Travels and Destinies: A Story of Emigration between Italy, Brazil, and Argentina

A story by Massimo Raciti

Sometimes it happens that, in real life, some stories are more cinematic than a movie.
One of these is that of Vincenzo and Luisa Argnani, two of my maternal great-great-grandparents, who left at the end of the 19th century to emigrate first to Brazil and then to Argentina, bringing with them three of their five children. The other two remained in Emilia-Romagna, and from them originates the lineage to which I belong.

This peculiarity makes my family's migration story somewhat different from that of many descendants of emigrants, who are often born abroad. I, on the other hand, was born and raised in Italy. Yet, ever since I was a child, I've always felt a powerful pull toward South America, like an atavistic impulse, difficult to explain rationally, which over time has also proven surprisingly fortunate.

When I started doing research to reconstruct the history of my great-grandparents and write Travels and Destinies, my first novel, I realized I wasn't just chasing a familiar tale, but a fragment of the collective history of millions of Italians. The more I delved into it, the more I was drawn into their adventure.

I studied the living conditions of late nineteenth-century emigrants, the endless journeys aboard enormous ocean liners bound for the unknown, the hopes and fears of those who set out with no certainty of return. It was a true leap into the past, rediscovering a history I felt was mine, but which until then I had only superficially known, a history that was hinted at every time I drove with my parents past the old, now abandoned house where Vincenzo and Luisa lived before emigrating.

The most intense emotion came when I found their names in the online archive of the São Paulo Museum of Immigration. Opening a PDF, the registration document from the port of Santos, Brazil, appeared on the screen. In that moment, I realized that, while an unknown bureaucrat was writing down those names, Vincenzo and Luisa were there, in the flesh: she with her youngest child in her arms, her husband and their other two children beside her, having just landed in a completely new world.

Today I'm still in touch with my distant Argentine cousins, who have become surprisingly close thanks to social media and the ability to travel with an ease unimaginable over a hundred years ago. A stark contrast to those slow, arduous, and definitive ocean crossings.

In Travels and Destinies I've told precisely this: the story of a part of my family. But it's also the story of many other families who, during the same historical period, emigrated to South America. Times change, places change, but the dynamics remain the same. Perhaps this is why, despite being a personal story, the book touches on universal themes and speaks to readers far apart in language and geography, yet surprisingly close in experience.

In the book, the story of Vincenzo and Luisa alternates with that of Sebastian, my narrative alter ego, who recounts another migration, this time in modern times. It's the true story of the period when I began traveling to South America in search of myself and a new career path. A more contemporary tale, profoundly reflective yet at times humorous, in which it's curious to observe how, over a century later, I too have found a new path there, thanks to those places my ancestors traveled so long ago.

Whether it's for necessity, work, tourism, or simply a temporary move, travel brings with it the inevitable encounter with something new. And every encounter, in one way or another, changes us.

Thanks to online sales and translations of the book into other languages, I've been struck by how this story is reaching readers around the world, perhaps descendants of emigrants like myself. Thinking that those routes opened more than a century ago can continue to exist, in other forms, gives a profound sense of continuity to the stories of those who have left.

Travels and Destinies It's not just the story of Vincenzo and Luisa. It's the story of an Italy made of departures at dawn with no return at dusk, of suitcases too heavy to shoulder but too light to contain an entire life, of farewells whispered so as not to make them unbearable. That Italy, too, is part of our cultural heritage, of the many mysterious connections that, over time, have helped shape our very lives.