Sicily men are an important part of Sicilian history and the related tradition. They did the war. They suffered, worked hard and emigrated abroad. For this reason, they deserve a special article that tells about them.
At the end, it is possible you’ll see back the life of your forefathers, namely those Sicilian men who made Sicily great in the world. If you are ready to discover more, I am ready, too. Let’s go, then!
Main Traits of Sicilian Men
To discuss the traits of the men of Sicily, you can’t use a univocal description, but several facets distributed over time.
There are, in fact, the Sicilian men of yesterday and the ones of today.
Sicily Men of yesterday
The men of yesterday embody the traditional look of ancient Sicilians. They are typically depicted with the classical Sicilian coppola, half trousers tied to the knees, shirt, vest and a curious pon pon red tie called “cravatta co giummu” in Sicilian.
Most of the above-described Sicily men were and worked as peasants on behalf of landlords who leased them the cultivable fields. It was the so-called sharecropping. Even if the agreement established that the sharecropper should earn the half of the harvest, these peasants were often exploited and humiliated. They received less than necessary to survive. The economic system that was in force in Sicily had, in fact, a feudal imprint which heavily influenced the mindset of Sicilian men.
This system was also a cause of extreme misery, poverty, emigration and the rise of the power of the mafia. Just think that the father of mafia boss Totò Riina was a poor and honest peasant that ended up killed by a WWII American bomb found while he was working in a field.
Due to his serious condition of poverty, he decided to dig up, clean and sell the bomb with the aim to scrape together some money. But unfortunately, the bomb exploded in his hands while he was removing soil and mud from it. The explosion killed the man and the little brother of Totò Riina.
When the young Riina refused to emigrate to Australia and decided to join the local mafia, he motivated his wicked and sick choice with these words: “My father was not killed by the bomb. He was killed by poverty.” However, an unfair destiny, mustn’t justify the decision to become a mobster. I want this principle to be clear for you that read this story. Because tons of Sicilian men endured a terrible destiny, but they made honest life choices. And here, we enter the story of the Sicilian emigration.
Sicily Emigration: An Exodus of Sicilian Men
The emigration of Sicilian men started officially in 1870 for the economic conditions discussed above. Many of them were, obviously, peasants. They dreamed of going to the United States, pushed by a strong propaganda that made them believe to get a better future there.
At the early of 1900, over 5,000 navigation agents invited Sicilians to emigrate. To abandon Sicily, however, the emigrants had to pay these agents the 3% of the ticket of the ship.
Sicily men undertook, this way, a long journey toward a new life. The travel started with an exhausting trip on a chariot pulled by a donkey that usually marched many hours before arriving in the port.
Sicily men were allowed to take food and their own objects to remember their family. They made the journey by boat in scanty conditions, crammed along with other passengers where often epidemic outbreaks occurred. Many Sicilian men died on the ship, and only a few fortunate guys reached their dreamy destination: the United States of America.
Usually, they left Sicily with poor luggage, such as a carton suitcase, which has become an iconic symbol of Italian emigration over time.
The arrival in the United States was not always easy. Many Sicilian emigrants were illiterate and unable to speak English. They couldn’t even speak Italian, because poverty prevented them from going to school. At the time, Sicilian men could only speak Sicilian and this made the pathway of integration harder.
Due to their social and cultural conditions, Sicily men obtained low paid jobs and frequently they came across racist employers who hated them because they were Sicilian.
As regards this side, 124 years have passed since five Sicilian migrants were beaten and hanged in Tallulah, a small village in the state of Louisiana. It was a sullen night of July, when in this former slave state, the brothers Joe, Frank, Charles Defatta, Rosario Fiduccia and Giovanni Cirami were executed.
This story is narrated in a book written by Italian journalist Enrico Deaglio, titled: A True and Terrible Story between Sicily and America. Unfortunately, we have only the Italian edition of the book. I translated the title for your own understanding.
The men executed in 1899 came from a family of Sicilian peasants. The book tells the story of their emigration from the route of Cefalù to the one of New Orleans.
They didn’t deserve to live for the racist community that dominated America at the time. They were considered as hybrid beings equal to animals, nor black, nor white, but invisible men, without dignity and with no honor.
This is an unfair and unfamous fact which heavily marked the vicissitudes of a multitude of Sicilian immigrants in the United States.
A few survivors developed mental illnesses and were sent back to Sicily, such as the story of the fool of Sciacca.
The history of the Sicilian emigration is strongly dystopic and permeated by violence and injustice. From one side we had many American employers, who, deprived by slaves for their plantations, were in need of another cursed race to enslave, and, maybe, kill.
From another side, there were the Sicilian migrants who fled the island driven not by hope, but by a deep desperation. And this, along with illiteracy and a scarce mindfulness of real American life, made them easy prey of subtle deception and horrible exploitation.
Those who were able to resist and remain in America went to school and learned English to get better jobs and an acceptable social status. In short, they rebuilt their life from scratch, even though they had a wife and children in Sicily. It is in this framework that several Sicily men conducted a double life, with the official wife in Sicily and a new American girlfriend and further children in the United States.
Other Traits of Sicily Men
The aspect of the double life describes another trait of Sicily men: they considered sexual desire as a fundamental right. They lacked the patience to bring their complete family to America as soon as their financial conditions ameliorated. And so, they preferred looking for another woman.
There is also to consider that, at the time, it was challenging to reach the family in Sicily or take it to America. Many Sicilian wives, moreover, remained tied to their origin clan and refused to rejoin with the emigrated husband.
Since at that time divorce didn’t exist in Sicily, emigration ended up separating several couples and many families. And all this, for the strong familiar structure of the Sicilian communities, was like a wound that was hard to heal.
I don’t know if the sons of the old and the new Sicilian families of the migrants have ever met over time. I know the stories of those who decided to come back to Sicily after many years in America. They are old Sicily men, today, have a good pension and lots of memoirs to share. They still have the sensation of being in the United States even when they walk amid the Sicilian streets. Broken souls, they define themselves, with half heart in the island and the other half abroad.
Returning to the peculiar traits of the ancient Sicily men, Sicilian culture bestowed them with the role of great lovers who were extremely jealous of their women. Sicilian masculinity is in fact very popular all over the world. But reality is different, a bit. In addition to womanizers, there were also shy men in Sicily. These guys, often, had their sexual initiation with prostitutes, because they were unable to seduce girls. Indeed, with the fact that the girls had to remain virgin up to the wedding day, seduction became a hard work for the shy Sicilian men. But begging sex from prostitutes, these men deprived themselves from the joy of true love.
Furthermore, a twisted and horrible Sicilian tradition, forced the most insecure Sicily men to marry only virgin women met and chosen through the so called predefined wedding.
These predefined weddings occurred, hence, between two persons who were unaware of the meaning of true love and sex coming from authentic intimacy.
Predefined wedding was a sort of mutual agreement between a Sicilian man in need of a servant and a woman in need of someone who maintained her.
These kinds of Sicilian men didn’t care about the qualities of their wives. They could also marry women mentally impaired, provided that the wife prepared meals and washed their pants.
The result of this loveless marriage was to have unhappy children who became depressed as adults. I was born by a predefined marriage, unfortunately, with all its burden of sorrow and unhappiness.
Sicily Men Today
Today, the men of Sicily are fully different. They don’t consider their spouse as a maid, and their relationships are based on respect and equalities. Only in small Sicilian villages, a few men who didn’t have a path of personal development, treat their women badly, but I hope these will be rare cases, even because women are free to divorce from them, by now. For the rest, modern Sicilian men can have a high social status.
Often, they have a degree and master degree. These Sicilian men also speak several foreign languages, and, usually, they live in the North of Italy or abroad. In short, Sicily men are forced to emigrate, even today, because there are no jobs for them on my island. The only available jobs are for peasants, low paid waiters, artisans and guys who got recommended by politicians or local mobsters.
As you can see, the face of Sicily has not changed. Cultural limits have remained the same, like an eternal and immutable hallmark of a broken and beautiful island.
What has changed, instead, is the face of the Sicilian emigration and the related men.
Today, you can’t emigrate as a plate washer, you must be a software engineer, at least. And Sicily men made it, fortunately. They haven’t forgotten the painful emigration of their ancestors.
That is why they treat migrants who arrive in Sicily with warm welcoming. In Lampedusa, indeed, they donated the poor African migrants, sheltering, clothing, food and delicious arancini.
There is no better way to be a true man in Sicily.
Conclusion
The history of Sicily men is as complex as their long vicissitudes, and an article may be not enough. To craft it for you, I tried to dig into my personal remembrances, in addition to look for historical data and facts.
While I was writing, I remembered the illiteracy of my maternal grandfather; he was a Sicilian peasant who never separated from his donkey.
I also thought of my paternal grandfather. He was a Sicilian bricklayer with the third elementary. However, when he went to the war, he wrote passionate letters to his wife, as a skilled writer.
With this piece, hence, I only aimed to emotionally convey the meaning of the life of all men of my island in their fullness.
I hope I achieved the goal.
Photocredits in order of appearance
Imdb.com
Dreamstime
Discovermessina.com
Istituto Poligrafico Europeo
Photographium.com
Gazzettinonline.it
Rosalba Mancuso is a freelance journalist born in Sicily. Passionate about her loved island and with extensive writing experience, Rosalba worked as a contributor for the main Sicily’s newspapers and as a bilingual Italian – English writer. Thanks to her skills, she also founded four websites in English. On Sicilyonweb, Rosalba tells every corner of her beloved Sicily. Furthermore, she writes this blog thanks to your help. Rosalba, in fact, earns a small commission, with no cost for you, when you book your travel or buy products through the affiliate widgets or links you find in her posts.