the south as italians.
In the interview, before to start the questionnaire, we ask them if they prefer to speak italian or spanish, and the most of them choose for the spanish language, because they speak only some dialects like calabrese, romagnolo, ecc.
To research about this issues and make a file to be used for future investigations is the main goal of this project. The idea is that this file to be available not only for academic use, but also for all of them who want to know about their roots, a secondary goal is making a documentary movie about the italian immigration in Argentina.