Assuming another’s child paternal care
Francesco and Andrea Cassinca. Raising others’ children.
Francesco and Andrea Cassinca were born in Sori, respectively March, 1 1845 and March, 10 1848. They were the middle and the youngest sons of Cottardo and Monica Capurro. They were the brothers of Emmanuele, born Nov 21 1838, my great-grandmother’s father. Their father, Cottardo, had died at sea at the age of 34, they hence grew up very united because of these circumstances and his legacy. Their grandfather Michele Capurro owned boats built in Recco and Camogli. They were raised and would work closely together.
What happened to my great-grandmother’s father Emmanuele, their eldest brother? We know absolutely nothing about his wife Felicina and him except for their births, wedding and the birth of their daughter in Sori. Both Maria Monica Magdalena my great-grandmother and her uncle Francesco, were three years old when their fathers died, and unfortunately, the old family story would repeat itself. After Emmanuele’s daughter’s birth there are no traces of any Cassinca marrying being baptized or dying in Sori. The family story says the brothers took their niece and crossed to Argentina around 1870 where they settled. They turned into her rock as they took great care and raised the child.
The family probably moved from Sori to Recco or Camogli, the neighboring towns, some point after 1867. We do not know exactly when and why, except that they expanded thanks to maritime activity that was booming in both towns at that time. According to my uncles and mother, the Cassinca brothers owned merchant and passenger boats. Their main purpose was to sail between Italy and South America at first; and between Buenos Aires and Montevideo later. The two brothers left Recco for Buenos Aires around 1870 with their orphan niece. Maria Monica Magdalena Cassinca, the full name of my great-grandmother that they called Monica, traveled to Buenos Aires as the daughter of Francisco Cassinca in the brothers’ clipper. Why did Francesco act as her father? Why did she appear with Argentinean documents as the daughter of Francisco Cassinca? Did he adopt her, as he had no heirs? Was it also his destiny to take care of someone else’s child, as he had none of his own?
It took approximately a month at that time to reach the River Plate at the port of Buenos Aires, on the 44 meter long modern steam and sail vessel. Cargo and passenger trade from Italy to the River Plate was very profitable. A single trip to America paid for the construction of a boat. Francesco and Andrea made a fortune with merchandise and passenger transportation. Children were the first to socialize and play together, the older ones taking care of the younger ones. Andrea and Francesco as owners of the ship travelled comfortably, were used to the sea and never seasick. There were those who liked to hang around the deck and others seasick who preferred lying inside. Some passengers would play games: dices and cards. Other gathered tuning folk Ligurian music that preserved strong influences of the old Occitan music. They played the flute, tambourin, accordion, sometime a one string fiddle called torototela and bagpipe. Singers would join in singing traditional ballads typical of the north of Italy. The passengers would engage into passionate conversations about the dreams that took them to leave for the new world.
Others, the eldest mainly, would silently retreat staring back at the horizon, burying their feelings of fear, doubts and other emotions they needed to process before imagining another future afar from their natal land, the ones they had left and that they might never see anymore. Francesco liked spending time alone writing and reading as Maria Monica slept by his side. He felt comfort by hearing her breathe and slightly snore. Andrea liked to stroll with her and socialize. She was an easy icebreaker as everyone soon wanted to understand and know everything about these charming and rich bachelors taking care of the cute baby girl. My great granduncles favorite time of the journey was the ritual crossing of the equator. It is a centuries old ritual in seafaring to inaugurate the Equator line crossing and boost the morale of the crew. It involved good-humored mischiefs: the crew would dress-up as the God Neptune himself, played by the most senior crewmember and its court. Neptune opened the ritual, followed by farcical series of challenges, culminated in a water baptism and ended with the distribution of a certificate. As the boat passed the equator the starry night gave way to new constellations such as the southern cross. When the weather was good and during the new moon nights navigators would tell the tales of the constellations and during the full moon they sometime could watch in silence the blond planet turned red rising from the sea in unison and opposite the sun set.
When they arrived in the 1870s, Buenos Aires had the look of a provincial town: single storey houses, narrow streets. Public transportation existed but by the mean of horse tramways. Horseback riding enabled mobility around the city built as a crossroads. The streets ran north to south crossing others going east to west.
Francisco and Andrés bought a house on Pedro Mendoza Street, number 129; close to the old port terminal to Montevideo where their business was based. Their boats were freighted to and from Montevideo with goods and passengers. The large houses in Buenos Aires of white facades, thick walls and heavy wooden doors were former post-colonial noble houses where rich and large criollos families lived with their employees prior to moving to the north and west areas of Buenos Aires. The architecture of the houses was typical and stunning: built around a patio that distributed to dozens of small rooms with little windows or just a door to the patio. Some still exist in the old neighborhood of San Telmo. On hot summer days, Andrés, Francisco and their friends would typically hang out on the rooftops and philosophize late into starry nights away from the hot and damp rooms.
Native elites never easily accepted nor welcomed foreigners. History repeated itself. As Frank noblemen established in the Holy Land many centuries before had considered the Genoese “usurers, corsairs, merchants or seafarers”, Argentineans viewed them as “unskilled, poor and lacking education” when not “agitators, socialists or criminals”. Immigrants, as they did during the times of the crusades, to blend into the Holy Land, changed their names and melted into their respective societies. Francesco and Andrea hence became Francisco and Andrés.
Before and since, with the right friends and political views, excellent positions are awarded or the right concessions granted. My great grand uncles however were very secretive and discrete about their business dealings, whether charitable or civil. Raised to fulfill a dream, they arrived in Buenos Aires with more than the purpose of making fortunes or holding status but to be of service to others. They were educated to care for others and make them into better people. Their greatest heritage were ideals and dreams for their new life in the new world. Money of course would help. Francisco and Andrés not only helped those in Buenos Aires but also those staying behind. Orphans, their uncles and aunts were much present since their birth. In those years, Francisco was a widower and Andrés a bachelor, they had known a stable situation with employees helping in their household. They decided they could at least bring another child from Liguria with their boat and raised the child with and as a companion to their niece, Monica.
Francesco and Andrea’s grandmother, Teresa was the godmother of a girl a few months older than Monica. Teresa Giovanna Pinceto was named after her godmother. Other details of the family relationship will follow. Francisco and André were related to her mother, Emilia Mezzano but more particularly knew Emilia’s father, Andrea “Andrés” Mezzano as people called him in Argentina, one of the first Sard immigrants in Buenos Aires. Andrés Mezzano’s other three children Juan, Margarita and José as well as their respective families, had been living in Argentina for more than a decade. For some reason Andrés Mezzano’s wife, his youngest daughter and her children were still in Sori. Andrés was in his seventies and Margarita had already five children. Francesco offered to bring Teresa Giovanna and raise her with Monica. Emilia agreed but eventually Giuseppe Felice went instead. His sisters may have been more fragile and news about the Buenos Aires climate and epidemics had been worrying. He was a strong and dynamic child; he travelled instead of his sister around the year of 1870, he was six years old.
In the neighborhood of La Bocca, overcrowded houses had become unsanitary settlements, called conventillos. The rents were expensive: poor immigrants and their families lived together packed by tens in a room. There was no proper water purification and distribution system. The weather was very humid in Buenos Aires and the swamps of the delta of the River Plate as well as the Riachuelo were the only existing water systems, the place of laundering activities, but also receptacles of slaughterhouses and latrines.
This unsanitary situation would foster the terrible Buenos Aires epidemics of cholera and yellow fever that claimed tens of thousands of victims between 1867 and 1873. Almost a tenth of the population died: it was a traumatic time for survivors. Initially, with all those deaths, the bells rang constantly. Authorities were overwhelmed, cemeteries could not cope and trains freighted for the evacuations of coffins. The commercial life vanished from the docks. As in all crisis, a variety of attitudes predominated. The wealthiest citizens massively left the city for the countryside putting as much distance as they could with the disease. Others oblivious to the danger, maintained social contact drinking and singing in the pulperias and cafés. Bonfires were lit. Fear was a driver that led rumors to circulate as well as behaviors to be stigmatized. Narratives of remedies and cures were circulating, doubtful alongside official ones. Science’s knowledge was limited: healers were commonly sought rather than doctors. Some Genoese descendant however inherited some health concepts from their history of plague that included quarantine, cleanliness and sanitation. Courage as well as humanitarian ideals and material means led Francisco and Andrea to provide assistance. They took part of San Telmo Parish health board, a hygiene commission handling administrative tasks and providing resources for the sick and needy. The commission preventive approach to the epidemic was ventilation, fumigation, disposal of dead bodies, street cleaning.
A new concern for hygiene and sanitation of Buenos Aires shaped and fostered debates and improvements characterized by the developments of the following decades. Argentina benefitted tremendously from its agribusiness boom during the Belle Époque. It was an extremely favorable time: investments and benefits flowed. By the end of the 1800 Buenos Aires, young capital of the republic of Argentina was the furthest from any former Spanish colonial city and the closest to a European Capital. The municipality widened the streets and built parks, gardens and plazas aiming at developing healthier, green and public spaces. There were several electrical tramways and railway lines. An interpretation of Italian style replaced colonial style; French Beaux-Arts style became the preference of the elite and Neoclassicism for public buildings. Few colonial buildings remained and the architecture was predominantly European. Argentinean wealth enabled the elite as they moved to the northern neighborhoods of the capital to commission European architects, constructions inspired by French, German or Italian petits palais. European rugs, statues, lamps and other luxury items furnished the buildings mirroring European lifestyle. Companies and institutions, built astonishing and splendid, government houses, banks, opera houses, universities, churches, hotels, railways terminals, offices, bars and restaurants. The city bloomed thanks to wealth and rich patronage invested in schools, museums and art. Buenos Aires had earnt the nickname of the Paris of South America.
Buenos Aires was a capital of the arts, an international music venue, hosting Puccini, Toscanini, Saint Saenz and Caruso to perform. Francisco had an extraordinary taste for art and music, which the children, Monica and Giuseppe took after. He passed to them his passion as he took them together with him to events. He furnished his house mostly with Italian artwork. Plastic Arts and local artists, educated in the Fine Art Academy flourished in parallel with the rise of a European paintings and sculptures market. Francisco however was particularly fond of the Barbizon and Realist schools easily found in Buenos Aires. Exhibitions were held, Art galleries had established in Buenos Aires. Acquisitions that rich families made during their yearly European travels brought to Buenos Aires beautiful luxury objects and artworks. The great wealth of the elite enabled them to travel to Europe and settle for months in Madrid, Rome and Paris. During those trips, business kept going and personal purchases were common to renew their private wardrobes and art collections. In 1889 at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, the Pabellón Argentino, was an impressive iron and glass building created for showing the Argentinian Section. Later it was dismantled, shipped back and re-assembled in Buenos Aires, and became a place for exhibition and meetings.
In 1885 Andrés Cassinca married Catalina and moved to calle Olavaria. Francisco later moved to the same street but to a bigger property. Andrés and Catalina had six children: Emma Maria Monica, Clelia and Andrés Menotti both christened in honor to Garibaldi with the names of his Latin American children, Catalina, Eduardo Gotardo, Emilio and Eldemira. In 1894, Andrés moved with his family to the new port of La Plata whereas Francesco moved to live with his adopted daughter Monica, her husband and their children in Buenos Aires, the family always united.
A new society came out both from the economical and epidemics crisis. Francisco and Andrea worked hard and shaped their destiny as hoped by my ancestor Cottardo. There is no doubt that he’d have been proud of his sons as they could be, of what they had achieved and of who they had turned into. Their legacy had proven Cottardo right: education, dreams and values stood far more solid than money and properties. They, in turn, would assure and pass to the next generation more than heirlooms, a heritage.