Columbus Day: COES celebrates Italian pride in New York

The Centro Orientamento per Emigrati Siciliani (COES) now boasts thirty years of activity at the service of Sicilian citizens who, for work reasons, have gone to live abroad. COES has always concentrated on putting into effect national and regional legislation in matters of help to the emigrants to facilitate their integration in a socio-economic context in the country of adoption.

The Centre organised a week of cultural activities culminating in the conference Sicilia USA, regional measures and Sicilian emigration on the threshold of the year 2000 on the occasion of the participation of COES on Columbus Day in the parade that takes place every year in New York on 12 October, the day when Christopher Columbus landed in the new continent.

"The Italian myth," he said, "has already entered into the American way of life and there are now many Americans with Italian origins that have reached high positions in the fields of politics, economics and culture."

The COES delegation on Columbus Day joined the masses of people originating from every region of Italy, fully aware that at that moment they represented another Italy (four million natives just in New York, twenty-five million in the whole of the United States the major part of which boasted southern and above all Sicilian origins) in the typically Yankee, festive parade and watched dozens of folklore groups, bands, majorettes, acrobats, enormous puppets suspended in mid-air and carnival floats parade down 5^th Avenue between two dense throngs composed of a variety of races that is possible to meet only in new York.

The delegates met the Italian consul for New York, Franco Mistretta, the day after. The articles of COES’s operating programme emerged during the course of the official visit which, anticipating the most recent requests of the community living abroad, starting from the 1960s has organised colonies and summer camps for the young with the aim of fostering knowledge of the nation and region of origin on the part of the emigrants’ children, thus putting into practice the activity of social tourism provided for by the norm. Long experience and the most recent studies in the field demonstrate, in fact, that only by turning our attention to the young generation can we hope to save the link between the Other Sicily and the region of origin. COES proposes the organisation of Italian language courses for Sicilians living abroad, by now second or third generation, to take place during holidays in the island.

Another possible way to meet lies with twinning between Sicilian and American towns, which COES has already programmed for next year.

In the afternoon the delegation went to Westwood, New Jersey, to the editorial office of "America Oggi", the only all Italian daily in the United States, which in ten years has built up a circulation of seventy thousand copies. The object of the meeting with the editor , Andrea Mantineo, and his team was the acquisition of up-to-date data of the diffusion of the Italian language in the United States and the needs of the local community, elaborated on the basis of continuous updated monitoring by the newspaper’s marketing office.

Mantineo underlined the increasing demand for information from Italy and expressed the preference amongst the most fervent readers for the Italian language, as well as the growing difficulty in finding new readers among the young since the new generation, although proud of their roots perhaps more than their families, learn Italian with difficulty. The delegation is committed to bring to the attention of the Regione Siciliana the delicate problem of the conservation of the cultural and linguistic Italian heritage in the United States and to promote through the administration initiatives aimed at the diffusion of information and culture concentrating however on topics of current interest, using the network of the associations.

The COES convention on the social security system took place on 15 October. Apart from the delegation the other participants were cavaliere Angelo Siciliano, president of ASU, Associazioni Siciliane Unite, Joseph Di Benedetto, delegate of COES for New York, Anthony Ciappina, editor in chief of America Oggi, Vincenzo D’Agostino, president of the Cultural Commission for the Province of Palermo and Girolamo Cusimano, emigration consultant to the Regional Province of Palermo.

Apart from examining all the problems connected with regional provisions for benefits to Sicilian emigrants, the debate focalised on COES’s activity programme in the United States, in the following areas: