The Hills That Remained

In the soft hills of Piacenza, the village of San Bartolomeo spread like an uneven mosaic of cultivated fields, gray stone houses, and short vineyards that clung to the slopes like stubborn roots. Time seemed to hang suspended there, guarded by a silence broken only by the church bells and the distant lowing of cattle.

The seasons were not marks on a calendar. They were the rhythm that ruled every life. Spring brought more than flowers; it brought the hope that the land would answer human labor. Orchards whitened with blossom, the vines stirred, and women hung laundry in their yards that drifted like flags of peace.

Summer came heavy. Under a relentless sun, men and women bent over the vines, picking grapes that would be crushed in rough presses. Hands stained purple. The air filled with sweet, dense smells that promised new wine. Every drop was sweat and patience. Every jar stored away was a promise of survival through the cold months.

Autumn was the season of gathering. Fields turned gold. Wheat became sheaves stacked at the edges of the land. Nights cooled. The scent of roasted chestnuts drifted through the streets and announced winter’s approach. Autumn also carried a quiet reminder that everything ends—harvests, seasons, youth itself.

Then winter arrived and tested everyone. The hills, once green and fertile, turned gray and still. Wind swept the narrow streets. Snow covered the roofs. Food was carefully measured. Families gathered around the fire, telling old stories, sharing hard bread and strong wine. It was a season of waiting and endurance, when faith and memory mattered as much as food.

San Bartolomeo was more than a place. It was a cycle. Year after year the village moved to the same measured beat, like an old clock keeping time with the hills. For those born there, the world felt safe, predictable, almost eternal. Yet every winter the same quiet talk returned: the land no longer gave as much as it once had. There were more mouths than harvests. Somewhere beyond the mountains, people said, the horizons were wider and more promising.

Domenico Bellaroto grew up inside that austere landscape, in a modest house of whitewashed walls and low ceilings. The smell of fresh bread and the thick smoke of the hearth mixed with the sharp mountain air that descended at dusk. The house was humble, yet it held warmth. The crackle of the fire seemed to mark the slow, difficult days.

Life was work and repetition: plowing with calloused hands, pruning the vines so they would still bear fruit, cutting golden wheat under the summer sun, tending a small flock that stood between the family and hunger. Every task was a daily contest with the land and with scarcity.

In recent years the harvests had grown thinner, as if the earth itself had grown tired. Grain prices fell. Taxes rose without mercy. The plot the Bellaroto family had worked for generations was no longer enough to feed the children who kept arriving. Each new life, with its hopeful eyes, tipped the fragile balance a little further. From boyhood Domenico had learned to meet this reality with a mixture of resignation and stubborn resolve. He understood that the future would depend on how hard they held on, even when strength itself seemed spent.

In the hard winter of 1888, letters began to arrive in the village. They came from America, written by former neighbors who had left years earlier. The handwriting was hurried, sometimes blurred. The letters spoke of wages paid in dollars, of crowded streets that never slept, of factories that ran day and night, of chances that felt almost unimaginable in quiet San Bartolomeo.

Those words crossed the Atlantic and entered the cold houses of the village. On long nights families gathered around worn tables and read them aloud, eyes bright, hearts restless. Each sentence lit a small, private fire. A quiet revolution began inside people who had never expected one.

Domenico felt that fire grow in him. When winter finally loosened its grip and the fields turned green again, he made his decision. It was not easy. There were long looks, tight embraces, promises spoken in low voices. The following spring he left, carrying with him the smell of baked bread, the smoke of the hearth, and the memory of a village that still held both hope and resignation.

The port of Genoa seethed on the day of departure. Voices, hurried footsteps, battered suitcases, anxious faces filled the docks. Hundreds of men, women, and children pressed together, each carrying not only belongings but dreams, fears, and final goodbyes. The air smelled of salt, coal smoke, and uncertainty.

Below deck the ship was packed. Space was scarce. The air was thick with seawater, coal, sweat, and the thin, tasteless food they shared. Time moved strangely there—sometimes crawling, sometimes racing—inside a closed world of wood and steel.

Days passed. The ocean took more than the ship; it took strength from some, hope from others. Fever moved through the weaker bodies. In the dark, people cried from homesickness and fear. There were silences that only deep despair can create. Yet others found an unexpected courage in the endless water, holding to the belief that something better waited beyond the horizon.

After weeks of storm and waiting, the unmistakable outline of New York finally rose against the sky—a hard, glittering promise.

Ellis Island offered no welcome. It was a narrow passage between hope and rejection. Doctors examined eyes, lungs, posture. Domenico passed through carrying a paper with a destination and a number, and the full weight of not knowing what came next.

Little Italy in Manhattan became his new village. The streets were narrow and loud with familiar sounds: fruit vendors calling out, Italian spoken in doorways, the smell of tomato sauce rising from cramped kitchens. On Sundays the community filled the churches. Religious festivals tried to recreate the Italy left behind. During the Feast of San Gennaro the streets exploded with color, music, and the aromas of home, and for one day the noise of the factories and the damp cold of the tenements could be forgotten.

Domenico worked in a foundry. The clang of hammers and the smell of hot iron filled the heavy air. The heat of the furnaces was so fierce it seemed to steal the breath. Fatigue settled on the shoulders like another layer of clothing. Each shift was a contest with exhaustion, thirst, and the simple weight of hard labor. It was also a quiet declaration that he would not break.

On warm summer nights Little Italy changed. Voices and laughter spilled into the streets and courtyards. Cheap wine passed from hand to hand. Fresh bread still released steam when broken. People shared food made with the same care they had once used at home, and memories rose easily in the talk. In quieter gatherings they spoke of politics, of changes blowing through both Italy and America. They helped the newly arrived find work, explained the new language and customs, and passed around letters from Piacenza that carried both longing and the fragile hope of reunion. In those moments Domenico felt a thin thread still connecting the stifling foundry to the hills he had left behind.

Time moved on, silent and without permission, like the tide. Decades later Domenico no longer possessed the strength of his early years. His body had bent under a lifetime of work. Every scar, every hardened callus, every lingering ache was a record of the foundry furnaces and the long winters of homesickness. His skin mapped the years. The light in his eyes had grown quieter, made of memory and acceptance.

Little Italy had changed too. The old dialect mixed now with English spoken easily by the younger generations. Some buildings had been modernized; others replaced by taller ones. Many of the neighbors who had once shared bread and stories had moved to better neighborhoods, taking pieces of the old collective memory with them.

Domenico stayed. He remained faithful to the streets he knew by heart, to the walls that still held laughter and farewells, to the sidewalk that had once watched a young man arrive full of hope. Sometimes he sat on his doorstep and watched people pass, recognizing fewer faces with each season, yet still feeling he belonged. Among the aging walls and the stories written into the place, he remained a living part of Little Italy—a quiet link between what had been and a present that drifted farther from its roots. While the world around him changed, Domenico himself became a living memory, a silent keeper of a time that would not return.

He knew America had given him what Italy could not: survival. Work. Bread. A roof that had sheltered him through the decades. It had also given him the weight of weariness, permanent absences, and a longing that settled in as a constant companion. Italy remained intact only in memory—the green hills turning gold in summer, the vineyards resting under winter frost, the church bell marking the slow hours, the smell of wet earth after rain.

He understood he would never again walk the narrow lanes of San Bartolomeo or feel the cold evening wind coming down from the mountains. Yet he carried every detail with him, the way a person carries a private relic. His roots, invisible but firm, stayed fixed in that distant soil, fed by memory, unbroken by time or ocean.

In the quiet of Little Italy nights, Domenico understood the truth simply: life had taken him far, but his heart had never truly left the hills where everything began.

Author’s Note

This story is a quiet tribute to all those who, like Domenico, left behind not only a country but a part of themselves. It draws from the anonymous paths of thousands of Italians who crossed the ocean at the end of the nineteenth century carrying little more than hope and courage.

Domenico is fictional, yet his life reflects the lives of many who worked in foundries, factories, farms, and small shops, building something new while keeping alive, inside themselves, the village they would never see again. His story is pieced together from letters, family memories, newspaper fragments, and the recollections still held in communities that continue to carry the accent of their grandparents.

I dedicate these pages to the descendants of those immigrants. May each one serve as both story and mirror—so they might recognize the courage, the losses, and the inheritance that shaped their families. May Domenico’s simple, enduring life remind us that roots, even at a great distance, continue to feed who we are.

Dr. Luiz Carlos B. Piazzetta

The Forgotten Venetian Colonies of Brazil - The Italian Immigrants Who Built a New Homeland

The Forgotten Venetian Colonies of Brazil: Where the Soul of Veneto Found a New Home

They left Veneto with empty hands, but they carried a culture that would survive across oceans and generations.

There are stories of immigration that are remembered by monuments, museums, and famous places. There are stories that live in history books and attract millions of visitors every year. The Italian immigration to the United States, with its images of Ellis Island, New York neighborhoods, and crowded ships arriving with hopeful families, became one of the most recognized chapters of the great European migration of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But far away from the streets of New York, another Italian journey was taking place, a journey less known to the English-speaking world, yet equally powerful and deeply moving: the journey of the Venetian immigrants who crossed the Atlantic and created new communities in southern Brazil.

Between the 1870s and the beginning of the twentieth century, thousands of families from the Veneto region of northern Italy left their ancestral villages and embarked on a voyage toward a distant land they barely knew. They came from provinces such as Vicenza, Treviso, Verona, Belluno, Padua, and Venice, carrying with them little more than a few belongings, religious faith, family memories, and the hope of owning a small piece of land.

Their departure was not an easy decision. For centuries, their families had lived among the hills, vineyards, and small villages of Veneto. They knew every path, every church bell, every season of the land they cultivated. But the reality of nineteenth-century rural Italy became increasingly difficult. Many farmers owned no land of their own. Others worked as sharecroppers, giving a large part of their harvest to landowners while struggling to feed their families. Poverty, taxes, economic difficulties, and limited opportunities forced many to look beyond the familiar landscapes of their homeland.

The ocean became the road toward a new beginning.

Unlike immigrants who arrived in American cities searching for factory jobs, many Venetian immigrants who went to Brazil were promised something different: land. The Brazilian government encouraged European immigration to populate and develop the southern regions of the country. For many poor farmers from Veneto, the possibility of becoming landowners represented a dream that seemed impossible in Italy.

But the dream came with a price.

When the first Venetian families arrived in southern Brazil, they did not find villages waiting for them. They found immense forests, mountains covered with vegetation, unfamiliar animals, difficult weather conditions, and a territory that demanded courage before offering any reward. The land that would become their home had to be conquered with their own hands.

The first houses were simple wooden shelters built from the trees they cut themselves. Before planting corn or wheat, before creating vineyards, before building churches, they had to clear the forest. The sound of axes replacing the silence of the wilderness became the first music of those new colonies.

Every tree removed represented a step toward survival.

Every field opened represented a victory.

Every home built represented the determination of people who had crossed an ocean carrying only hope.

The Venetian immigrants brought something more valuable than material possessions. They brought their culture. In the isolation of the Brazilian mountains, far from Italy, they preserved traditions that connected them to the villages they had left behind. Around the wooden tables of their homes, they continued to speak Venetian dialects. They prepared polenta, baked bread, produced homemade wine, celebrated religious festivals, and told their children stories about the distant homeland across the sea.

The old Veneto did not disappear.

It was replanted in Brazil.

Communities such as Caxias do Sul, Bento Gonçalves, Garibaldi, Antônio Prado, Nova Bassano, and many other settlements became symbols of Venetian perseverance. Places that once contained only forests gradually transformed into prosperous towns filled with vineyards, churches, schools, cooperatives, and family businesses.

The immigrant who arrived with nothing became the builder of a new society.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of these Venetian colonies was not only the economic development they created, but the preservation of identity. While many immigrant communities around the world gradually lost their original languages and customs, the descendants of Venetian settlers in southern Brazil maintained many traditions for generations. The Talian language, a form of Venetian dialect developed among Italian communities in Brazil, became one of the strongest examples of cultural survival.

For many descendants, hearing Talian spoken by grandparents was like listening to a voice coming directly from the old villages of Veneto.

It was the sound of ancestors.

It was the sound of memory.

It was the sound of a homeland that had crossed the Atlantic.

Today, descendants of those immigrants can be found throughout Brazil and around the world. Many families in the United States, Canada, and other countries are discovering that their Italian ancestry does not always lead only to Sicily, Tuscany, or the famous cities of Italy. For millions of people, the search for their roots leads to the small villages of Veneto and then across the ocean to the mountains of southern Brazil.

Behind every surname there is a story.

Behind every family photograph there is a journey.

Behind every old recipe there is the memory of someone who crossed an ocean so that future generations could have opportunities they never had.

The Venetian colonies of Brazil are living monuments to courage. They were not built with marble or gold, but with hard work, faith, sacrifice, and love for family. Their churches, vineyards, traditions, and languages are reminders that immigration is not only about leaving a place behind. It is also about carrying a place within the heart.

The forests where those pioneers struggled have become valleys of vineyards and prosperous communities. The small wooden houses have been replaced by modern cities. The children and grandchildren of those immigrants now live lives their ancestors could hardly imagine.

Yet something remains unchanged.

When a descendant prepares polenta following an old family recipe, when an elderly person speaks a few words of Talian, when a family gathers around the table during a traditional celebration, the spirit of those Venetian pioneers returns.

Because a homeland is not only the land beneath our feet.

A homeland is the collection of memories we refuse to forget.

And in the Venetian colonies of Brazil, the soul of Veneto continues to live, generation after generation, proving that even after crossing an ocean, a people can carry their homeland forever within their hearts.

Author’s Note

To understand the great Venetian migration of the nineteenth century, it is necessary to look beyond the romantic image of immigrants searching for adventure or new opportunities. For many families from Veneto, emigration was not simply a choice. It was often the last possibility to escape a life marked by poverty, hunger, and uncertainty.

During the nineteenth century, many rural communities in Veneto faced severe economic difficulties. The majority of the population depended on agriculture, but the land was often insufficient to support growing families. Many peasants worked as tenant farmers or day laborers, dedicating their entire lives to the fields while remaining trapped in a cycle of debt and hardship. A poor harvest could mean the difference between survival and famine.

Food shortages were a painful reality for many families. In numerous villages, the daily diet was extremely simple, often based on cornmeal, vegetables, and whatever could be produced locally. Malnutrition and diseases associated with poverty affected thousands of people, especially children. For many parents, the greatest fear was not leaving their homeland, but remaining there without being able to provide a future for their sons and daughters.

The social changes that followed Italian unification also created new difficulties. Taxes increased, traditional economic structures changed, and many small farmers discovered that the new Italy did not immediately bring prosperity to rural populations. The dream of owning land remained distant for countless families who had cultivated the fields of others for generations.

For these Venetians, the decision to cross the Atlantic represented a painful separation from everything familiar: their villages, their churches, their language, and the graves of their ancestors. They did not abandon Veneto because they stopped loving it. They left because love for their families was stronger than the fear of the unknown.

When they embarked for Brazil, many carried memories of a homeland they hoped to see again someday. They carried seeds of their traditions, recipes remembered from their mothers, prayers learned in childhood, and the Venetian words spoken by their grandparents. Although they left their land behind, they never truly left Veneto within themselves.

The history of Venetian immigration is therefore not only a story of migration. It is a story of survival, dignity, and the extraordinary human capacity to rebuild life after losing almost everything.

Dr. Luiz Carlos B. Piazzetta

O Homem que Conquistou uma Floresta - A Saga de um Imigrante Italiano na Colônia Caxias

 

"Antes dos vinhedos e das casas de pedra, existia apenas a floresta. Foi nela que nasceu o sonho de milhares de famílias italianas."

O Homem que Conquistou uma Floresta

Na primavera de 1857, quando os sinos da igreja de Cornedo Vicentino, na província de Vicenza, romperam o silêncio de uma manhã envolta pelo perfume das videiras, nasceu Angelo Lovarini. Era o terceiro filho de Giuseppe Lovarini e Caterina Dal Lago, camponeses que conheciam a terra apenas como trabalhadores, jamais como proprietários.

Desde menino, Angelo aprendeu uma verdade que parecia inalterável nas colinas do Vêneto. O homem podia passar toda a vida cultivando um campo sem jamais poder chamá-lo de seu. As melhores terras pertenciam aos grandes proprietários; aos demais restavam pequenas glebas arrendadas, colheitas incertas e a obrigação de entregar parte do fruto do próprio suor a quem nunca empunhara uma enxada.

A infância passou depressa. Antes de completar doze anos, já acompanhava o pai nas lavouras, cortava lenha nas encostas e conduzia carroças carregadas de feno pelas estradas estreitas que ligavam Cornedo Vicentino às pequenas localidades vizinhas. O trabalho endureceu suas mãos muito antes de transformar seu rosto em homem.

Os anos seguintes foram ainda mais difíceis. As colheitas raramente bastavam para alimentar toda a família, e a notícia de que existia uma terra distante, onde cada agricultor podia tornar-se dono do próprio pedaço de chão, começou a espalhar-se pelas aldeias da província de Vicenza como uma semente levada pelo vento.

No outono de 1883, Angelo tomou a decisão que mudaria sua vida.

Despediu-se dos pais, dos irmãos e dos parentes, prometendo que aquela separação não seria definitiva. Ao seu lado seguia a jovem esposa, Lucia Fracasso, mulher de saúde delicada, mas de coragem incomum. Ambos embarcaram em Gênova levando poucas roupas, algumas ferramentas e uma esperança muito maior do que a bagagem.

A travessia do Atlântico consumiu semanas de sofrimento, mas o casal resistiu. Quando finalmente alcançou o sul do Brasil, Angelo descobriu que a promessa feita pelos agentes de imigração era verdadeira apenas pela metade.

A terra existia.

Mas ninguém a encontrava pronta.

O destino da família foi a Colônia Caxias, no alto da Serra da Província de São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul.

Quando viu sua propriedade pela primeira vez, Angelo permaneceu imóvel por longos minutos.

Não havia campos.

Não havia estradas.

Não havia cercas.

Diante dele erguia-se apenas uma floresta imensa, fechada, quase impenetrável.

Naquele instante compreendeu que sua verdadeira viagem começava ali.

Os colonos mais antigos ensinaram-lhe como vencer a mata. Primeiro era preciso cortar toda a vegetação menor com o pesado roncão de lâmina curva. Depois vinham os machados, abrindo feridas profundas nos troncos gigantescos. As árvores permaneciam secando durante semanas, até que o fogo consumisse folhas, galhos e arbustos. Restavam os troncos maiores, reunidos em montes para serem queimados novamente.

Era um trabalho que exigia paciência, força e fé.

No primeiro verão brasileiro, Angelo conseguiu abrir dezoito grandes áreas de cultivo.

Enquanto manejava o machado desde o nascer até o pôr do sol, fazia contas silenciosas. Se a chuva viesse na época certa, colheria entre vinte e vinte e cinco sacos de trigo. Nunca imaginara produzir tanto em tão pouco tempo.

Foi então que percebeu uma riqueza que nenhum europeu conseguia enxergar ao chegar.

A floresta era um tesouro.

As árvores que precisava derrubar para plantar eram as mesmas que forneceriam madeira para construir a casa, o paiol, o estábulo e, mais tarde, vender vigas e tábuas aos novos colonos. Em sua terra natal, uma mata daquela dimensão transformaria qualquer homem em pessoa abastada.

Ali, porém, a madeira era apenas o primeiro obstáculo antes da colheita.

Angelo jamais reclamou do trabalho.

O que verdadeiramente lhe pesava era a ausência da família.

Ao cair da noite, sentado sobre um tronco diante do rancho coberto por tábuas rústicas, imaginava o pai envelhecendo em Cornedo Vicentino, enquanto seus irmãos continuavam trabalhando para enriquecer outros homens.

Foi nesse período que nasceu uma convicção que nunca mais o abandonaria.

Eles precisavam vir.

Todos.

O pai.

Os irmãos.

Os tios.

Os primos.

Os vizinhos.

Não queria apenas construir uma propriedade.

Queria reconstruir uma comunidade inteira.

Escreveu longas cartas incentivando a família a atravessar o oceano. Explicava que ali ninguém vivia sem esforço, mas também ninguém permanecia servo por toda a vida. Contava que o governo pagava cinco francos por dia aos homens que trabalhavam na abertura das estradas da colônia. Enquanto alguns parentes cuidassem da lavoura, outros poderiam ganhar dinheiro nas obras públicas. Em poucos meses conseguiriam economizar mais do que em anos de trabalho na Itália.

Também enviou notícias aos amigos Luigi Dal Zotto, Antonio Schiavo, Pietro Cestonaro e Giovanni Frigo, descrevendo as terras férteis da Colônia Caxias e pedindo que viessem antes que os melhores lotes fossem ocupados.

Nem todos acreditaram.

Alguns permaneceram em Vicenza.

Outros aceitaram o desafio.

Com o passar dos anos, novas famílias chegaram. Os antigos vizinhos voltaram a morar próximos uns dos outros, agora separados não por muros de pedra, mas por pequenas cercas de madeira construídas por suas próprias mãos.

Enquanto isso, Angelo transformava lentamente sua propriedade.

O trigo tornou-se a primeira grande colheita.

Depois vieram o sorgo, a horta, o pomar e as videiras.

Lucia Fracasso recuperou plenamente a saúde. Plantava flores diante da casa, criava galinhas, fazia pão e transformava o rancho inicial numa verdadeira morada. Ali nasceram os filhos, que cresceram ouvindo o som dos machados abrindo novas clareiras e o canto dos pássaros que ainda dominavam a floresta.

Aos domingos, a família seguia a cavalo até a pequena capela da colônia. O caminho era longo, mas Angelo jamais permitia que os filhos faltassem à missa. A fé, dizia sem palavras, era uma das poucas riquezas que conseguiram trazer intacta da Itália.

Décadas depois, quando a Colônia Caxias já possuía igrejas, escolas, ferrarias, armazéns e ruas movimentadas, poucos conseguiam imaginar como aquele lugar fora no início.

As colinas cobertas por vinhedos escondiam a memória das árvores gigantescas.

As casas de pedra ocultavam os antigos ranchos de madeira.

As crianças brincavam onde antes apenas o silêncio da mata existia.

Já idoso, Angelo costumava caminhar lentamente até o alto da propriedade, de onde podia contemplar toda a extensão das terras conquistadas.

Ali permanecia em silêncio por longos minutos.

Não via apenas plantações.

Via o pai que jamais conhecera aquela paisagem.

Via a coragem de Lucia.

Via os irmãos que finalmente atravessaram o oceano.

Via os filhos trabalhando em terras que nunca precisariam devolver a nenhum senhor.

Então compreendia que a maior conquista de sua vida não havia sido derrubar uma floresta.

Fora interromper um destino que durante gerações condenara sua família a trabalhar para outros homens.

Na província de Vicenza, nascera filho de camponeses sem terra.

Na Serra Gaúcha, morreria deixando aos descendentes aquilo que seus antepassados jamais puderam legar.

Não ouro.

Não títulos.

Mas algo muito mais raro.

Uma propriedade conquistada pelo próprio trabalho e uma liberdade que começara a ser construída no primeiro golpe de machado desferido contra a floresta brasileira. 

Nota do Autor

Esta crônica nasceu da leitura atenta de uma carta autêntica, hoje preservada no acervo de um museu histórico dedicado à imigração italiana no Rio Grande do Sul. Escrita por um imigrante no final do século XIX, ela revela, com extraordinária simplicidade, os desafios enfrentados na abertura das primeiras colônias, o esforço cotidiano para transformar a mata em lavoura e, sobretudo, o desejo permanente de reunir novamente a família em terras brasileiras.

A narrativa aqui apresentada é uma obra de ficção histórica. Embora inspirada em fatos, lugares, costumes e circunstâncias documentadas nessa correspondência, os personagens tiveram seus nomes modificados e diversos recursos literários foram empregados para dar unidade e profundidade à narrativa. O objetivo não é reproduzir fielmente a carta original, mas preservar sua essência humana, respeitando a memória das pessoas envolvidas e transformando um documento histórico em uma história de vida capaz de aproximar o leitor da realidade vivida pelos pioneiros da imigração italiana.

Escolhi desenvolver este tema porque poucas experiências foram tão decisivas para a formação das comunidades italianas no sul do Brasil quanto a conquista da floresta. Antes das casas de pedra, das videiras e das cidades que hoje prosperam na Serra Gaúcha, existiram homens e mulheres que precisaram vencer a mata fechada apenas com machados, coragem e esperança. Suas cartas revelam que a verdadeira colonização não foi apenas uma ocupação da terra, mas uma extraordinária obra de perseverança, construída dia após dia por pessoas comuns.

Ao transformar essa correspondência em literatura, procuro prestar uma homenagem silenciosa a milhares de imigrantes anônimos cujas histórias permaneceram guardadas em arquivos, museus e coleções particulares. Cada carta preservada representa muito mais do que um documento: é a voz de uma geração que, ao escrever para os familiares deixados na Itália, acabou legando às futuras gerações um dos mais valiosos patrimônios da memória da imigração italiana no Brasil.

Dr. Luiz Carlos B. Piazzetta