Traveling is almost like talking with those of other centuries.
Rene Descartes (1506-1650)
The statement by the French philosopher and mathematician is true and may provide an answer on why some of us are restless travelers. When we move to a new city of country, do we subconsciously stay in contact with our former hoe, cherished relatives, friends and memories? Does our wish to remain spiritually connected to such matters reveal why – after many generations – some of us in faraway lands stubbornly refuse to severe ties with a country like Finland?
Possibly, some of us are nothing more than antique collectors of culture, which decorate the shelves of our soul. If you had a chance to see my soul, you’d notice shelves extending as far as the eyes can see with ornaments and heirlooms of Finnish and other cultures gathering soul dust.
A book publsihed in 2006 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Colonia Finlandesa, Argentina.
I still can’t place my finer on it, but there’s something bewitching that the streets of bygone times house. Is it a lost dream? A passionate desire? An eternal gut feeling that spiritual and material wealth are around the corner? Or will we find our former relatives on such streets and have the opportunity to ask them the immigrant question of all questions: What did you search so hard for?
What they searched for
Since Argentina has been on the front pages of the world’s major dailies, with your permission, we will momentarily travel to the streets of that country, where my Italian great grandparents migrated to in the end of 1890s.
Like the U.S., Canada and Australia, millions of Europeans moved to Argentina in the 19th and early 20th century. Most of these migrants were Italians and Spaniards. A tiny group of Finns founded in 1906 a colony in the subtropical jungles of north-eastern Argentina.
In the 1914 census, 30% of Argentina’s population comprised o foreigners and its capital city, Buenos Aires, the figure stood at 49%! Add to these percentages the children of these migrants and the foreign-to-native ratio becomes even more impressive.
If you visit a residential neighborhood of Buenos Aires like Flores, where my grandparents once lived, you’ll still find early-20th-century Parisian-style houses adorning sleepy oak-lined cobblestone streets.
Many of the older residents of Flores despise time because they say it distances them from those they love and who where from distant European lands. The residents of the neighborhood have ingenious methods of stopping time: They park vintage cars like Fords from the 1930s in front of their homes. Some have portraits of ancient heads of state like King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, Spain’s Francisco Franco and Czar Nicholas II hanging on the walls of their homes.
The inhabitants understand that if time is allowed to wander freely, it turns into the worst ogre devouring everything in its path.
A late uncle, who lived in Flores, once scolded me for bringing a modern object like a pocket calculator to his home. “Are you mad!” he said. “Get that contemporary thing out of here, pronto! We don’t want to speed up time, now do we?”
Horatio’s home was like entering a museum. The only modern appliance he had, which was a television set and fridge, were are least 30-40 years old. He’d often talk to me as a child bout traveling to Africa on an adventure safari, even in his lifetime ha never traveled outside Buenos Aires.
One day my uncle told me why he had nailed the hands of time .
“Time is a migrants worst enemy because it distances you from who we were and shapes us by force into nationals of new countries and circumstances,” he said. “I’m still hopeful that if time is slowed, and the past and present are perfectly balanced, the answer concerning what my Italian parents searched for in these parts will drop on my lap like a golden leaf inscribed with wisdom.”
I never knew if Horatio learned the great secret. The tone of his voice and desolate look, when I spoke to him last, suggested that he had not had any luck. He sounded more like an estranged man with cancer who knew that death was closing in. The bitterness brought by hyperinflation, political and economic turmoil – like some to the images seen from Argentina – ended getting the best of him.
They were signposts that led him – like million of other second-generation Argentina – to his grave.
Twilight worlds
Migrating to a new country is like entering a world exposed first by twilight. Matters become more defined and lighted as you familiarize yourself with the spiritual and physical landscapes of your new home country.
Choosing a country is just as an important decision as picking the right wife or husband. I’m convinced that some countries can bring out the best in a person, while others can spell ruin. The decision our past relatives made to migrate to a country continues to affect us for many generations. Aren’t we natives of a country because of a decision a parent or great grandparent made a long time ago?
Let’s return to the main question: What did our migrant relatives search so hard for? Was it opportunity? Advature? Love? Freedom? Simple survival?
Or was it only a wish to talk with those of other centuries and ask them what they searched fo hard for?
Read the Spanish-language version of the column here.