By UGO RIVETTI*
For those who immigrated, the past returns, in the end, with full force, in conversations and in deliriums in bed. And, in the end experienced by those who remain, there remains the unusual suspicion that they may rest in a strange land.
All families are similar in their happiness – and in the myths that surround them. The immigrant family is no exception. In fact, the family itself is the product of many myths.
From the myth of what was “left behind”. A whole world of images – of the house, of relatives, friends and neighbors, of the city, of the town/village/village, of festivals and fairs, of work, of scarcity and crisis – and of elements of daily life – recipes, songs, objects, sayings, accents, expressions – are translated, in the biased gaze of the offspring, into fragments of the family’s prehistory. Work that, to the extent that it distorts, restores to daily life the grandeur erased by the rush of everyday life.
Such elaboration perhaps explains the suspicion that something is hidden in what was left behind, the source of that obsession with archaeological research into origins that unfolds not only in dreams of travel, but also in the proliferation of resources that today promise the means for reconstructing family trees and for discovering, from a simple saliva sample, the deepest and most unsuspected roots of the individual.
From the myth of the “crossing”, summarized as an act of rupture through which uprooting becomes the adventure of founding a new lineage. A journey with a defined origin and destination, but without beginning or end, with borders that disappear in the flow of the immigrant’s life, as shown by the memories of the past that he cultivates and passes on, in which the reasons for the displacement live side by side with the memories of a golden age of the past. Hence the question that only those who have lived this experience are able to face sincerely: how is his destiny different from that of the exile?
From the myth of the “founding father”. A myth that is formed and perpetuated in stories that tend to emphasize the patriarch’s entrepreneurial capacity, his competence in the qualities required of those engaged in public life on the street and in commerce. The figure of the mother, on the other hand, is subjected to another treatment, to a filter that imprints something ineffable upon her. A compensatory operation, after all, the private sphere, the home, the space where the mother reigns, is also the world of the most intimate contacts, of the rooms and hallways where everyone jostles, where children compete for their parents’ favor and where parents elect their favorites, where the first cracks begin to appear.
That the figure of the mother tends to assume a blurred form in retrospective reconstructions of her offspring perhaps stems from an almost irresistible need to hide the memories of the house where one grew up – to scrutinize the place of the mother is to delve deeper into everything that has been repressed. Be it the mother of the first waves of migration, for whom the role of parent seemed the only imaginable path, or that of the later waves, prevented from following any alternative path to taking care of the house by the intervention of a husband fearful of the possibility of success of any madness of this kind.
Unlike the mother, the father figure has unhindered access to mythical status, based on a life story whose mark is imprinted on businesses, factories, mansions, clubs and unions, and on extra-family alliances established in contracts and partnerships. And on cemeteries. On tombstones where it is written that this is the tomb of the father's family, sometimes proudly represented in a bust or on a medal. The exceptions result from the imponderable (or, if you like, from fate): the premature death of a wife or a child, to whose memory the grieving husband or father dedicates the family tomb. Deviations that denounce the rule.
Myths that are constantly reinforced and updated by the generations that grew up in them. In the first names given to descendants, signs of filiation, whether through the decision to replicate a family name or through the singular spelling indicating the clan's roots. But also in the distortions of the slips of the tongue by which first names in Portuguese give way to nicknames in the variant of what family members feel is their true mother tongue (as mythical as it is less well-known). It is no coincidence that nicknames are emblems of the apparently more stripped-down, authentic – in short, familiar – face of the individual. An affectionate allusion reserved for the most intimate circle, protected from misunderstandings and ironies on the street.
Myths that have their reason for being, based on centripetal forces fueled by the experience of uprooting, affecting both those who share the same name and members of the same community, and by external and internal pressures for integration/assimilation into the new society. Such myths, as well as everyday rituals, can even be interpreted as mediating devices between the pull of centripetal forces and the desire for integration. Hence the ridiculousness of the efforts at differentiation displayed, as a rule, by those furthest from the first generations – an opportunistic initiative, since it is immune to the risks inherent in true non-integration.
But beyond all these considerations, the fact is that the rupture is real. The point of arrival will always seem less familiar than the point of departure, no matter how unequal the proportion of years between the two. And, if the passing of time alleviates the effects of the rupture, old age brings with it an acute awareness of the costs of displacement. Perhaps because the tasks of work at home and on the street no longer cover the day, or simply because time has passed, and the places and people are no longer the same, neither here nor there.
For those who immigrated, the past returns, in the end, with full force, in conversations and in deliriums in bed. And, in the end experienced by those who remain, there remains the unusual suspicion that they may rest in a strange land.
*Ugo Rivetti He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of São Paulo (USP).
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