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THE
EMIGRANTS OF S.GREGORIO MATESE
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| Working
on Matese |
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| Emigrants |
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| Emigrants
waiting after getting off the ship |
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| Group
of emigrants. |
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San Gregorio Matese |
Just
like a lot of other small communes, San Gregorio Matese also
had a migratory exodus in the second half of the nineteenth
century. This depopulated
the lands of Southern Italy.
The emigration from San Gregorio however presents an aspect
that emphasized the distinct preference that its people had
for Argentina instead of the other destinations of those times.
The answer to this preference stay in another peculiarity represented
by the precocious time of departures that moved from the village,
and therefore from the deepest one rootage of the sangregorians
in that nation; so in the later years the migratory chains that
started were advantaged in the social and working insertion
in Argentina land. It not happens for the emigrants that started
later.
In the last thirty years of XIX Century the flow
of people who transferred from Italy to Argentina
reached its greatest amount. More than half (55.4%) came from
the North, mostly from Piedmonte, Lombardy and Veneto, while
35.2% came from the regions of Southern Italy, mainly from Calabria
and Campania.
This is only the relevant migratory data for the last thirty
years of the nineteenth century. In this period, 1056 people
were left in San Gregorio of which 678 were male and 378 were
female. 78.3% of the total emigrants went to Argentina and 19%
to the United States; only 2.4% to Brazil and 0.3% to other
nations.
A specific characteristic relevant to the women
comes from the observation that they always left in the second
round of emigration, following the husbands or fathers who already
had gone in advance. The first woman who left San Gregorio went
to Buenos Aires in 1872, later she went to the United States
and arrived there in 1884, twelve years after the first male
departure.
The comparison between this data and those of the total emigration
from the province of Caserta emphasizes a clean discordance
between the local flow of departures. San Gregorio always preferred
Argentina, whereas the province of Caserta preferred United
States first, then Brazil, and Argentina third, after an initial
direction towards extramericans nations. In the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, in the province of Caserta 95,000
inhabitants were left. Emigrating
altogether from San Gregorio was 0.9% of the entire migratory
movement of the province of Caserta. But the values changed
with the specific migration towards Argentina. In this case
the contribution of the people of the country is equal to the
7.1% of all provincial departures, and corresponds to the 0.9%
of the migration of all Campania towards Argentina.
Regarding the occupations of the emigrants from San Gregorio,
in the examined thirty years, 703 were manual day laborers and
265 farmers. It is the same category which change the ancient
name of bracciale in function of the new statistical regulations
of the Italian state. These represent 91.7% of all of the emigrants.
The remaining 8.3% of the trades were a spacious whole including
cooks, millers, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, masons and
construction workers. There were also not manuals occupations
as writer, lawyer, elementary teacher and herbalist. Then there
were not classifiable occupations like clergyman, landowner
and wanderer.
Not all of those who leave stop themselves in the reached goals.
Quantifying the data of the returnees to San Gregorio with respect
to the departures for each individual destination, from the
United States 42.2% of the emigrants returned, only 32% returned
of those who had left for Brazil. The returnees from Argentina
were 19.9%. The quantitative data of re-entrees was important
in order to estimate how many San Gregorio emigrants had put
down roots in the destination countries, without ever returning;
797 people (75.5%) had definitive left S. Gregorio.
Therefore in the last thirty years of the 1800's, the country
endured a true and just demographic
demographic landslide. Going from the 1358 inhabitants
of the 1871 census to 818 in the 1901 census, a reduction of
40% of the population, entirely due to the migratory exodus.
The responsible causes of the nineteenth century emigration
from Southern Italy are wide and worthy of specific mention.
The territorial economic conditions, the sale of the ecclesiastical
assets, the new political order, the aftermath of the brigandage,
were all factors that enter into play as the causes for the
departures. Also, at the return of the first commuters who exalted
the new living conditions of the destination country, the undecided
were enticed to emigrate themselves. Then there were the departures
of wives and children of the men who were irrevocably determined
not to return.
The habit for the necessity of territorial movement for working
requirements was widely diffused in the country. A large amount
of the population of San Gregorio Matese had lived in the eighteenth
century the periodic movement of the transumanza,the
exodus of the herds of sheep of the rich landowners of the country
towards the Sheep Custom House locations in Capitanata. This
habit of seasonal migration was deeply rooted in the culture
of the country. It revealed the fundamental prerequisite with
respect to the intercontinental migratory journeys that happened
further on in time.
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The Bojanos
