Sicilian Culture: The News: The Promised Land On Posters

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The Promised Land On Posters

They left behind their land of origin, their loved ones, and their traditions. According to some estimates, about 60 million Italians left the motherland, in various periods, and migrated to richer countries.
They went to unknown lands looking for a better life. Their baggage held photos, holy images, publications that reminded them of the places and people that they were leaving behind. During their long, tedious voyages, crammed in squalid boats, they dreamed of "America." They carried with them their dreams and "pieces" of Italy: poetry, songs, prayers, and theatrical plays that they reproduced everywhere they went, and not just for fellow nationals. Groups of actors and small theatrical companies proposed Italian theatre as if they were at home, looking for consolation in those memories.
They launched their initiatives with posters rigorously written in Italian. These posters were used for promoting initiatives, advisories, advertising. Some of them were veritable pictures that could be looked at, reflected upon, interpreted.
Many of the posters created in those years are systematically displayed within the framework of the most important photographic exhibitions about emigration. Through these posters the life and history of Italians abroad can be understood and imagined. From those photos one can capture the facial expressions, melancholy, and feelings. They could be called a "photo album" testifying a history long ignored by official books and only recently included in school curricula by some regional governments. One of the first regions to take steps for involving high schools is Molise, with an experimental initiative.
Meanwhile, one can appreciate and comment on the photos, each with its own story, protagonists, and untold tales. Transparent blue, a clear sea and the red dress of a "lady" wearing a small hat and waving a white handkerchief. She¹s greeting the arrival of a ship, loaded with successful people who left Italy some years earlier and is now returning for a visit to wives and relatives. That was the only alternative to a worker¹s meagre wages and to a farmer's increasingly scarce yield. More or less, this should be theimpression that those posters elicited from poor Italian workers and farmers with few possibilities at home. That huge, shiny steel ship, with its promise of comfort even for third-class passengers and its claim of "reaching New York in just 11 days" must have raised their hopes. An imposing and fast transatlantic ship, safe even in stormy seas, which allowed a glimpse of a more dignified life, far from misery, hunger, and illness, to anyone who could reach the Statue of Liberty.
That ship stood for well-being: 11 days, just 11 days and then life would change on the other side of the Atlantic. Surely, period propaganda hit the mark of tickling the dreams of poor Italians. Poster illustrators were masterfully drawing liners under vermilion skies at sunset, among foaming waves. The shipping lines shuttling back and forth between Italy and America had encouraging names: "La Veloce" ("The Fast") from Genoa ensured a "most speedy service with most elegant steamships," and also "electric lighting and top-class treatment for passengers."
There were also the "Famous Four Counts," four ships belonging to Lloyd Sabaudo, which were shown in posters as knights with pennants and shields while riding galloping horses that left fast trailing waves. There was "Augustus," a steamship displacing 30,000 tons, connecting Genoa to Brazil.
Its imposing hulk occupied almost the entire poster, as if the sea, for such a huge ship, were just a small detail. The fantasy from a poster artist was extremely capable of selling dreams. The Italians of the early 20th century, still prevailingly farmers and exhausted by frequent famine, needed to change their lives. Beyond the sea, a virgin country was awaiting discovery, giving more than the bare necessities. Between these two worlds there was a reassuring, robust, and unsinkable ship, sailing every other week. According to the destination, the trip took 11 or 18 days, and even nine immediately after the War. The fare varied according to class: for Brazil, with the Adria shipping company, the tickets in 1911 cost 770 Lira in first class, 570 in second, and 195 in third. But the treatment was to be excellent "for all passengers regardless of class, with fresh meat and freshly baked bread".
However, Italian emigrants almost invariably found these promises to be illusory. In a newspaper report written in the late 19th century by Cuore author Edmondo De Amicis, who had travelled to Uruguay and Argentina on board the "Galileo," revealed what really went on during transatlantic voyages, talking of the real conditions of third-class passengers. "Crammed among piles of cartons, baggage, and animals, in the company of thieves and people smelling from filth, there are sick women with malnourished children.
What about the friendly giant glorified by advertising, protecting the poor emigrants with its warm steel hull?"
Despite the much-advertised electric light, the luxurious accessories, and the fresh meat, the squalid reality was that often the third class had not even a bathroom for hundreds of passengers, who were forced to reach the second class to find one.
Of course, publications were not limited to advertising posters for shipping lines, but developed in new ways all around emigration: covers of records sold in America depicting the enchantment of the gulf of Naples; holy images invoking the protection of patron saints over those "who were leaving their motherland;" notices about the rules and regulations to be adhered to by emigrants who were going to Brazil; posters of famous Italian restaurants in San Francisco and posters advertising Italian movies; and postcards of all kinds: Christmas greetings from New York, birthday wishes, and greetings to a far-away family.

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